Bird Flu
 

The Bird Flu.

How worried are you about this?

It's been on my "Ya I'll worry about that real soon now" list. Right up there with issues like dirty bombs and asteroid strikes.

Now however as more human cases are being reported I'm starting to wonder. I find my self thinking back to the post where I made light of a storm called Katrina. At that point it was out in the Atlantic and hardly a storm at all. And then...

Is the bird flu the same thing? A storm gathering on the horizon just starting to pick up steam?

Are you worried? Or not? Preparing? Or not?

Somewhat torn on the issue...

On one hand, the media loves to over-sesationalize. How many times has the evening news told us about some disaster that is just around the corner? Africanized Bees, Fire Ants, etc... I try not to get worked up over stuff like that.

Then again, few people are aware of the severity of the 1918 flu epidemic that killed 25-40 million people worldwide (more than the black plague), and all within approx. a years time. Now granted, medicine has come a long way since 1918, but if what is being reported is accurate, this could be very very bad and we don't seem to be adequately prepared. The more cases get reported, the more nervous I will get.

Medicine has indeed come a long way, but unfortunately so have the agents of infection. Airports. Worldwide in less that 24 hours.

Am I personally worried? No. I'm young(ish) and (reasonably) healthy. I may get sick and suffer but I don't think I will be damaged beyond belief if I DO catch this thing.

There are those who will not be as lucky. They are frail, old, terribly young or generally unhealthy. These are the same people who could be killed by a bad case of "regular" flu.

As usual, the hardest hit demographics will be those with fewer priviledges and that will be terrible. There aren't many equal opportunity diseases around these days.

I tend to look at the fear the media is currently inciting with a chunk (better than a grain) of salt. I rarely watch TV and, when I do turn it on, there's always something ridiculous like "Storm Watch 2005" (reporting on California). I just can't take it seriouslt any longer and I'm not willing to go into any sort of panic mode just yet (if ever).

So once again you live up to your name. :)

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."


So it looks like it's not quite as bad once it makes the human-to-human jump.

I'll worry about it as much as I worried about West Nile and SARS. That is, not much at all. The news has sensationalized so many ridiculous things that we'll never know when they're being real.

OTOH, a story on the Daily Show quoted Bush as saying that it's when the bird flu goes "bird, human, human" that it's dangerous. They followed the best logic I've heard about this thus far: the best solution, if that happens, is to give it back to a bird.

I can find plenty of birds around here should that happen. ;)

So let me get this straight: the President LIED to us? "Bird, human, human" isn't when it becomes dangerous? I'm shocked and appalled!!!!

Well yes and no. When it spreads human-to-human is when it takes off like wildfire and millions get infected. At the same time it should drop from 70% fatalitly to fractions of a percent fatality. However since (in theory) truly massive numbers of people will contract the disease then many more will die.

Being young and healthy is not always a defense against influenza. It's thought that the reason so many young and healthy people died in the Spanish Flu epidemic is because they hadn't been exposed to a milder form of it that made the rounds a generation prior, and so had no natural protection.

I am not too worried, mostly because there is precious little I can do about it. (Much like with Ebola or any of the other horrific viruses out there). If a '12 Monkeys' bug hits and things go to hell, then I will deal with it as best I can, provided I survive. If I don't, then I won't be around to worry about it anyway.

What, me worry?