Chicken Little?
Posted on 03/08/2006 7:25:27 AM PST by Termite_Commander
THE lethal strain of bird flu poses a greater challenge to the world than any infectious disease, including AIDS, and has cost 300 million farmers over $10 billion in its spread through poultry around the world, the World Health Organisation said yesterday.
Scientists also are increasingly worried that the H5N1 strain could mutate into a form easily passed between humans, triggering a global pandemic. It already is unprecedented as an animal illness in its rapid expansion.
Since February, the virus has spread to birds in 17 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, said the WHO's Dr Margaret Chan, citing UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates of the toll on farmers.
"Concern has mounted progressively, and events in recent weeks justify that concern," Dr Chan, who is leading WHO's efforts against bird flu, told a meeting in Geneva on global efforts to prepare for the possibility of the flu mutating into a form easily transmitted among humans.
In Austria, state authorities said Monday that three cats have tested positive for the deadly strain of bird flu in the country's first reported case of the disease spreading to an animal other than a bird.
The cats had been living at an animal shelter where the disease already was detected in chickens, authorities said.
In Poland, a third wild swan has tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu, a lab announced. The swan was found dead Saturday in Torun, about 120 miles north-west of Warsaw - the same place where the first two cases were detected.
Dr Chan told over 30 experts in Geneva that the agency's top priority was to keep the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu from mutating.
"Should this effort fail, we want to ensure that measures are in place to mitigate the high levels of morbidity, mortality and social and economic disruption that a pandemic can bring to this world," she said.
WHO says 175 people are confirmed to have caught bird flu, and 95 of them have died.
Global influenza pandemics - as opposed to annual recurrences of seasonal flu - tend to strike periodically. In the 20th century, there were pandemics in 1918, 1957 and 1968.
Bird flu could potentially cause more deaths than those from the global flu pandemics. Because the H5N1 virus is airborne, it is easier to transmit and more contagious than HIV/AIDS, WHO officials said.
Dr Mike Ryan, director of epidemic and pandemic alert and response at WHO, said: "We truly feel that this present threat is likely to stretch our global systems to the point of collapse."
This is the first time world health authorities have tried to stop a global influenza pandemic before it begins. Dr Chan referred to the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, as evidence of "how much the world has changed."
SARS infected 8,000 people, killing 800 of them.
WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng said experts hope to isolate areas where there is a bird flu outbreak and establish agreements allowing international health authorities to respond quickly, testing viruses and implementing containment measures.
Public health measures to quarantine areas, isolate people or help give antiviral medicine to those infected with bird flu also are on the agenda of the meeting, which ends today.
I doubt it.
Yeah, but we're spending billions on AIDS research, and I doubt that we'll spend anywhere near that on flu research.
Man, oh man, are the AIDS activitsts going to be on suicide watch after "The Bird Flu" steals their thunder...oooooohhhhhhhhh the humanity!
"We're doomed", "Yawn", "Chicken Little" or "The sky is falling".
what about the internal combustion engine?
Really bad news for queers who bugger hens!
Of course it is, because the latter can be stopped simply by altering behavior.
And wreck the breathless anticipation of the global pandemic cheerleaders?
Never!
If you're a bird, that is.
Chicken Little?
The WHO and the UN seem hell-bent on ruining the livstock/agri market for US producers one way or another.
This headline probably won't set well with the Africans who constantly gripe about us not sending them more money.
These groups are just trying to pad there funding for research....only 80 people have died from avian flu and they all handled birds. Why don' they ever mention how many people die annually in th world. This flu is no big deal.
cost 300 million farmers over $10 billion
If they would test before confiscating and killing everything it may not be such a loss.
Kill all Canadian Geese first, then move to starlings, crows and pigeons.
That's EXACTLY what they said about SARS and Swine Flu.
There will be terrible disasters in the future, rest assured, but they will be disasters that you never saw coming, no matter how much smarter than everybody else you obviously consider yourself to be.
Ok, I'll bite. The sky is falling. Yawn. We're Doomed. Chicken Little.
Did I cover them all, hehe.
We are now down from 8 mutations to 1 mutation needed for the Human to Human spread variation. In fact in less then 30 days we have gone from 2 mutations needed to 1.
Keep in mind that the strain currently spreading in Europe/The middle east and Asia is a different strain then the one we have been developing the vaccine for. Current Vaccines are based on the Vietnam 2004 strain.
We are now going full tilt trying to design a vaccine for the current strain (A/ Indonesia/5/2005). Most people should have known something was up when the Military started talking about a vaccination campaign last year. We found out later it was because the Indonesia strain was discovered.
Also keep in mind that we will not have a vaccine for the Human to Human version until it breaks, then it has to be developed.
Okay, so every major health and governmental body in the world is engaged in a big money-grabbing conspiracy. Yeah, that sounds a lot more logical than "There's a deadly virus mutating towards humans". After all, when was the last time that happened?
Second, no, everybody hasn't gotten it from poultry. There have been multiple cluster cases of human-to-human transmission, and those clusters have been increasing in Indonesia. On a sidenote, the number of dead is 91, I believe.
And please explain why the flu is "no big deal". The fact that it has the highest mortality rate we've ever seen in a flu virus (1 1/2 times more lethal than smallpox), people have no immunity to it, we have only one antiviral that can treat it, and that it's spreading around the world is no big deal, huh?
You fail to understand that H5N1 research is far more complicated than AIDS. To date, epidemiologists have still not been able to find birds of any species who are willing to have anal sex with one another....
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