Its coming, are you prepared?

[Lilaena De'Ville]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12584149/wid/11915773?GT1=8199

Prepare the duct tape/plastic enclosures for your windows and doors, BIRD FLU is coming, but don't worry, we'll be ready.

[Miranda Tarkin]

I don't mean to slight the possible death toll, but the media has panicked a lot of customers here at the pharmacy that they thought the worse case scenario would be like 25+ million :|

It's rather annoying

[Shawn]

Hooray, more conjecture and fear mongering. http://img506.imageshack.us/img506/4706/emotfoxnews3jr.gif

My immune system is about due for a good workout, anyway, and I can't make it to California so I can catch myself some good ol' Bubonic Plague (http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-04-19-bubonicplague_x.htm).

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Well you can't get it from eating chicken, either, which is a common misconception.

Although I suppose once someone DOES get it at a chicken farm that it will spread from person to person. I just hope my husband doesn't get it, because he's stubborn about taking medicine or going to the doctor.

[Jaime Tomahawk]

Oh God, Bird Flu is the frikking least of anyone's problems.

Firstly, it is not in a form that can be readily transmitted human to human at all. The reason is that for a disease like normal flu (which kills tens of thousands a year I might add in the USA alone) is so contagious is that it is a upper respiratory disease, ise it dwells in the upper areas like your nose and throat and thence is easily mixed into saliva and snot. It is also fairly hardy and can survive outsid ehte body for a bit.

H5N1 cant survive in the upper traicts, it is more like pnumonia in that it has to be very deep in the lungs. The offshoot is that the virus cant spread as it is not present in saliva or snot. You can only catch bird flu with very high exposure and deep breathing - which is why humans when they die of it have had very high exposure to birds and bird droppings.

Second, no one really knows the mortality rate of H5N1. The areas where deaths have been reported have been remote and data hard to come by - the actual rates of infection probably are much higher but the infectees only got a cough and it cleared up a few days later, hence they would not be reported.

Third and this is the big kicker, H5N1 has to mutate twice to be a true human virus and be a pandemic candidtate. It has to mutate into a form that is not only easily transmittable, it has to also mutate into a form genuinely suited to human infection. These two mutations are unlikely. In the case that they do occur, the form the virus takes is also unknown and anothter thing is that a successful virus doesnt kill it's host. A virus that kills it's host has a far lesser chance of being passed on, the exception being HIV with is probably the perfect virus with it's huge incubation time, hence giving it the most time to be passed on. Ebola and the like that kills fast is simply too containable as a result.

The pandemics of the past ike 1918 were at a time when the world was either at war or trying to recover, presenting a one off opportunity for Spanish flu to attack a generation that had their immune systems weakened by stress and war and health systems that were inadequate to cpoe. Later pandemics were just in reality a blip in statistics. As I said, flu kills literally thousands every year just in the USA, the full flu total would be well over 100,000 worldwide at the minimum.

I'm not worried in the least. H5N1 hasnt even been shown to be capable of being a pandemic canditate in humans. If it mutates into a form capable of a pandemic... it's most likely that it will be weak and just cause a statistics blip. A world wide mega killer virus isnt very unlikely to be flu based - the virus that does exist that is a pandemic is called HIV.

[Ryan Pode]

Next Thursday on ABC there is a Bird Flu movie.

[JMK]

One of the characters on House supposedly was stricken with a bird virus...or was he? They never get it right. Still, the very mention of it....ugh.

Conjecture and fear mongering is right.

[Ryan Pode]

He got some virus that they thought birds carry.

[JMK]

I didn't watch it, I only heard about it, but the reference is blatant and obvious, never mind the images and impressions it probably made on many viewers who think that the bird flu is going to kill us all.

[Shawn]

It's not a reference to the bird flu.

[JMK]

Well like I said, I didn't see it, but the timing of it is very suspect. Did you happen to catch it?

[Ryan Pode]

Yeah, I watched it. I <3 House. They thought the disease could have been gotten from the bird droppings, but it tested negative.

[Shawn]

Yes. The patients both had a disease which created brain lesions, causing them both to have wildly exaggerated emotional responses. At one point, they suspected pigeon droppings were the cause, but it was later shown that this wasn't the case. It had nothing at all to do with the flu.

I don't see how the "timing is suspect", since the bird flu hype has been going on for months and has largely died down by now.

You want to talk funny timing? They had an episode where the patient had the bubonic plague that aired the day before the article I linked to above was published.

Edit: This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naegleria) is what the patient had.

[Ryan Pode]

I thought thought that was ironic.