OK, I'm hyperventilating with fear over avian chicken pox

[IDemo]

Or was it bird flu? Oh well, no difference, the point is, must continue clutching my head in panic over my impending doom. Must run around in small circles, must keep the spirit of fear alive in my heart, regardless of whether fear of terrorists, terriers, Iranian nukes, or an avian virus which has not yet proven to be transmissible from human-to-human. But let's count on the pandemic occuring soon.

Don't get me wrong, our gummint could have done very much better in anticipating actual disasters and preparing appropriately. A serious engineering assessment might have prompted the Army Corps of Engineers to make the necessary improvements to the levees to prevent, or at least alleviate somewhat, the Katrina catastrophe. A serious examination of available intelligence may have prevented one or more of the fatal flights of 9/11. A lack of serious examination of the available intelligence, not to mention outright denial of said intelligence, brought about the Iraq debacle.

But there has been something distinctly odd and out of the loop of ordinary * administration loopiness and denial when it comes to bird flu, the H5N1 virus. That is, when it comes to issues (problems) that most agree will have actual, serious impacts on the planet and/or human population: global warming, polluted air and water, vanishing species, HIV, peak oil; this administration has put up an endless wall of denial and dismissal. Why then has bird flu found itself placed in the spotlight by both the administration and the MSM? I'm just waiting for the modern day equivalent of the 'duck-and-cover' ads of my youth ("Don't go near that duck, Jimmy, and for Godsake cover your mouth!")

My more cynical side (98% of me, nowadays) feels that our Gub'mint would welcome an actual pandemic, believing it would "decrease the surplus population". Any reason to believe our present 'leaders' would exert themselves to protect the US general public from an unproved health threat?

[0007]

1. LOL!

[babylonsister]

2. Don't forget all the moola Rummy will get for tamiflu. And don't

forget Florida! It's already happening!:scared:

[hedgehog]

3. I just wish there was some way to remind these people that

this government was established to ensure the welfare of the American people! My interpretation of what they are saying is that a lot of people are going to get sick and many will die, but they can't envision any possible role for the Federal government to alleviate the situation. Of course, they have already shown this attitude by the way they abandoned all responsibility before and after Katrina and Rita. If we could handle this in 1919, why are we panicking in 2006?

[deadcenter]

5. Read

The Great Influenza by John M. Barry. We didn't handle the 1918-19 pandemic, the flu ran out of fuel (people). There will be another pandemic, sooner or later, and personally I don't care who's running Washington, they won't handle it very well either. My opinion anyway.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

7. Adding to your thoughts, we now have 6.5 billion people living....

...primarily in urban centers, unlike the 1.8 billion that lived primarily in rural areas in 1918-1919. There won't be any lack of fuel this time around.

By the way, I've read Barry's book, too. He did an excellent job with a very complex subject.

[deadcenter]

22. I found it a very enjoyable read,

even though it took nearly half the book for him to actually start talking about the pandemic, lol. Really enjoyed his history and evolution of medicine, medical education, and medical science though.

[hedgehog]

9. A lot of people died, but life went on.

This isn't Ebola we're talking about here. Shipyards and factories didn't miss a beat in supplying the Army in Europe. There was no mass breakdown of law and order. The part that hurts is that hospitals that are already ready to collapse due to cost cutting by insurance companies and governments (Federal, state & local) are being told to stock up on supplies and be ready to instantly increase staffing when the need arises. They can't find enough nurses today (mostly because of terrible working conditions). Where are these nurses going to magically appear from if the pandemic hits? People are going to die who should be able to survive this because the Bush administration is not taking responsibility now.

[deadcenter]

21. read the book,

Barry is much more eloquent than I. The "official" death toll world wide was 20 million, epidemiologists have since estimated that the actual number is more in the neighborhood of 50 to 100 million. The reason for the disparity in numbers is many doctors basically refused to call the cause of death influenza because they could not concieve that "only influenza" could kill the way that virus did. The vast majority of those that died, died in less than 24 weeks. Hospitals were overloaded then and they had 5 times the capacity we have today. You're right, we don't have nearly enough nurses either, however, we did miss several beats, shipyards and factories were impacted. But, consider this, the influenza bug back then could only travel at the speed of the fastest ship, today it can travel around the world in less time than it took for it cross the Atlantic.

[lastknowngood]

4. The real danger is not that the "bird flu" could crossover to humans

The real danger is that it could cause the deaths of billions of birds, many millions of which are used as food. Question: what would be the effect of a worldwide kill off of chickens, ducks and turkeys?
Answer: The single largest, cheapest and most widely distributed form of PROTEIN for HUMAN consumption would be eliminated overnight. The impact on prices of other sources of protein i.e. beef and pigs would skyrocket and much of the world would be without a source of protein.
What would be the effect? Human die off and decrease in population?

Do not always look straight at the item, sometimes you get a clearer view from your peripheral vision.

[hedgehog]

10. But don't birds always have some sort of "bird flu"?

Is this flu especially lethal to birds or are we noticing it simply because it has a strong potential to jump species?

[Hoping4Change]

20. Yes its very lethal to birds and has spread very quickly. nt

[prolesunited]

17. I wonder how vegetarians manage to survive

without eating chickens or ducks or turkeys or beef or pigs. Hmmm... perhaps there *are* other sources of protein.

[IDemo]

6. Cell Barrier Shows Why Bird Flu Not So Easily Spread Among Humans

Although more than 100 people have been infected with the H5N1 avian influenza virus, mostly from close contact with infected poultry, the fact that the virus does not spread easily from its pioneering human hosts to other humans has been a biomedical puzzle.

Writing in the journal Nature, a team of scientists led by UW-Madison virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka reports differences in the receptors on cells in the lower and upper parts of the human respiratory system that avian flu viruses use to gain access to cells. The work shows why the avian influenza virus does not yet transmit easily from human to human.

Now, a study of cells in the human respiratory tract reveals a simple anatomical difference in the cells of the system that makes it difficult for the virus to jump from human to human.

The finding, reported March 22 in the journal Nature, is important because it demonstrates a requisite characteristic for the virus to equip itself to easily infect humans, the key development required for the virus to assume pandemic proportions.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060322181022.htm

[Media_Lies_Daily]

8. It's not much of a puzzle, IMHO. It just hasn't developed a variant...

...that can be easily transmitted from human to human.

[hedgehog]

11. What constitutes close contact?

I'm wondering if these cases were blood-borne transmissions instead of the more typical air borne transmission. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find that the real culprit is the use of roosters in cock fighting more than anything else.

[IDemo]

12. Health advisory: don't play catch with chicken heads:

An 11-year-old girl became the third victim of bird flu in Turkey yesterday, days after her brother and sister died from the disease. Hulya Kocyigit, 11, died in a hospital in the eastern city of Van, as teams from the World Health Organisation and the European commission arrived in the region to assess the risk.

Doctors said the Kocyigit children had almost certainly contracted bird flu after playing with the heads of dead chickens at their parents' rural poultry farm. The girl's sister Fatima, 15, and brother Mehmet Ali, 14, died earlier this week. They are the first to have died from the H5N1 bird-flu strain in Turkey, prompting fears it could spread to mainland Europe.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/birdflu/story/0,14207,1681097,00.html

[hedgehog]

14. Chickens really do run around with their heads cut off

unless you secure them before you behead them. I imagine that would spray a lot of blood around, also.

[IDemo]

15. I hate the mess chicken heads leave on the ping-pong table n/t

[Exultant Democracy]

13. We should call them Duct Tape-Republicans...

It is a very fitting metaphor. Yes there is no threat of massive biological or chemical attacks, but if you duct tape your house inside of sheet of plastic, then the worst case scenario is you suffocate. But if you suffocate you will be 100% safe from any WMD attacks.

[MercutioATC]

16. Sometimes we're as simple-minded as the Freepers....

There are two extreme positions one can take in any situation...panic or denial.

Both are simple-minded.

H5N1 is currently only transmitted from birds to humans (with rare exceptions) and is not transmitted to humans easily.

There's no need to panic.

H5N1 is an H5 virus. No human has been exposed to an H5 virus before and we have absolutely ZERO resistance to one (which is why it's more troubling than any of the normal yearly flu bugs). H5N1 has been around a while but in the past year it has begun spreading faster and mutating faster (which is why it is more troubling than some of the other avian viruses). With every human infection (and every swine infection) the likelihood that H5N1 mutates into a human-to-human virus increases.

It's foolish to simply deny the issue.


Why is it that most DU threads on H5N1 originate from one of these extremes? We constantly accuse freepers of being unable to recognize the existence of a middle ground (which most of us call reality). Why are we emulating them? Why are most here treating this as an all-or-nothing issue?

Sorry, I've just been really disappointed in the nature of H5N1 posts here...

[spanone]

18. I just love Speculative News...

:sarcasm: This 'Bird Flu'. CNN is right now talking about the possibility of MILLIONS DYING. Gawdalmighty.

[hedgehog]

19. How many die each day anyways?

I don't see people dropping dead in their tracks as hinted in the promos for the upcoming movie on ABC.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

23. My aunt worked as an educator in a lot of asian villages.

She said that many of the people there ate raw chicken, and drinking chicken blood was not uncommon. I can see in that instance where it could easily be transferred from bird to human, and subsequently, from human to human. It is not the bird to human contact that is so frightening, as in our culture we don't do these things, but once it crosses over to humans infecting humans, anything could happen.

[DearAbby]

24. Remember to stock up on the Tuna fish

also don't forget you're on your own.