An interesting website that tracks news of bird flu outbreaks:

http://birdflubreakingnews.com

Cheers

The article seems to have made an impression on you. I still think the bird flu was a false alarm but I still see pandemics as a global threat. Your response and counters are interesting and I’ll re-read them and let you know if I am starting to sway.

Cheers,
Ronin

Everyone is at risk – not just overpopulated areas in third-world countries and poultry workers.

To have a pandemic three things are necessary. It must be a new virus that no one has immuity to. It must cause severe disease in people and it must spread easily from person to person. The H5N1 virus already has the frst two requirements.

When the last requirement is met and the virus is spreading from person to person easily, we will not need to worry about infected birds or the food we eat being infected.

The virus will be spread from where ever it mutates to other continents by air travel. People are contagious before they have symptoms. So business people who travel to Asia or tourists will become infected and bring the virus onto their planes where it will infect other passengers who will then take it to their home towns.

Right now there are two antiviral drugs that are being used – Tamiflu and Relenza.

Unfortuately we do not have enough of either. The U.S. stockpile covers less than 20% of our population.

And some strains of the H5N1 virus are already resistant to Tamiflu.

Antiviral drugs are one of the best weapons that we have, but we do not have nearly enough and there is a good chance that the virus will be resistant.

Domesticated birds do die in great numbers from high path avian flu – the death rate is virtually 100 percent, and any birds that do not die must be culled to try to prevent the disease from spreading.

But wild birds are dying from H5N1 also, and they are dying in great numbers.

Humans…

There haven’t been many infections of H5N1 in people – yet.

Officially 383 people have been infected – of those 241 have died.

That’s a fatality rate of 63% – with good medical care and antiviral drugs. In Indonesia where the virus has been most active, the fatality rate has been over 80% – with good medical care and antiviral drugs.

Many of these people were infected by contact with birds, but Indonesian officials say that at least 25% of their patients have not had contact with any birds.

There has been confirmed human-to-human transmission. The World Health Organization confirms this.

There hasn’t been *sustained* human-to-human transmission, but scientists are watching the virus mutate and it is acquring the changes necessary to pass easily from person to person.

When the virus is able to pass easily from person to person we will have a pandemic.

There was a lot of media attention several years ago, and some people seemed to believe that pandemic flu would begin in the next “flu season.” When that didn’t happen, they thought that the threat was overblown.

But there was never a time limit on when a pandemic would start. The scientists and public health people didn’t say that.

The H5N1 virus is still out there, still infecting birds, still infecting people, still spreading across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. This morning we got news that 17 people are suspected to have avian flu in Egypt.

Getting a bit bored with the scaremongering and need to know the unbiased facts of this rampaging global killer, from China?

Crisis?

So you’ve had a dire-ria day. Get compacted home. No post, no messages, no food. After finishing microwaving your Kiev you switch on the box. There he is, John Simpson telling you chicken is ill, and here’s another picture of your walking chicken Kiev, and here’s one being slaughtered. O wait there’s a professor telling you he’s concerned. And there’s the bin, and there’s your poultry Kiev in a sea of value eggs and edd the duck puppets.

…more at http://www.lifestyleguides.blogspot.com

I second that motion!!!