Peter M Howard ::

wintermute.com.au

Bird Flu

15October2005 [myth]
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Bird Flu in ?bits=myth, ‘cause that’s right where it belongs for now… The media are doing their usual beat-up (here in France it’s becoming rather terrifying, with regular updates on the daily news!), and they’ve just reported cases in Romania (in the chickens, not in people)… But I’m inclined to view it as yet another ‘Asian Invasion’ scenario (it’s no coincidence that foreign pandemic scenarios are more heavily ‘reported’ whilst a country is feeling anti-immigration, nor is it something new)

Just saw a scientist out of Amsterdam being interviewed - the reporter doing their best to turn the Romanian cases into an argument for heightened paranoia, while the poor scientist is saying no, no, the chance of a pandemic hasn’t changed whatsoever.

The danger (to humans), it seems, is only that the flu may mutate into something that can be transmitted from human-to-human, but at the moment, it appears to be restricted to bird-to-human (eg, eating uncooked infected chicken) or in extreme cases. Nature, as always, is well balanced — the more dangerous the disease, the more difficult it is to contract.

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