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anybody following the bird flu soon to be pandemic?

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Guest:
Just curious- I feel about this exactly the way I felt about the stock market collapse. All the experts are saying it is a matter of when not if. The left and right are both in concurance on the subject, and historically it is a 50 year overdue inevitability.

  If you are unaware about the potential, search around for " flu pandemic 1918."

  Most people do not know  we lost six hundred thousand people in this country in 1918 and 1919 due to a horrific flu pandemic- estimated losses worldwide were 40 to 100 million . NYC lost 30,000. The mortality rate was about .6%, the population of the US was 105 million.
 
  The avian flu that has killed millions of chickens and other fowl in asia, and has resulted in the culling of millions more, has been actively recombining genes and mutating since the mid 1990's. The trend has been from a virus that is very hard to transmit to humans (you basicly had to handle or eat diseased fowl) and was about 100% fatal, to a virus that is much less lethal (10 % and up) but with efficient transmissability. The situation in Vietnam and China with regards to monitoring this is pathetic. For interesting terrifiying reading go to www.recombinomics.com and click on whats new.
  This small buried story has the potential to be the defining event of the century. Can you imagine the US losing 10% of it's population in a few months? That's thirty million people. I think this country would crack uip up emotionally.

  Perhaps I am just a doomsayer, certainly I have been accused of pessimism on enough occasions. BUT- ALL the infectious disease experts say it is on the way- The event is a historical cycle, and we are way overdue. What do you think?

jefnvk:
I think I'll just stop eating birds.

Trying to think the last time I had any bird was, anyways.  Certainly not in the last few weeks.

But yeah, it would be bad.

Antibubba:
I'm just about to start a new job, which will allow me start stocking up on Tamiflu-because it sure won't be available when the pandemic hits.

Nathaniel Firethorn:
Resistant strains have already been reported Prolly because of Chinese chicken farmers trying to protect their livestock.

BTW, I ain't so sure about Henry L. Niman. He's picking bits out of the news to support his position, and appears pretty argumentative and defensive on some other fora. Neither of which is good science.  He does have some pubs listed on PubMed, but none very recent.

- NF

Guest:
Yeah, I wouldn't consider Niman the last word either. But there doe's seem to universal concurrance among the experts that the avian flu is coming. The question is how bad it is going to be. If it has a 1% or above lethality it is going to put our social structures to the test big time.

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