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for the birds...

 
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ChimpumCallao



Joined: 17 May 2005
Location: your mom

PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 2:34 am    Post subject: for the birds... Reply with quote

Quote:
March 24, 2006
Can We Shut the F*ck Up About Bird Flu Now?
Posted by Sean Lynch @ 1:26 pm in General| Trackback | Cosmos

Ok, so it turns out that the reason bird flu does not get passed from human to human is the same reason it��s so lethal. Which means a mutation that makes it passable from human to human will also turn it into your run-of-the-mill non-lethal flu virus.

In other words, even if bird flu does start passing from human to human, we still wouldn��t have a problem. If it starts passing from human to human and then mutates into something that��s lethal in a completely different way, we��ll have a pandemic on our hands. But isn��t this true of every flu virus every year? To become a pandemic, a virus must be lethal and easily transmissible. This virus has one of those charactistics and can��t acquire the other without losing the first. That would seem to make bird flu less dangerous than other flus.

So we have the press on one side who know that fear sells, and we have the scientists on the other side who know that fear gets grants, and on the third side we have our ��fascism lite�� governments who will take any opportunity to acquire more power. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Westerners don��t raise birds and therefore doesn��t need to hear another f*cking peep about a disease that��s killed on the order of 100 people in the entire world and requires intimate contact with birds. Here, I��ll give you all of the information you need to know: don��t get intimate with birds. There. Done.

Of course, poultry farmers do need to know about bird flu, but guess what? They have their own publications that the rest of us don��t read.
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Hater Depot



Joined: 29 Mar 2005

PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 3:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

So does he have an article or is he just spouting?
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rapier



Joined: 16 Feb 2003

PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 6:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think thats just unsupported opinion.

However..my own position is similar: the conditions for the virus to mutate into a pandemic do not exist.
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desultude



Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: Dangling my toes in the Persian Gulf

PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 7:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't have the article at hand, but I read that bird flu resides in the lower respiratory system- making is very hard to spread.

I think that is what he is talking about.

Someday the crying wolf on a world-wide basis will create a huge problem, because, as in SARS, the hysteria and hype will not be lived out too many times, and when the real deal happens, we'll all say, yeah, we have heard this one before. Rolling Eyes
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EFLtrainer



Joined: 04 May 2005

PostPosted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 11:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've not yet read anything like what that post says, only that a certain number of specific mutations need to happen for a 1917-18 type of pandemic to happen. That this particualr strain is such that any one mutation might exclude the possibility of another being fatal is something I have heard only in that post.

If someone has the medical info that supports that contention, please post it. Otherwise, 1918 DID happen and some believe that all the major flu pandemics of this century trace back to avian flues, so let's not put all our faith in a blog post just yet.
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