Free Republic

The swine flu has been greatly exaggerated May 5, 2009 By Larson Caldwell Hall Monitor, Skyline High School Recently, the halls of Skyline High School have been filled with hand sanitizers, “Stay Healthy” flyers and the fear of the completely overrated disease of the swine flu...

BEIJING, Oct 15 (Reuters) - China has developed a new and better vaccine for use on birds against the avian influenza strain that scientists fear could cause a global pandemic among humans, state media said on Saturday. The vaccine had the advantage of fighting another common bird disease, as well as the H5N1 influenza strain that has spread from Asia to Europe, state television reported. It identified this as avulavirus APMV-1, also known as Newcastle disease.

It happened three times in the last century -- and nearly happened again in 1997. Now experts say that another killer flu epidemic is brewing. Will it emerge to kill millions -- as did the 1918 Spanish flu? Or will it be nipped in the bud, as in the 1997 emergence of chicken flu in humans? There are no easy answers. But now the same experts who led the successful effort to stop the 1997 virus in Hong Kong raise troubling new questions. Those questions come from a report in the June 25 issue of the prestigious Proceedings of the...