Ok, what's up with 'bird flu'?

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Dasmi,

My point exactly! Or Ebola Reston, or Influenza, or terrorist, or...that neighbor of yours that owns a gun.

Risk is inherent in liberty and freedom.

Jim, WHO has a count of 112 human cases and 57 deaths? Washington DC has a higher homicide rate and they have already banned firearms!

Jim and Tokugawa,

People will still get sick and die. sooner or later some super virus or meteor or other disaster is going to kill everyone. So that is a reason to repeal one of the few laws this country has to keep it's cheif executive from declaring martial law and using the military as a personal police force?

For me and again this is my belief and opinion meaning it is not fact for you or anyone else, but for me it is true:

I will accept the risk of some terrible outbrake or disaster to remain secure in what freedom I have left. I will not trade the illusion of security for the risk of tyranny. I understand that I may die in a car accident tomorrow as I drive to work and I am at peace with my mortality, I am not at peace with fallible men passing or repealing laws to afford for protection that I am best to euipped to provide for myself.
 
Interesting links Jim. I'm more knowledgeable about the business end of influenza (viral usurpation of host cell metabolism, genome repoduction and encapsulation) than in modes of transmission. I wonder if the use of surgical masks and respirators would be usefull precautionary items during an outbreak or pandemic. Like we used to see worn in Japan during high pollution days. I have no problem wearing such gear in public. 'Specially if its in ever fashionable black. :evil:

Yea, visions of the movie "Outbreak" have been running through my head as well. I suspect that if I were in a quarantine area, I'd not attempt to leave. I don't have kids, so thats not a factor, and I understand WHY an area around an outbreak would be quarentined.
 
Now for the really un PC comment- A flu that kills 95 percent of the worlds human population may be better in the long run for the planet and it's creatures- saving it from the long slow extinction and suffication by overpopulation. A friend went to Ethiopia recently and the picture of mile after mile of 1/4 acre farms, all devoted to producing enough food to feed the occupants of the one hut on it was a terrifing vison of the future. No electricity, no surplus, no books, no ideas, no hope- just a bag of grain and another year to live and breed. Hmmm, just occured to me I probably do not fit in the "optimistic sector", hey?!
 
A friend went to Ethiopia recently and the picture of mile after mile of 1/4 acre farms, all devoted to producing enough food to feed the occupants of the one hut on it was a terrifing vison of the future. No electricity, no surplus, no books, no ideas, no hope- just a bag of grain and another year to live and breed.
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That's Ethiopia. Drive across Iowa some time, and you'll see real agriculture in action.
 
That's Ethiopia. Drive across Iowa some time, and you'll see real agriculture in action.
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Don't forget the infrastructure that is required to support that kind of agriculture Standing Wolf. All the other folks who find/extract/refine/ship/sell the fuel to run the equipment. All the other folks who are needed to find/extract/refine/manufacutre/ship/maintain the equipment that burns the fuel to grow the food. All the other folks who are needed to process the food, can/freeze/dry it, ship it to the stores for us to buy. All the other folks who are needed to organize and run such a complex system of production.
A flu that kills 95 percent of the worlds human population may be better in the long run for the planet and it's creatures- saving it from the long slow extinction and suffication by overpopulation.
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True, but I doubt our technology dependent lifestyle would survive such an event.
 
Wasn't SARS supposed to kill us all a few years ago?
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Nope. Sars wasn't even close to what a pandemic like this would be like. I forget the actual death rate from SARS, but it was below ten percent.

I agree that a pandemic will suck for us but ultimately be best for the planet. I don't expect to survive such an event--I seem to get every damned flu that passes through town.
 
The real problem, as I understand it, is that influenza viruses of all stamps mutate rapidly. That's why you've gotta get a new flu vaccine every year.

The worry is that the avian strain is jumping from birds to humans right now. Every infected human is a BIG experiment for the avian flu. Lots and lots of variations of this thing are being produced every time a person gets it. Eventually (goes the concern) one of these variations will succeed in jumping from human to human. When that happens we're in a spot of trouble, assuming the same mutation hasn't dramatically reduced the mortality rate.

Most other lethal viruses haven't shown quite the adaptability as the influenzas so they don't carry quite the risk of suddenly being able to infect a large proportion of the worlds population.

Yeah, we got too many folks on this world, but a 50% reduction will be hard to take for everyone.
 
The worry is that the avian strain is jumping from birds to humans right now.
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Yes, in small numbers and in people who have VERY close contact with birds. There are instances of it occurring in family clusters, which suggest it can jump human to human - but again only to those in very close contact with the infected person. Experts put the risk of a pandemic this flu season at about 10% - I'm not going to spend a significant amount of time on something with that small probability of happening. What it hasn't done - and may or may not do - is make the jump for easy human to human infection. While we should remain vigilant, this virus could mutate into something harmless and go away - or it could go the other way and infect large numbers of people and wipe 5% (worst case models) of the earths population out.

Tamiflu is not the only thing available. It's been shown to reduce the spread of the virus in an infected person - in layman terms it slows it down enough to hopefully give the body time to respond. Two others are looking good; one made by Chiron Corp. and another by the Sanofi Pasteur Corp. which is further along. The one made by Sanofi Pasteur is produced from the virus isolated in a patient in Vietnam with a gene removed to make it harmless. I don't know enough about where the Chiron drug is in it's test cycles to comment. Computer models indicated that a pandemic could be stifled within about a week with drugs and quarantines, but you have to realize that NONE of these drugs are available in quantity - and other nations have orders in ahead of the US.
 
It would be wise to have on hand remedies which could be taken at home at the first sign of exposure. Even with a highly virulent flu strain, it might make the difference between life and death.

The Life Extension Foundation has a protocol for treating influenza with over the counter vitamins, herbs and supplements. I keep this on hand. For "normal" flu, I think LEF claims it cuts the duration in half, and I have experienced this personally. See:

http://www.lef.org/protocols/prtcl-051.shtml

If you can render your family even somewhat independent of the authorities and the medical establishment, that is a good thing.
 
Judging by all the hype in the media, the mundaine rubbish George (Peepers) Bush pukes out to the American public about us winning the war on terror, the typical biological scare tactics, and members of various websites paranoid about a totalitarianist US government in the works, I do declare ... Al Qaeda is winning more every day. Citizens vs the government suits them well ... for now. They are waiting for the point to boil over into an all out civil war - when we as a nation would be at our weakest against foreign enemies.
 
The "bird flu" means that we havent been attacked by terrorists in awhile, and most of the country lives outside of the hurricane zone. Its the new thing that your supposed to be afraid of so that you dont question things you arent supposed to question.

No go wrap your houses in plastic and stop thinking so much.
 
It is probably the more recent one. It broke out again a few years ago.

I dont think anything has come close to the 88 percent of Ebola Zaire. Ebola almost certainly has some wild reservoir that occaisionally makes the jump to humans. It is too deadly to be a naturally occurring human virus. For it to survive in the human population for 40 years (it has been breaking out sporadically for decades) it would have to be far less deadly than it currently is.

H5N1 could be nasty, but it would quickly become domesticated in the sense that after a few weeks the only surviving strains would be the varieties that didnt kill their hosts. You could safely contract those variants and you would be granted immunity from the nasty for free.

Living in such a small world can be very bad when bugs like this cross over species.
 
Byron, I was reffering to hard number not the percentages, I was attempting to illustrate the point of how small the numbers truly are yet Bush uses it to get congress thinking about giving him more power. That is what truly scares me, you can say I am wearing a tinfoil hat if you like but no president that I amaware of has ever had as much power as Bush ad he keeps asking for more. I fear what he would do if Posse Comitatus were repealed. And that is what he has asked congress to consider. I truly suspect the White House is trying to feel out public opinion on the use of US troops against US citizens. It just seems to me Bush uses continual scare tactics to do this sort of thing. As I stated before, there is always something that is going to kill us all, I tried to provoke thouht by being a little absurd it seems some folk take everything literally. Let me end by trying to provoke more thought:

What security and protection do we gain from repealing Posse Comitatus? Will it stop a virulant outbreak?
 
You know, there are a number of things that could be really really bad for the US:
  • This avian flu, if it mutates just right
  • Ebola, if it mutates just right
  • A meteor impact
  • A coordinated terrorist attack
  • A terrorist attack where they have nukes
  • A terrorist attack where they have nukes and the ability to generate an air burst that maximizes EMP effects
  • HIV, if it mutates just right
  • A monetary collapse
I bet the membership could list a few dozen other things without any thought. Here's the deal though: we live in an age where our government uses fear to generate support for the continual erosion of our liberties. It will continue to do so, and when "terrorism" and the fear of bearded dark-skinned men in white dresses fades away, they'll grab another source to use to continue the slow increase of power.

I for one don't see how the elimination of the 130 year old rule limiting the domestic use of the military would really help in any of the above scenarios. Guys, we live in an age where anyone can be 6,000 miles away in less than a day, and where you simply can't completely isolate a population center without getting Katrina/New Orleans style results.

So, we've got Avian Flu in New Jersey. Great. Anyone think we can isolate New York for a month and get a less than 50% mortality rate while doing so? What about food, and fuel trucks, and the influx of the military folks themselves?

It won't make things better. If the cards we're dealt in the next few decades add up to "50% population loss -- go back four spaces", then I don't see how martial law on a national scale helps things even a little bit.
 
EasternShore, Ebola Zaire, Sudan and their close relative Marburg are lethal to humans up to 90%ish. Last I heard Reston has no serious negative effects on humans. CDC seems to agree with me. Has anybody heard of Ebola Ivory Coast?
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Those are bad bugs all right, but they aren't transmitted by air. Flu bugs ARE.

When you combine airborn transmission and a mortality rate past 50%, you've got a nightmare that dwarfs Ebola and the like.
 
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