bird flu?

[Stewart]

I couldn't give a monkies really, unless it kills me then I'll be really annoyed!

[Dorza]

Im not that worried right now. I mean weren’t we all going to catch SARS last year. That’s how the media portrayed the situation. However if the situation with BFlu escalates and more and more people get it i.e mainly in Europe or the UK then i will get worried about it. Whats the point in worrying your self about it when its thousands of miles away? To my knowledge it is ne way. By the way just out of interest what are the symptoms for it in a human?

[cfuk]

i'm not worried at the minute, but i will be if it's in my area

[Butuz]

It is a bit worrying tho specially as i work in a school with a thousand kids and a hundred odd staff - good place to pick something like that up isnt it?

But at the end of the day we are just passengers not much point in worrying too much.......

Butuz

[Spunkey]

hype. Total hype.

Its like this Sudan 1 thingy. Suddenly its a risk - after we've been eating the stuff for how many years? Woop-de-dooo

The only reason it both of these things caused panic amongst the sheep - sorry public - is because it was a slow news day and the ever high brow, home of enlightened journalism, the Sun needed a sensasionalist story.

[nichomach]

hype. Total hype.
Its like this Sudan 1 thingy. Suddenly its a risk - after we've been eating the stuff for how many years? Woop-de-dooo
The only reason it both of these things caused panic amongst the sheep - sorry public - is because it was a slow news day and the ever high brow, home of enlightened journalism, the Sun needed a sensasionalist story.

There's a hell of a difference between this and Sudan-1. Everyone assumes that SARS was hyped. SARS is an "atypical pneumonia of unknown aetiology"; i.e. they don't know what the cause is, but it struck its victims with considerable savagery and high mortality. It appeared to be infectious, and consequently there was a lot of attention paid to it. Would you rather they'd ignored it? As regards avian flu it's notable that in 1997 Hong Kong ALSO had an outbreak of H5N1, which caused 6 deaths and there they responded by killing over 1.5 million birds; that probably prevented a pandemic. They were lucky in that H5N1 did not infect anyone who also had HUMAN influenza; that's the risk factor.

Native avian flu cannot manage human to human infection (only avian to human), but it has a documented capacity to "pick up" genes from other viruses; in the event that it infects someone who already has human influenza via avian to human transmission, the likelihood is that it will mutate, picking up the genes required for human to human infection. Think about that for a moment; how common is human influenza?

If it does, then the likelihood is that there will be a high degree of mortality. In Cambodia, Thailand and Viet Nam combined between 28/1/04 and 2/2/05 there were 55 confirmed cases of avian flu (that is flu that jumped the species barrier from an infected bird to a human). Of those 55 confirmed cases, 42 died. That's over 80% mortality among confirmed cases.

WHO Stats

Personally, I'm rather glad that the government is taking it seriously enough to lay in reasonable stocks of antivirals, and also is ready to undertake vaccine development and production as soon as a new strain does appear.

In the 20th Century, there were 3 influenza pandemics, the first of which killed at least 40 million people globally (the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919), later outbreaks in 1957 and 1968 causing about a million each IIRC. There is a likelihood of about 4 pandemic outbreaks of influenza in every century. A pandemic of an avian influenza hybrid with human to human transmissibility could easily have the same effect as the Spanish Flu, especially given the greatly expanded possibilities for global travel since the early 20th century.

Oh, and Dorza? You could view one of the major symptoms as a tendency to fall over dead...

[JK Ferret]

I'm not particularly worried, myself.
How many times have we been told we're gonna die, yet we haven't?

[FarmerJon]

I personally am very concerned by the whole thing. SARS caused a lot of panic and confusion, but mainly because it was caught so quick and was only transmitting human to human it was (despite the nbr of casualties) well controlled. The major problems with this virus are that it mutates astonishingly quickly, that it has the ability to swap between species, that it affects one of our main food sources, and that it has a high mortality rate. I'm only a med student, but from what i've been reading this virus really could become a true pandemic, the first of the 21st century and LONG LONG overdue. A microbiologist i was speaking to the other day shared some of the same concerns, but he did add that half the media seem to be making too much of it, and the other half are taking it too lightly...I personally just hope for the best and hope that it ends up burning itself out...

[Mblaster]

I am not worried about the threat of a 'super flu', as it's not a problem in this country... yet And i don't think it will be.

[Elmo]

what people seem to be forgetting is... Birds fly, and people travel. All it really takes is 1 bird or one person to come into the country with it, cough on someone and that's it... it's got a foothold in this country.

Dont be so laid back about it. Yes, i agree, it is a bit of scaremongering, BUT it *IS* a threat all the same. It's not a case of *IF* it comes to this country, it's more a case of *WHEN*. I'm not saying stockpile for when the time comes and we arent allowed to leave our houses, i'm saying just have your wits about you and dont think of it as just another scaremongering tactic from our government.

If they HADNT warned us of this, and we WERE hit rather badly by it, and then people found out that they had actually known about it for a while, but not SAID anything, then you'd all be up in arms about that.

Quit complaining, take heed, and just get on with your life.