The Bird Flu is Comming! The Bird Flu is Comming!
 

I just picutre Chicken Little running around screaming that. I think it's kind of punny that Chicken Little would be doing it. Har Har.

Is anyone here actually stockpiling food and medical supplies? Aside from our resident malitia members who have compounds that are already fully stocked that is...

I keep seeing the comercials for this new bird flu movie that's coming on TV soon (ABC I think). Between this extremely sensationalized film and the daily news reports, I'm seriously waiting for the wackos to come out of the wood work overreracting.

I found this tidbit on Webmd.com:

The H5N1 bird flu bug has been particularly deadly for people unlucky enough to catch it from poultry. But if the bug learns to spread among humans, it almost certainly won't be as deadly as it is now, says Ira Longini, PhD, professor of biostatistics at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health.

"Avian H5N1 looks like a 70% case fatality in humans. But this has never been true of any human strain," Longini told WebMD last December. "There has never been any human influenza virus that has behaved that way in recorded or even unrecorded history. The case fatality of even highly virulent flu strains are a couple of deaths per 10,000 people."

Y2k Computer bug.

Ebola.

SARS.

I honestly believe all of this crap (of which I also consider the bird flu scare to be) is because of a bored and overexposed media. This is true in a few areas.

Scary news gets better ratings.

There are too many media outlets with nothing to report, so it makes for a good story...."what could happen if every nuclear reactor in the US melted down at the same time? Join our MSNBC team report tonight at 9:00."

Each news outlet is afraid that if they ignore something that could become big then they will look like idiots and can't claim to have "had the story first".

So....that's a rather long explanation of why, um....no. I will not be stocking up on everything.

I have problems with that number. The 1918 flu epidemic killed between 20 and 40 million people. World population was perhaps 2 billion at the time (earliest numbers I can find are for 1950, and population was 2.5 billion). That's 1% of the world population. One out of every one hundred people died. And that includes everyone, not just infected. So "a couple of deaths per 10,000 people" is a gross understatement of the death rates possible with an influenze epidemic. True, 75% is absurdly high, but I'm not even particularly comfortable with the 1-2% represented by the 1918 pandemic.

That being said...I think it's possible to mitigate the risks without resorting to the sensationalism and fear-mongering that people seem to like.

In 1918 wouldn't a larger portion of the population have been malnourished and have other medical conditions that would have weakened their defenses? Just wondering.

You're precisely right. "If it bleeds, it leads." is not just a joke, it's seriously how news operates.

One time at the TV station where I used to work, it was a "slow" news night, so the producer asked me to help her call fire and police stations to ask for any fires or fatalities. And, no office had anything. She actually threw her hands up in the air and said, "I swear!! I wish someone would just die or something, so we have something good to broadcast tonight!" :eek:

I refuse to stockpile for a "news scare". However, I was raised to be prepared at home with a week's supply of food and water, just in case anything would ever go wrong - earthquake, personal illness, etc. That's more than sufficient to me.

My favorite "scare" of all time - the stockpile craze of plastic sheeting and duct tape. I so wanted to make a "portable safety system" version of it and sell the "kits" on eBay. It'd consist of a small clear plastic bag and a small roll of tape with the instructions: "Place bag over head. Secure tightly around neck with tape. Enjoy the safety from all airborne pathogens." Then, I would have saved the list of people who purchased them and submit it as potential recipients of the Darwin Awards. :evil:

I'm too busy worrying about the new albuterol shortage. Bird flu won't mean squat if I die from the common cold first.

Oh, absolutely. I'm not arguing that the bird flu is likely to be as bad as the 1918 outbreak. But the " never more than a couple in 10,000" number (which is .02%) is shown to be clearly ridiculous by a simple look at history. I mean, he's off by a factor of 100 on that. Even if a modern-day flu pandemic is only half as deadly as 1918's, that's 50 times more than Mr. Longini's "facts".

Ummmm..

2,000,000,000 * .02 = 40,000,000

So overall ~ 2% of the population died from bird flu.

If 2 in 10,000 died out of a 2 Billion population then you would have:

(2,000,000,000 / 10,000) * 2 = 400,000

Looks like I need to write a letter to Dr. Ira.

That's what I do. But after Katrina showed we cannot count on FEMA I'm slowly stocking up for a month. That just means I have food in my emergency kit and extra dry goods in my pantry. If there was a really bad earthquake I'd pack my backpack and start making my way to my parents house where there would be enough food for a few months (just the way they shop).

What abuterol shortage?

Aren't we due for another asteroid story? You know where they say one could hit Earth and then doesn't...

Best I can do, Brad -

Newest asteroid impact hazzard

"At the end of February, orbital calculations for near-Earth-asteroid (NEA) 2004 VD17 indicated that the risk of an impact within the next century (specifically on May 4, 2102) was higher than that of any other known asteroid."

Not that scary, I suppose.

I miss Skylab.

Interesting, though.


Everytime something comes on the news that we're supposed to panic about, I keep thinking about the townspeople of South Park screaming and running and trampling each other...
:D

That article doesn't seem like it's a reason to panic...

Oh, I'm not in a panic. I'm just more panicked about that then bird flu. Not that it really matters to me, since I'm down to using my inhaler a couple times a year. Actually, my albuterol concern is more for the long-term. If I do get sick, I sometimes *need* an inhaler or I can spend my evenings in urgent care with the nebulizer thingy. I'm more concerned about a couple years from now when my current stock is no longer good.

(Although if it's anything like the way they handle flu shots around here, it's not at all like they say. If "your" pharmacy or medical center is out, you can't go to another one. Not even if you want to pay cash and forgo insurance. The pharmacies will only serve existing customers.)

I tracked down Dr. Longini. Here is the response he sent:

So basically he's admitting he was wrong when he said "in recorded or even unrecorded history"

Nice catch GD.

I'm convinced that majority of the sensationalized news over the bird flu (and other stories of that nature) are all just planted by major companies to drive their particular businesses sales and stocks up. Gas? Pharmaceuticals? Housing shortages? It's all is driven by fear and speculation. All the money fear can generate. Is my skepticism showing much?:rolleyes:

I heard that there are two ways the flu could go. It could combine with a normal virus, which would make it contagious from human to human (and, watered down by viruso normalo, not as deadly.) Or it could mutate to become contagious, in which case there's a big problem.

The already-ill and those at the bookends of their lives would be in the most trouble. But I really hope it combines instead of mutates.

There's a third path...it does't do crap.

Birds that don't crap - now there's a scientific advancement I'd like to see!

Bird flu mutates

And the panic resumes. :rolleyes:

The first case of human-to-human transmission was confirmed.

Maybe we won't be going to SE Asia.

Coming to NY?