Oh dear.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4172182.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4741031.stm
Double oh dear.
Dont worry about it. Apparently all food is either bad for you, treated with chemicals that are bad for you or packaged in something that is bad for you. Our diets will kill us off long before anything else can get us. Even chips are supposed to give you cancer now! Not that I’m worried, before they give you cancer you’ll get blocked arteries anyway. Allways look on the bright side of life! 
What do they mean by “battery birds”, about half way down the first article?
But this isn’t just that chips are bad for you! This is a disease spreading through birds, killing the birds and a good number of the people coming in contact with the birds. A disease that might possibly be spread from person to person. It will wipe out the businesses of people growing fowl for food, causing financial ruin for some and rising food prices for others. And then if the virus mutates, who knows. I think because wild birds can get it and then fly to so many different places is what makes things so worrisome. And just look at that map of Thailand. You won’t live long enough to get blocked arteries!
Battery hens, hens which are reared in tiny wooden cages inside girt big barns. They never get out to see the light of day, lay their eggs on a conveyor-belt, and are fed and watered automatically. As opposed to ‘free range’ birds, which wander around outdoors (allegedly) and lay their eggs where they feel like it.
There’s a fair bit that’s worrying in the articles. That the strain of Asian bird 'flu is in Russia and wending its way down through Europe is one. The other is the WHO’s prediction that it’s a case of ‘when’ not ‘if’ the virus mutates into one which can be passed human-to-human. 40 million deaths is a heeeyoooge number. The biggest worry though is that “it can be stopped” if countries and governments will work together. Yeah right, that’ll happen…
Well, there might be some hope since we’ve actually seen the virus in action in Asia. That might scare people into cooperating together. The other thing is that people, sadly, seem to act more promptly when an industry is at stake, like this, than when it is human lives alone, like AIDS. It might just seem that way, because when animals are infected you can do something-----quarantine, put indoors, kill----but when it’s people, you can’t really do any of those things readily. I just hope they keep paying attention to things.
If civilisation had the advanced medicine and understanding of epidemics it does today, would the 1918 flu have been as bad?
That’s a good question, unfortunately no one for sure seems to know the answer, though the experts think probably not. Of course, there won’t be nearly enough retro-virals to go around, the vaccine will take months and months to make, and there also won’t be enough medical equipment like ventilators and such to take care of all who need them - not to mention that if the strain is as virulent as the 1918 strain you can count on about 1/3 of your medical workers and other essential service workers being sick themselves and more out taking care of their families. The consensus seems to be that while probably not as many will die as in 1918, it will still be very, very bad.
Of course, how bad it is depends on the virulence of the strain that ultimately causes the pandemic. We’re all very worried about the H5N1 strain that they’re seeing in Asia right now, but we don’t know that it will be that. There’s also been an H7N1 strain causing some problems, and it could be something that we haven’t seen yet that decides to pop up and cause the pandemic. That’s why we can’t get too far in creating a vaccine until we know for sure what’s going to cause the problem.
As a public health professional, pandemic flu scares the $%#! out of me. It’s Mother Nature’s bioterrorism. We are way overdue. And while I think we are more prepared than we were a few years ago, we’re still not ready - I don’t think you can ever be.
If anyone’s interested, here’s a link for more info CDC Pandemic Flu page
That’s an interesting article. Interesting too the decreased time-scales for the spread of the 'flu worldwide as air-travel improved. When the next one hits I imagine it’ll cross continents in days, rather than the months it once took. I get the distinct impression that even Dustin Hoffman wouldn’t be much good when the next pandemic strikes.
I don’t know about bioterroism but maybe it’s Mother Natures of cleaning house.