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I have just this second finished watching a really scary 90 minute documentary on the BBC, called - Horizon Pandemic, it focuses on WHEN, NOT IF bird flu becomes pandemic. It showed a simulation carried out by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where within three months of this virus being introduced it had overrun all areas of the USA, also within two weeks of the first British victim to die from the infection, another 40,000 will have died.
I thought that after the scare last year in Asia that the bird flu may jump to humans that this had all gone away -apparently not.
The scariest part was the voice over at the the end which asked "what will we do when......" ,that is when we discover our failings.
It's a scary scenario, but I wouldn't worry about it too much yet. My guess is that since it seems to keep appearing in Asia (China, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc.), it's more likely to break into a human pandemic there first than in North America or Europe. Hopefully the Chinese will tell us if that were to happen. The number you cite from the special on the virus are much lower than what happened in the 1918 influenza epidemic. And what's weird about that epidemic that killed an estimated hundred million people is that although it was called the "Spanish Flu", it apparently originated in an isolated army camp in uninhabited western Kansas, USA. It quickly spread and people dropped like flies everywhere. U.S. soldiers on crowded transport ships carried it to Europe and from there it spread around the world killing millions. They found the 1918/19 Influenza virus to be H1N1. An estimated 2.5-5% of the world's population died and up to 20% were infected during the 18 months of the pandemic. Almost one out of three Americans caught it and 500,000-675,000 died from the influenza. Britain had 200,000 deaths, France 400,000 deaths. In Fiji, 14% of the population died in two weeks. In Samoa 22% died in two weeks. Eskimo villages in Alaska were left empty. An estimated 17 million people died in India alone, almost 5% of the population at the time. 257,000 Japanese died, but their numbers were less than most of Asia as the Japanese restricted travel into Japan. There's been debate as to whether the source was avian or not or a spontaneous mutation. Who knows. But with today's air travel and millions of people going everywhere at all hours of every day, one infected person carrying bird flu in the early stages that appears to be a cold, but in fact has mutated to be transmissable by sneezing and through air contact would have the world sick very quickly.
Apparently it is something to worry about, governments are stockpiling Tamiflu to try and contain it WHEN it happens, but no country in the world will have enough to do this, when the drug runs out we go back to day one scenario again and the infection will take hold. One of the experts says we have never faced anything like this before and that it is utterly evil.
Apparently it is something to worry about, governments are stockpiling Tamiflu to try and contain it WHEN it happens, but no country in the world will have enough to do this, when the drug runs out we go back to day one scenario again and the infection will take hold. One of the experts says we have never faced anything like this before and that it is utterly evil.
Tamiflu has proven to be iffy...not guaranteed to work and also causing deaths in people who've taken it. It sounds gross, but one method I've heard of to fight it if it were to go global is to drink some of your own urine. The reason being that if you're infected, the virus would shed and antigens would be flushed into your urine. Reintroducing those antigens orally would automatically begin innoculation under the tongue as your body sees the reintroduced antigens as foreign instead of domestic because of how it's introduced back into the body, thereby helping the body develop an effective immune response. Who knows. I'm willing to drink a gallon if it saves me if the epidemic ever becomes real. In the meantime, we've been told that it could happen imminently now for how long? Five years? Ten years? In the meantime we've had 9/11, the London subway/bus bombings, Madrid commuter train Al Qaeda attacks, plots to blow up airliners over U.S. cities by maniacal British Muslims, Bali bombings killing hundreds of innocent people, Bombay/Mumbai train bombings by Islamic militants. I'm a lot more afraid of Islamic extremists than the Bird Flu....at least for now.
I'll just go and start to stockpile - back in two minutes.!!!!!!
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!! Good one.
Seriously though, here in the Dallas area not too long ago, this year or end of last year we did in fact have a person that went to the hospital sick. When the admitting nurse was taking the symptoms down she noticed they were way too similiar to bird flu and immediately put the person in an isolated room w/ it's own ventilation system and from then on out only that nurse (since she had already been "exposed") and a doctor were the only ones that saw the patient. Scary thing is this person lived w/in blocks of my parents and went to the local hospital about 2 miles down the road from their house. Turns out the person had just returned from a trip to a country that had bird flu and had been visiting relatives staying out in the country with them instead of in a city hotel.
It is very real and scary how quickly we could all be exposed to something like this and yet we can't even get enough regular flu vaccines every year for just those at high risk.
I'm an infectious diseases physician and the threat of H5N1 has been exaggerated. As they tell us in training: in an emergency, take your own pulse first. CALM DOWN.
I'm an infectious diseases physician and the threat of H5N1 has been exaggerated. As they tell us in training: in an emergency, take your own pulse first. CALM DOWN.
wish I'd read this last night before clearing the wine rack for my stockpile of Chateau Pis!!!!!!!.
Seriosly though, Pandemic.gov is a rather large and detailed website for something you say has been exagerrated.
Why can you not see typing errors until they are posted? Must have been the wine!
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