Posted on 11/07/2005 6:28:14 AM PST by add925
A three-day council of war on avian influenza opened here to warnings that a flu pandemic was inevitable, could kill millions and inflict up to 800 billion dollars in economic damage if the world failed to defend itself.
An influenza pandemic, potentially unleashed by a mutation of the H5N1 bird flu virus, "is only a matter of time," World Health Organisation (WHO) Director General Lee Jong-Wook said Monday.
"We don't know when this will happen, but we know it will happen," Lee said. "(...) If we are unprepared, the next pandemic will cause incalculable human misery... no society will be exempt and no economy will be unscathed."
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Wavelength is also a matter of time.
Another Ice Age is just a matter of time. Our sun finally burning out is just a matter of time. Human extinction is just a matter of time. A flu pandemic is just a matter of time.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
(Still best to have your Tamiflu and end of the world plans ready to go.)
Of course it is a matter of time. We are overdue for a pandemic. Will it be the bird flu? Maybe. Maybe not. But sometime in my lifetime I expect to see a major flu epidemic.
It seems the left has a firm grasp on paranoid schizophrenia these days.....so be it.
part of what most people don't realize is that the people in the countries that have gotten this flu handle live chickens on a daily basis. When was the last time you handled a live chicken? For 99.9% of America the answer would be never. The bug may spread from human to human, but what was the BIG killer in the Spanish flu was medical complications not flu virus. France who can't keep people alive in a heat wave may have a problem of 10,000 dead, but not likely to happen in America. /rant against the stupid media off
Ok, Here's the problem with preparing now.
If the Bird flu DOES mutate into a type that humans can contract, then how does making a sirum NOW going to prepare us from an attack?
Just the fact that it mutates could potentially cause the sirum to be totally unusable.
Unless, of course, you know exactly HOW it's going to mutate.
Maybe the MSM is looking out for all those Chicken Pluckers out there. /sarc
I think you're wrong here: Spanish flu killed rapidly, all by itself. It was primarily young adults that died. 20% of the US population got this flu, but the mortality rate was 2% to 5%. This is why everyone is so worried by H5N1: it is likely to mutate to be easily transmissible from human to human, and if it maintains its current mortality rate in humans, that would be a screaming catastrophe.
Henny Penny, the sky is falling! The flu is coming! The oil is drying up! We're losing the war! Bush lied! Inflation is starting! There's a vast right wing conspiracy! Haliburton! Halliburton! Rummy! Sqwawwwkkk! (whistle) Polly wanna Cracker! Good bird!
What is the liklihood that any Flu in modern times could kill at a 50% mortality rate?
As you say, 2-5% back in 1917 died in the US (my Great-grandfather being one of them at about 44 years old - he was generally sickly and worked in a steel mill).
Imagine it getting a little human help in mutating along the way...
The Japanese yakuza who causes hurricanes to attack America
will have no problem mutating a virus..
no indeedie...
Or worse spud virus in your french fries....
-The Great Mutato
The computer swallowed Grandma.
Yes, honestly it's true.
She pressed 'control' and 'enter'
And disappeared from view.
It devoured her completely,
The thought just makes me squirm
She must have caught a virus
Or been eaten by a worm.
I've searched through the recycle bin
And files of every kind;
I've even used the Internet
But nothing did I find.
In desperation I asked Jeeves
My searches to refine.
The reply from him was negative,
Not a thing was found 'online'.
So, if inside your 'Inbox',
My Grandma you should see,
Please 'Copy', 'Scan' and 'Paste' her
And send her back to me.
What else can be expected from the Left...they never let facts get in the way in regard to their paranoic tirades.
I think you got it right.
They offer one nonsensical idea after another. Even Bush bit on this one and suggested that he take over America with the Military.
Pretty strong stuff for something that has not happened.
Of course a lot of money will be spend in the meantime and thats what the fear mongers were hoping for anyway.
IN the 70's, the experts prophecied the end of the world with Swine Flu. After spreading their mercury shots and making lots of $$, nothing.
Relax, the Isrealis are developing a new vaccine which will give immunity for ALL flus:
". . .Arnon probed a protein called Hemagglutinin found on the surface of the flu virus and found that it hid a peptide which appeared when the virus attached itself to a living cell. She discovered that this hidden part remains fixed in all the viruses, even when the external envelope undergoes significant changes, which prevent the body from identifying the virus. Over the following 10 years, Arnon and her assistants succeeded in proving that this peptide could serve as a serum for a vaccine, which enables the immune system to recognize and to stop various flu strains.
"Babecoff says that Arnon's work is "a change in the paradigm. Scientists were sure that you can't vaccinate with peptides. She proved that it's not true."
The new vaccine activates both arms of the human immune system (B- & T-cells) resulting in over 95% protection."
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