Bird Flu?

[Wayne]

I would like to add the PG has got the right idea. No panic just simple precautions should the worst occur. We in the UK live in a benign environment and tend to be overawed by small changes. Every winter our infastructure is severly stretched by a couple of cms of snow. Schools close and cars abandoned. Hospital wards are closed by winter vomitting virus etc. How much more distrubtion to daily life would we face by a Pandemic?

Wherever you live you can store a few extras to make life more comfortable without turning yourself into a raving survivalist.

 

[locum76]

(quote)
Finally, the pieces of the puzzle start to add up. Not
long ago, President Bush sought to instill panic in
this country[USA] by telling us a minimum of 200,000 people
will die from the avian flu pandemic, but it could be
as bad as 2 million deaths in this country alone.

This hoax is then used to justify the immediate
purchase of 80 million doses of Tamiflu, a worthless
drug that in no way shape or form treats the avian
flu, but only decreases the amount of days one is sick
and can actually contribute to the virus having more
lethal mutations.

So the U.S. placed an order for 20 million doses of
this worthless drug at a price of $100 per dose. That
comes to a staggering $2 billion.

We are being told that Roche manufactures Tamiflu and,
in a recent New York Times article, they were battling
whether or not they would allow generic drug companies
to help increase their production.

But if you dig further you will find that a drug was
actually developed by a company called Gilead that 10
years ago gave Roche the exclusive rights to market
and sell Tamiflu.

Ahh, The Plot Thickens...

If you read the link below from Gilead, you'll
discover Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was made
the chairman of Gilead in 1997.

Since Rumsfeld holds major portions of stock in
Gilead, he will handsomely profit from the scare
tactics of the government that is being used to
justify the purchase of $2 billion of Tamiflu.

----

Gilead Sciences Inc.
http://www.gilead.com/wt/sec/pr_933190157/

 

[Wayne]

Perhaps we should all buy some shares.

 

[locum76]

it may not be the full story, avian flu is sweeping east to west. but given the lack of a human to human variant in the previous years of this pandemic it would seem that the american govt would have an alternative motive to panic its citizens. and after all it wouldn't be the first time fear has been used by a government to further its own ends.

 

[redcollective]

I was watching the news a few weeks back and they were interviewing a Turkish farmer who was having his birds put in boxes and taken away for destruction. He had sadly lost a child to the outbreak. He made some interesting statements: His children had helped look after the sick birds, and his family was in the habit of killing and eating sick birds.

Here's my opinion for the little it's worth: It's a pity folk in poor nations are not better informed by their governments; it's a pity the governments of rich nations don't spend money helping poor nations cope with bird flu instead of looking for technological solutions to problems which don't yet exist.

Please remember 'pandemic' human to human transmission of a bird flu mutant is still a big 'IF', not a when, no matter what people tell you. If you are being told it's not possible, or even that it's inevitable, you are not being told the truth. A real expert would tell you they just don't know.

I think if you want to be prepred for pandemic flu you need to stay informed, but choose your sources of information very carefully. Think more 'New Scientist' and less 'Interweb'. I'll stop proselytizing now. No intent to offend.

 

[RovingArcher]

Plain and simple truth is, there will always be a crook, trying to make his booty off of the fears and hopes of the people. I could care less, because those types usually get their's in the end anyways.

Whether it's a bird flu pandemic, or some other event that takes place doesn't really matter. I mean, there could be a comet gonna hit this planet, or the bottom could drop out of the economy and all we as occupants can really do, is ride it out and do the best that we can do. But, that doesn't mean we should stick our heads between our knees and kiss our backsides goodbye. What it all boils down to is, that it is up to each individual, just how far they are willing to go in their ability to protect and provide for their loved ones and after all, isn't that what this is really all about?

 

[pierre girard]

Interesting article in an Israeli paper - for the bushcraft minded:

http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp...&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=Health&


PG

 

[Keith_Beef]

Please remember 'pandemic' human to human transmission of a bird flu mutant is still a big 'IF', not a when, no matter what people tell you. If you are being told it's not possible, or even that it's inevitable, you are not being told the truth. A real expert would tell you they just don't know.

Although it is true that human to human transmission of H5N1 influenza virus is still a big "IF", it remains that the world has not seen a serious 'flu pandemic for a long, long time.

Statistically, it is overdue.

It also remains true, that the main source of human to human transmissible new strains of influenza historically originate in south east asia, where pigs and poultry (and fish) are kept in close proximity. In my (laymans, limited) understanding of influenza, pigs can be infected from a human, and be infected from poultry. The two strains can merge, giving rise to a new strain. If this new strain can then infect a human, there's a good chance that human to human transmission is possible.

It is going to happen. No "IF" about it, but a big "WHEN".

The immediate question, as you put it, concerns the likelihood of the H5N1 strain being the one to do it.

But then, I was brought up from early childhood with the idea that we were long overdue for a coming reduction in the human population...

Whether it comes from WWIII or another "Spanish Flu" epidemic, I'll still hear my grandmother's and my mother's voices telling me of how "it was bound to happen, sooner or later".


K

 

[Doc]

Just to clarify, it is the World Health Organisation who have warned that an influenza pandemic (not necessarily H5N1) is 'inevitable'.

Influenza pandemics are not new - we had three in the last century.

 

[redcollective]

Just to clarify, it is the World Health Organisation who have warned that an influenza pandemic (not necessarily H5N1) is 'inevitable'.

Influenza pandemics are not new - we had three in the last century.

That's absolutely true for pandemic influsenza. I don't think the press make it clear enough to the rest of us when they report on this issue, they are for the moment, seperate risks.

My great grandfather died of pandemic flu.

 

[Doc]

That's right Stu. Your earlier post was absolutely accurate. It is only because the subject is not well understood by the public that I added my clarification.

 

[Tengu]

My fathers wife works in cytology (doing blood tests) and I asked her about it. She said not to worry.

(this is from someone who is severley asthmatic and so presumably wouldnt survive, even if they had jabs)

Im stocking up on 3 months food anyway. Im normaly not moved by scares, but its prudent in whatever emergency.

 

[Keith_Beef]

Just to clarify, it is the World Health Organisation who have warned that an influenza pandemic (not necessarily H5N1) is 'inevitable'.

Influenza pandemics are not new - we had three in the last century.

Which is what I meant when I wrote:

It is going to happen. No "IF" about it, but a big "WHEN"... The immediate question... concerns the likelihood of the H5N1 strain being the one to do it.

It's going to happen. We don't know when, or what strain is going to go round. Just being mentally prepared for it will make a big difference.

The sun going supernova is, apparently, inevitable. But is it worth worrying about? Can we stop it hapening?

Influenza hybridization might not be not inevitable; mainly, it seems to come about through certain farming practises. It can be slowed, or even stopped.

But changing those practises, without depriving the farmers of their livelihoods is a delicate question.

K.

 

[Porcupine]

i wonder if theres any more or less detailed study (or practical examples on a small scale) of what this means for a "modern" society.

simply put an farmer living in the fields somewhere has a high level of selfsufficiency,whereas we with our dependency on shops would have big troubles just to stay alife.

how much of our workingpopulation is minimaly needed to keep things running for long enough to pull through?

another thing im not sure of,is an pandemic flu only to strike in our traditional flu season or do pandemics break the normal pattern?


interesting stuff to think about,and i do hope it will stay all theory.....

 

[Abbe Osram]

They just interviewed a leading Swedish scientist, in TV, who is working with the bird flue. He said that he is fascinated as a scientist about the virus and how fast it is developing. But he was scarred as a private person. We got news that it had jumped to cats, dogs and now even to a marten. What do you guys think now about the development?

click on info

Cheers
Abbe

 

[Eric_Methven]

Time to start stocking up on the staples. I still have backup stuff from Y2k (water containers, generator, oil lamps etc). I think three months supplies of dried foods are in order. A bit like an insurance policy, except if nothing bad happens, you can eat the premiums.

So, the Irish solution to bird flue won't work then? They planned to ban hen parties!

Eric

 

[gunnix]

Quote from http://www.inthewake.org/blog.html :

Bird flu comes from factory farms

According to a recent report ( http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0226-02.htm ) the avian flu is incubated and spread by poultry factory farms:

Factory farming and the international poultry trade are largely responsible for the spread of bird flu, and wild birds are being unfairly blamed for the disease, a new report says.

The report says the deadly H5N1 virus developed inside intensive poultry units in Asia and has proliferated through exports of live birds and the use of chicken droppings as fertiliser. Its publication by Grain, an agricultural pressure group, follows an announcement that the virus has been found in a turkey farm in eastern France. Though the farm was close to where two infected wild ducks were found, all its 11,000 turkeys were kept indoors with no contact with wild birds.

Dissident scientists accept that the flu began in wild birds, but say it developed in the cramped conditions of Asian factory farms. Research published in the official journal of the US National Academy of Sciences blames the poultry trade for the virus spreading from China to Vietnam.

BirdLife, a charity, says the virus's spread across Russia last summer - widely attributed to migrating birds - took place when birds were moulting and unable to fly. It adds that an outbreak in Nigeria took place on a factory farm far from migratory routes.

But even if governments accepted this fact they would surely continue their general bird culling programs instead of banning factory farms. Over 200 million birds have been killed to "prevent the spread of bird flu", many of them back-yard or community-scale poultry farms. Those poultry raisers are generally not compensated monetarily for the deaths of the birds and may not be able to afford to restart farming, meaning that the effect of the culls is to increase the centralized factory farming of birds. Governments and large businesses like shift towards centralization on a superficial level because they get money from factory farming that they wouldn't get from small-scale farming. And on a deeper level they like greater centralized control. The effect of an increase in factory farming, ironically,would probably be to worsen the avian flu situation by giving the virus more habitat to incubate and evolve.

In any case thse reports make it clear that avian flu is yet another disease of civilization, dependent on a dense population of stressed and immunosuppressed hosts for infection, living in much larger groups than they would be normally, and spread by extremely rapid transport. In contrast, really fast-acting and lethal infections don't do very well in healthy, distributed populations. The infections tend to spread all of the possible hosts nearby (and either kill them or give them immunity) before they can get very far. They burn themselves out.

(As a side note, I'm fairly sceptical about how likely it is that avian flu will actually cause a pandemic. Especially consider how certain people, like US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, have already made millions of dollars from general public concern about it.)

 

[directdrive]

Hi, Abbe: You are blessed to live out away from a high population area. The fewer people around when the virus makes the jump from animals to humans, the better for you and your family. You need to stock up on supplies now. My guess is the coming fall and winter will be the time things begin to fall apart.
Regarding the wild animals. Perhaps you should refrain from any contact with them as well. If it is already dead or looks sick, that is warning enough. If it does not look sick, that does not mean it isn't carrying the virus.....be careful and good luck.
Bruce

 

[redcollective]

Time to start stocking up on the staples.

Really? I don't see what good office supplies will do me.

Sorry - It' s lunch time after a bad week - I needed to lighten up!.

Seriously though - the advice for Bird Flu is: stay away from infected birds and keep your pets away from infected birds.

If I were to put money on it I reckon a cull and containment policy will work, but the monetary cost will be enormous - just like foot and mouth.

Stay safe and sensible and don't worry too much.

 

[risby]

it had jumped to cats, dogs and now even to a marten.

Blast, that's my name and I have had a headache and felt weak all day. How come I'm always the last to know about these things?