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.