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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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 Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 2:33 pm Post subject: Avian flu the next big disaster? |
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http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2005_09_11_dish_archive.html#112698032821111283
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2005_09_11_dish_archive.html#112688899824860859
| Foreign Affairs Magazine wrote: |
Scientists have long forecast the appearance of an influenza virus capable of infecting 40 percent of the world's human population and killing unimaginable numbers. Recently, a new strain, H5N1 avian influenza, has shown all the earmarks of becoming that disease. Until now, it has largely been confined to certain bird species, but that may be changing.
The havoc such a disease could wreak is commonly compared to the devastation of the 1918-19 Spanish flu, which killed 50 million people in 18 months. But avian flu is far more dangerous. |
Other countries are stocking up and trying to get ready. The US, as anyone with a newspaper subscription or an Internet connection can readily see, has done jack squat.
I can remember when Bush came into office. We were promised things would be run efficiently, the trains would run on time, competent adults were finally in charge. Five years later the list of major national-security issues they have bungled is staggering: Failing to catch Osama; failing to put enough resources into halting the spread of "loose nukes"; the continuing debacle that is Iraq; weak responses to the resumption of North Korea and Iran's nuclear programs; the shockingly incompetent response to Katrina laying bare our inability to react to a second 9/11; and now, potentially, a global influenza pandemic predicted by scientists for decades.
Ask yourself, do you feel safer? |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 4:15 pm Post subject: Re: Avian flu the next big disaster? |
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| Hater Depot wrote: |
| Ask yourself, do you feel safer? |
I do, I truly do. At least my ego is boosted by knowing I could beat the president on any intelligence test even after dying of the Avian Flu. 
Thank goodness I don't have kids... I feel for you that do. |
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desultude
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: Dangling my toes in the Persian Gulf
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| Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 4:35 pm Post subject: |
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When I saw an article on this this morning, I thought immediately about Katrina, and knew that the shrub has probably thrown one of his bush-whacking friends in charge of the Department of Health, and those in the U.S. would be screwed if it broke out any time soon.
On the other hand, I am not reassured being here, either. Switzerland, maybe, Korea, not in those circumstances.  (I tried to think of other countries, and I am sure there are a few that would do well (Singapore comes to mind) but remember how France responded to a heat wave that ended up killing scores of people?)
The U.S. government is not unique in it's ineptitude, it is just supposed to be, presents itself as being, so competent and capable of being the world leader- able to handle two wars and keep the homefires burning, etc. It's the catastrophic handling of emergencies by an administration that defines the term hubris that makes it all so remarkable yet not surprising. |
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rapier
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 11:48 pm Post subject: |
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"Avian" flu is a misnomer. Chickens, and dead birds can't fly. A better term for it is "poultry flu" as the cause and spread of it is related to the commercial keeping of domestic wildfowl in unsanitary and unregulated conditions.
Now scientists have come out with all sorts of lazy speculative, and damaging theories that scapegoat wild birds as carriers; their ideas have no basis in truth and do not hold up to evidence.
25 August 2005
The numerous strains of avian influenza can be divided into two classes, according to their pathogenicity (disease-causing ability) to domestic poultry. [a] Low pathogenic strains circulate in wild birds, especially waterbirds, usually at low levels. These cause no, or only mild, illness. However, strains of the H5 and H7 subtypes can occasionally become highly pathogenic following a specific mutation. These highly pathogenic viruses can cause great mortality in domestic poultry flocks but are very rare in wild birds, with only one recorded instance prior to 1997 when the current strain of concern, H5N1 appeared.
http://www.birdlife.org/action/science/species/avian_flu/index.html
Poultry/Bird/Avian flu does not present an inevitable and pandemic-scale threat to human health. Evidence shows it is not migratory wild birds, but rather the poultry industry and poultry farms (as well as the cage bird culture) that remain the main source of the problem and its solution. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 1:58 am Post subject: |
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You're full of duck s shit t, as usual, rapier.
In China, wild ducks intermingle with domesticated ones on duck farms, and when they migrate they're capable of spreading the virus. For over a billion years, viruses were spread by natural vectors. There's nothing new about avian flu doing the same thing.
As usual, you just have an agenda to promote. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:04 am Post subject: |
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| desultude wrote: |
When I saw an article on this this morning, I thought immediately about Katrina, and knew that the shrub has probably thrown one of his bush-whacking friends in charge of the Department of Health, and those in the U.S. would be screwed if it broke out any time soon.
On the other hand, I am not reassured being here, either. Switzerland, maybe, Korea, not in those circumstances. (I tried to think of other countries, and I am sure there are a few that would do well (Singapore comes to mind) but remember how France responded to a heat wave that ended up killing scores of people?)
The U.S. government is not unique in it's ineptitude, it is just supposed to be, presents itself as being, so competent and capable of being the world leader- able to handle two wars and keep the homefires burning, etc. It's the catastrophic handling of emergencies by an administration that defines the term hubris that makes it all so remarkable yet not surprising. |
Unfortunately it's the nature of the virus, and it's means of transmission, that will make a mutation to a deadly human-to-human transmissible form inevitable. |
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rapier
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:28 am Post subject: |
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| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
In China, wild ducks intermingle with domesticated ones on duck farms, and when they migrate they're capable of spreading the virus. For over a billion years, viruses were spread by natural vectors. There's nothing new about avian flu doing the same thing.
As usual, you just have an agenda to promote. |
Dude you haven't a clue what you're talking about, please actually read the link provided
While Low Pathogenic Avian Influenza is widespread in some types of wild bird (especially waterbirds, most notably ducks and geese), outbreaks of HPAI are extraordinarily rare in wild birds, with only one case recorded prior to 2005 where infected wild birds were believed to have had no connection with infected poultry - that an outbreak of H5N3 in Common Terns in South Africa back in 1961.
Past outbreaks of HPAI in poultry, however, have a very long history. They were first described back in 1878 as ��fowl plague.�� Between 1959 and 2000, there were at least 17 primary outbreaks of HPAI in poultry, with 8 such outbreaks between 1990 and 2000.
Poultry, here defined as domesticated chickens, ducks, geese and turkey, are simply not meant to be "housed" in the unnatural conditions in which they find themselves.
http://effectmeasure.blogspot.com/2005/02/bird-flu-and-bird-farms-part-iv.html
There is as yet no clear evidence that wild birds are spreading bird Flu beyond the immediate area of their infection. if they catch it (from domesticated birds), they die. They don't fly hundreds of miles with it.
On the other hand, there is abundant evidence that Poultry Flu is spread over significant distance through the transport of poultry (chicken, domesticated duck, turkey), and through other human activities.
The outbreaks of Poultry Flu do not match the movements of migrant birds, either in timing or in distribution (contrary to the claims of some prominent non-specialists); no wild bird species can be identified that link sites and dates of outbreaks.
The first known case of H5N1 was in a chicken in the UK back in 1959. The present H5N1 outbreaks can be traced back to a "domesticated" goose in China, in 1996.
The present strains and sub-forms of H5N1 poultry flu in Asia are all traceable back to 1996/1997: poultry flu has therefore been maintained in the vast poultry industry/trade of the region for 9 years now, often concealed.
Such concealment is not necessarily government-driven, nor is it necessarily organized. Huge numbers of people depend economically on poultry and poultry products; and some domesticated birds have been proven to remain asymptomatic even when infected.
"We should distinguish between ordinary avian and poultry flu. Poultry flu,is flu that's adapted to spread among - and often kill - chickens and other domestic birds. It's been subjected to unique selection pressures that have to do with how the chickens are raised. It has no more in common with avian flu than a white leghorn has with a red jungle fowl."
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=29096 |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:33 am Post subject: |
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I know exactly what I'm talking about. In addition to being a liar, a coward, a hypocrite, and an idiot, you've always had an anti-human agenda and have always been deliberately selective in your choice of links and "evidence".
You're a liar, and everybody on this board knows it, and you have no credibility whatsoever. Fortunately most of your "contributions" to every discussion have been superfluous. |
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rapier
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:38 am Post subject: |
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| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
Unfortunately it's the nature of the virus, and it's means of transmission, that will make a mutation to a deadly human-to-human transmissible form inevitable. |
There are no known cases of transmission of poultry flu from wild birds to people, and cases of transmission from poultry to people remain very rare.
There are 70 billion chickens alone reared annually in Asia;probably smaller but still huge numbers of ducks and geese for human use. However, in 9 years there have been only ca 63 recorded fatalities, in a vast region of huge human population, where in many local areas people li | | |
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