OH NO! The bird flu is coming to get me!

Sorry, but I'm not buying in to the MSM hype on this one.

This whole flu scare is 110% all american, hyped up, media bullshit designed for one reason, and one reason only. To distract us from everything happening on capitol hill, and the rest of the world.

They tried the same crap with SARS a couple of years ago. If you want to go all Howard Hughes on every one and practice your OCD skills, and wash your hands every ten minutes, go for it. You might as well buy some duct tape and plastic sheeting while your at it.

There, I just needed to get that off my chest.

BTW, Georges war on worldwide terror is going great isn't it?

I agree, I haven't made my mind up about this either. But, it IS a particularly bad strain of flu, 60% death ratio is something this nation hasn't seen since in over 75 years.

Maybe...they've lulled us into not paying attention, with their SARs scare? It's what I worry about, making noises, but now we're used to not listening.

And if all hell breaks out? They can blame us...because we didn't "listen".

I don't know. It could happen. All I know is, these bastards aren't on our side. It's all I know, but, it's enough.

...does this virus spread person-to-person? Guess what the answer is?

No. It does not.

This is distraction hype. Kind of like a terror-alert, but more cynical.

it has spread from one person to another, but has not achieved "sustained transmission"

unfortunatly this type of "baby-stepping" is par on course for emerging pandemics.

concerned that the virus will mutate and will then be easily spread person to person.

Once it does jump the species barrier it will be another story.

It is a story that you need to pay attention to, but not go crazy over

Directly. Many Type A influenzas have their genesis in animals, but by the time the virus mutates to allow human-to-human contact, the virus itself has become less virulent.

Type A flus are no fun, but quite survivable. Of course, the elderly, the very young, pregnant women and those with compromised immune systems should always take precautions.

they're sure that it's only a matter of time before we're hit with some viral pandemic.

I think it's more a matter of the fact that we're simply not ready when one DOES break out.

however, don't discount a very real threat because of it. Comparing SARS and avian flu are like comparing apples to oranges; they aren't remotely similar.

"The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster. "
http://www.stanford.edu/group/virus/uda/

Take these numbers and apply them to current populations and you get a big nasty. This flu circled the entire globe. Was found in every country. Literally half the planet's population was infected (I said infected, not killed). Consider the global travel vector and you've, potentially, got a high speed transmission path.

So, if current strains of bird flu mutate into sustainable human->human transmission, then things might get ugly. We're talking if and might.

which I'm sure helped to spread the disease. Also people were just realizing the connections of hygiene and the spread of disease. Did you know that the invention of the modern washing machine has probably done more to eliminate disease from critters like fleas, lice and bedbugs more than any vaccine program initiated by any government?

I'm sure we need to be concerned about this, but I see no reason to panic and do silly things like isolate ourselves or hoard drugs like tami flu.

but, if this pandemic occurs, it will be airborne (via droplets) and the virus can live on hard surfaces for about 48 hours.
Also, this virus is different from standard human influenza because it targest the deep tissue in the lungs causing them to fill with fluid.
Isolation during a pandemic will not be a silly thing.

but not currently. There have been approximately 60 deaths world wide from this so far and those people have had direct contact with chickens.

I'll wait and take the usual winter cold precautions before I panic. When I see humans passing it to each other, I'll break out the face masks and rubber gloves when I'm in pulic.

good point.. some victims actually had only thier brain tissue attacked.

no one in the fighting zones wanted to admit to anything.

for a second. If there is any amount of deception about this flu, if they're using it at all, it would seem that whether it's a real danger, or whether it's not, it works for them either way.

Either way, it's something to worry about. Quarantines are something to worry about. If they keep the "rational" community, that is, us here, the folks like us all around the nation, confused about it...that only helps them too. Look at it from the most pessimistic point of view, the most paranoid, if you will. I know, it's not the most healthy outlook, but you always have to worry what a worse-case scenario is, and in this, it's whether or not they'd use this for some kind of political advantage.

And we know they will. Profit from disaster has worked well for them.

So, maybe it is a real threat, this year. Maybe not this year. Maybe not ever. But they've already begun discussing quarantine, which is one hell of a strict measure. And, hired guns are a commodity this admin has invested in. So, if one has any concerns about police state, it's good to realize this would be a handy tool. If we think "they" are nutty enough to actually be planning something like that. It's a big if. It's got really bad worst-case scenario possibility.

Just my two cents. This flu, real or a fake, could give this admin excuses to take all manner of actions. They could downplay a real one, or dream up a fake one, or any variation you can think of, because lying is what they do. Real or fake, either way.

have you ever had influenza? Not just a little virus that made you sick for a couple of days, but influenza that had you flat on your back wishing you were dead for two weeks? And took weeks to recover from?

Imagine a large percent of the population that sick or sicker.

Ignore the MSM and the govt hype, but the people in public health are concerned about this particular virus AND about our healthcare system's inability to deal with a real epidemic of influenza.

And if you want to be concerned about an epidemic, you should be more worried about water born communicable diseases like typhoid and cholera on our shores here in the US in NOLA. That is what should be all over the media right now.

But then that would be bringing up the failure of this administrations lack of planning up now, wouldn't it?

about it.

If we had a real president, I would expect him or her to stay on top of emerging diseases, have workable plans in place in case of a pandemic.

But we don't.

And has been for some time, among scientists & public health officials around the world.

Of course the MSM are screaming! Don't get all your news from them.

Of course the Republicans are planning to send in the Army! Don't trust them, either.

nt

ordinarily turn for accurate information. This administration has so twisted and abused science that I literally can't tell what messages about public health are worthwhile. Add to that the "whiz bang" atmosphere of the corporate entertainment/propaganda machine, and I'm confused. I have some college degrees, and I've been around since Truman was President, so I figure it must be especially murky for lots of folks with limited frames of reference.

good info

pandemic is predicated on a series of if statements:
if the virus becomes easily transmissible to humans, and
if it becomes easily transmissible from human to human, and
if it really is as deadly as the hype would lead us to believe,
then and only then will there be something to worry about.

Keep in mind several things about the 1918 Flu Pandemic: its spread was largely because of crowded army encampments and continued troop movements despite warnings from public health officials that those were important reservoirs of the virus. In addition, simple hand-washing can greatly reduce many illnesses, including flu, and back then people didn't wash their hands as often as we do now. Heck, lots of people didn't having running water available to them.

Yes, flu mutates constantly, and some of those mutations are more virulent than others, but I'm really bothered by the degree of hype this is getting. It really is a lot about the Great Swine Flu Scare of 1976. For those of you too young to remember, based on one soldier in Ft. Dix, NJ, dying of flu, it was predicted we'd have a terrible and deadly outbreak of swine flu and all Americans were urged to get flu shots. Indeed, the swine flu detected then was supposed to be practically identical to the 1918 flu, so I'm very puzzled about the current claim that avian flu is practically identical to the 1918 flu. Anyway, in case you've forgotten, no such outbreak occurred. But the attempt to vaccinate everyone resulted in an outbreak of Guillain-Barre syndrome, which was quite nasty.

Here's a link to a good piece about the entire fiasco. http://www.haverford.edu/biology/edwards/disease/viral_essays/warnervirus.htm

Here's a link to a somewhat more readable account: http://www.capitalcentury.com/1976.html

SheilaT, post 17


I have been looking into this because it has resulted in considerable misinformation. People have been suggesting that another outbreak of the 1918 flu would not be serious because of a similar virus hitting in 1976. However the fact is, it didn't.

Up until a couple of years ago, the world's top microbiologists believed that the 1918 influenza was a swine flu, so when the 1976 outbreak proved to be swine flu the assumption was made that they were very similar. Once the virus was actually recovered and isolated, scientists were astonished to discover it had been a bird flu.

Since then they have amused themselves by finding the particular 2 genes that made H1N1 particularly deadly, and combining them with other viruses to make completely new bugs. And the complete genome of the virus has been published on the web, in the knowlege that there are hundreds of laboratories in the world equipped to construct it.

it's the only year I've ever really had the flu, and I was sick for weeks. Had a fever of 104 and my normal body temperature is 97.2. (Yeah, I'm a cold-hearted wretch. Let's go for the cheap joke. ;-)) IIRC, one of the reasons they were so worried about "swine flu" is that it was a variant of H1N1, the killer strain from 1918, and another reason they were concerned is that flu viruses can recombine in pigs and become nasty threats to humans. Given my druthers, I'll take a government that urges an overproduction of vaccine over one that starts talking about quarantining parts of the country without mentioning any other actions it's considering first.

We've seen that the virus is transmissible to humans, and deadly, and a lot of scientists seem to think it's a matter of time before a strain emerges that is easily transmissible from human to human. The real questions are hows, not ifs:

how deadly will the human-to-human strain be?
how long do we have before it emerges?

If it's not that deadly or we have a couple of years to stockpile antivirals or both, then things aren't so bad. If not, :scared:

Yes, the neocons are fond of trotting out boogeymen to help push their agenda. Yes, many of these turn out to be overblown. This ain't one of them.

The leading investigator of H5N1 and its pandemic potential is Dr. Robert Webster, who has long been active in educating the public about this issue. He also was key in containing the Hong Kong outbreak in 1997. Note his comments about the unique virulence of this strain.

In an earlier post, I put up a summary of the situation. Most sobering is Webster's estimates of fatalities if the 1997 virus had "learned" how to go from human to human. Apparently, viral mutation and adaptation is normal -- it's what they do, so it's just a matter of time.

This subject is worth learning something about. It goes way beyond the MSM and routine spin du jour.

1. A government that lies constantly.
2. A president who wants to use any excuse to distract attention from the Fitzgerald enquiry, to declare martial law, and to become dictator for life.
3. A bunch of people chattering about what they see from the bottom of a deep well, lit only by the confusion of propagander, conspiracy theorists, and a few genuine news items.

Google and Yahoo are your friends. Watch what other countries and the UN are doing, to get a truer picture. I'm really glad to see some people here are keeping an eye on such sources.

In Australia we are currently testing a recombinant H5N1 on volunteer in both Melbourne and Adelaide. CSL Limited is set up in Melbourne to be able to produce 2 doses of vaccine for each Australian within 3 months. In addition we are stocking up on an Australian made anti-viral. Nobody here is panicking, it's just a matter of taking sensible precautions just in case, and then getting on with life and keeping your eyes open.

Because bird-flu hits much faster and quite differently to regular flu, I have worked out a cheap non-medical way to help handle it, which will not interfere with any medical precautions I may choose to take. If anyone is interested, I'll be glad to tell them about it.

Heh, sorry for the bad pun. :P