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A World Health Organization (WHO) alert says that a worldwide pandemic of the bird flu "may be imminent."
As we wrote earlier this week, officials at WHO are increasingly concerned that the deadly virus, so far confined almost exclusively to chickens and ducks, may mutate into a form that can be passed from human to human.
With new bird flu deaths occurring in Vietnam and Thailand, Thailand has declared a state of emergency. So far, people infected with the bird flu stand a 75% chance of dying, but those infections were contracted from direct contact with chickens and ducks.
If some human being contracts both bird flu and ordinary human flu at the same time, that would probably be enough to create a bird flu virus that could be transmitted from human to human. Such a virus would probably have a lower death rate, but even if the death rate lowers to 10%, a worldwide pandemic would still kill hundreds of millions of people. The 1918 worldwide Spanish flu epidemic killed 40 million people.
The bird flu virus is clearly mutating, according to WHO officials. It now appears capable of infecting additional animals (tigers and cats), and it's become "hardier," able to survive longer in the environment.
Another issue is that infected ducks don't show any symptoms, but during migrations they can spread the virus through their droppings.
Because there are so many different ways now that the virus can mutate, WHO officials believe that a worldwide pandemic is increasingly likely. A particularly plausible time is next month, during Vietnam's lunar new year (Tet) celebrations, when many people will be travelling, and more poultry is transported, slaughtered and consumed.
Incidentally, in response to a reader question, a potential bird flu
pandemic has no major connection with Generational Dynamics, but I'm
covering it on this web site because most people are ignorant of
what's going on, and the media is doing little to publicize it.
However, there is one indirect connection: A bird flu pandemic might
trigger a major worldwide financial crisis, and might trigger
a major civil war in China.
(21-Jan-05)
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