Originally Posted by Croakmore

Several days ago I emailed this inquiry to the Washington State Dept. of Health:

"There is a very good chance that avian flu will be brought to us on the wings of starlings, crows, pigeons, seagulls, and geese. These highly mobile flocks of birds will be the transport agents of avian flu, not unlike the way rats served as such agents of the Plague in the Dark Ages. Has the Department of Health considered any measures for managing the populations of these wild birds that now seriously threaten our health?"

So far, no reply. If I don't hear from the Dept. soon I will accuse the state of Washington of anticipating bird flu with the same ignorance shown by those of the Dark Ages who let the rats run free.

--Croakmore

Oh, it'll be the bloody Canadian geese... at least here in Washington State. Bet on it.

For awhile in the mid 1990s, the foul beasts seemed poised to take over Downtown Kirkland. I wonder what the City ever did about it? Back then, one clever fellow made a marvelous suggestion I recall: Declare open season, and serve them to the homeless. What happened? The animal rights activists shit their pants, and the matter was dropped.

At any rate, the 11 o clock news this evening ran an interesting story. It seems that the government is in full panic mode, in a race against time to develop a vaccine effective against avian flu. The problem: the virus is mutating so quickly that the vaccines become obsolete before they're even approved. The most recent one was developed from an avian strain obtained in Vietnam in Twenty-Oh-Three.

Here is the formal letter I and wrote and mailed off yesterday. We will see.

Mary Selecky, Secretary of Health
Washington State Department of Health
P.O. Box 47890
Olympia, WA, 98504-7890

RE: Avian Flu and Flocking Bird Populations

Dear Secretary Selecky:

Please find enclosed a recent review of The Monster At Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu, by Mike Davis, who emphasizes this important point: If we want to understand the causes of pandemics, and if we want to prevent or control them, we must look to the ecology of hosts, vectors, and agents.

There is a very good chance that avian flu will be brought to us on the wings of starlings, crows, pigeons, seagulls, geese, and certain other flocking birds. Thus these highly mobile flocks could be the vectors of avian flu, not unlike the way rats served as vectors of the Plague in the Dark Ages. What is the Department of Health doing to control the populations of these flocking birds that now seriously threaten our health?

If officials of the U.S. Forest Service and the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife are planning to cull the populations of barred owls to protect the health of spotted owls (see The Bellingham Herald, March 3, 2006), then your department, working with the Departments of Ecology and Fish & Wildlife, should start culling the flocks of starlings, crows, pigeons, seagulls, and geese to protect the health of humans.

I trust that your department is not preparing for this pandemic with the same kind of ignorance shown by those of the Dark Ages who let the rats run free.

Sincerely,


Richard E...

cc: Jay J. Manning, Director of the Department of Ecology
Jeffrey P. Koenings, Director of the Department of Fish & Wildlife

On the wings of wild birds…[posted for discussion purposes only]

Bird Flu Could Appear in U.S. in Months

By LARA JAKES JORDAN (Associated Press Writer)

From Associated Press
March 09, 2006 12:36 PM EST

WASHINGTON - A deadly strain of bird flu could appear in the United States in the next few months as wild birds migrate from infected nations, Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said Thursday…

I don't know why flocking birds should not be regarded as WMDs. Neither Osama nor Saddam, in their wildest dreams, could imagine terrorism at the level we might be in for.

--Croakmore

Originally Posted by Croakmore

I don't know why flocking birds should not be regarded as WMDs. Neither Osama nor Saddam, in their wildest dreams, could imagine terrorism at the level we might be in for.

Your concerns are justified. I view myself as a progressive, one who sees new threats and acts to avert them. This is indeed a new threat.

But I don't know that we can or ought to try to make war on Nature. Do we send vice president Cheney and his drinking buddies up to the Aleutian Islands with shotguns, and have them shoot any bird flying east that coughs?

There are too many birds out there. Variations of the bug are going to spread world wide. While culling domestic birds to prevent infections from getting into the food chain might be a plausible precaution, attempting to manipulate the bug in the wild is likely beyond us.

I would like to see preparations made to immunize rapidly should the bug start jumping human to human easily. Given the wide area the bug covers, and the degree of mutation, this too might be a matter of too little, to late. They should be ready for when the time comes, however.

I don't know, Bob, being an ecologist I'm thinking there is still a lot we could do to reduce these flocks with an overall positive effect. If it were rats we'd be out there pounding them with baseball bats. But there is something I like about the thrust of your question:

Originally Posted by Bob Butler

Do we send vice president Cheney and his drinking buddies up to the Aleutian Islands with shotguns, and have them shoot any bird flying east that coughs Cheney and his buddies?

One day in the future scientists will be forced to conclude that messing around with the human immune system was a bad idea. This is why we need to draw the line on forced public vaccinations. Too many screw-ups in the name of medicine. But think of the profits made by pharmaceutical companies when they invent and sell those blessed vaccines.

Many scientists today believe we are spawning new pandemics by tweedling around with these "blessed" vaccines. Polio —> AIDS is a good example. I'm very suspicious about our pharmaceutal hopes for a bird-flu vaccine.

—Croakmore

This article appeared in yesterday's Washington Post editorial section. Standard disclaimers apply.

A Pandemic of Fear
By Marc Siegel
Sunday, March 26, 2006; Page B07

Fear is a deeply rooted emotion -- one that can serve as a lifesaving response to imminent danger. But because we humans often magnify risk, fear can also cause us to overreact to remote threats, such as bird flu.

According to a significant study published in the prestigious British journal Nature recently, the H5N1 bird flu virus is at least two large mutations and two small mutations away from being the next human pandemic virus. This virus attaches deep in the lungs of birds but cannot adhere to the upper respiratory tract of humans. Since we can't transmit the virus to each other, it poses little immediate threat to us.

So why did the "flu hunter," world-renowned Tennessee virologist Robert Webster, say of bird flu on ABC that there are "about even odds at this time for the virus to learn how to transmit human to human," and that "society just can't accept the idea that 50 percent of the population could die . . . I'm sorry if I'm making people a little frightened, but I feel it's my role."

I'm sorry, Dr. Webster, but your role is to track influenza in the test tube, not to enter into broad speculation on national television. By your way of thinking, we should all be either building an escape rocket ship or killing every bird we see before it can kill us.

Fear causes the public to blur the distinction between birds and people, and so, as the H5N1 virus infects flocks of birds in Pakistan and Israel, nightly news watchers track the path to the United States. The poultry industry cringes as migratory birds that may be carrying H5N1 make their way closer to the northern shores of North America.

But though this bird flu appears to be quite deadly in many species of birds, killing 10 out of 10 chick embryos in test-tube conditions, we humans are a different matter. In 1997 in Hong Kong, for example, where there were 18 human cases of bird flu and six deaths, thousands of people were screened, and 16 percent developed antibodies but never got sick. There appears to be a spectrum of disease in humans, not nearly as deadly as many media reports have supposed.

Even if the H5N1 virus does mutate enough to spread easily among the upper breathing tracts of humans, there are multiple scenarios in which it would not cause the next massive pandemic. In fact, the Spanish flu of 1918 made the jump to humans before killing a large number of birds. Not only do we have vaccinations, antibiotics, antiviral drugs, public information networks, steroids and heart treatments that were lacking in 1918 to treat victims of the flu; in addition, the growing worldwide immunity to H5N1 may lessen the outbreak in humans even if the dreaded mutation does occur.

Even as the virus spreads in birds, the chances of a mutation occurring over time appear to be less likely. For every doomsayer who declares that "it's not a matter of if, but when," there is a sober scientist who says that H5N1 may well dead-end in animals and not be the next pandemic virus.

If H5N1 spreads in pigs (a soup of viruses) and exchanges genetic material with another human flu virus before passing to humans, the result is likely to be far less deadly. The swine flu fiasco of 1976 is an example of the damage that can be done by fear of a mutated virus that never quite lives up to 1918 expectations. About 1,000 cases of ascending paralysis occurred from a rushed vaccine given to more than 40 million people in response to a feared pandemic that never arrived.

Even the word "pandemic" scares us unnecessarily. The word simply means a new strain of a virus appearing in several areas of the world at one time and causing illness. The last flu pandemic, in 1968, killed 33,800 Americans -- slightly less than the number who usually die here of the flu in an average year. We certainly don't need to think in end-of-the world terms for that kind of pandemic.

Cooking a chicken or turkey kills any influenza virus 100 percent of the time, yet the fear of H5N1 bird flu is already so rampant in Europe that poultry consumption is down 70 percent in Italy and 20 percent in France. In Britain people are giving away their parrots after a single parrot got the disease, and in Germany a cat died of H5N1 and the public was told to keep cats indoors. Forty-six countries outside the European Union banned French poultry exports after a single flock of turkeys was found to be infected. France, fourth in the world in poultry exports, is already hemorrhaging more than $40 million a month.

In this country I have heard from more than one farmer and several poultry companies that the price of poultry has already dropped 50 percent in some places. Imagine what will happen if a bird in the United States gets H5N1 bird flu. Our fear is growing at such a rate that our own poultry industry, No. 1 in the world, is likely to be destroyed. We are already petrified by fear of mad cow disease, another case where a species barrier protects us.

Flu changes its shape and size and is a killer worthy of respect and attention. But the most contagious virus among humans is our fear.

The writer is an associate professor at the New York University School of Medicine and the author of "Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic."

Avian Flu Update from Pandemicflu.gov

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Avian Flu Update from Pandemicflu.gov

This chart is misleading. By blocking in amber an entire country that has had bird flu, it looks like it is right at our doorstep (via Alaska). However, I doubt there has been bird flu in Siberia.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Avian Flu Update from Pandemicflu.gov

[Image deleted]

This chart is misleading. By blocking in amber an entire country that has had bird flu, it looks like it is right at our doorstep (via Alaska). However, I doubt there has been bird flu in Siberia.

I think they expect you view the chart on the government site, where more detail is readily available. Of course, a site called Pandemicflu.gov is pushing it a bit, too. It is interesting that the Russia-Alaska part is all the way on the left of the screen.

So ABC has decided to air on Tuesday, May 9 a made-for-TV film about the effects of Avian Flu in America titled: Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America, and of course, they play it up like it has apocalyptic proportions, ranging from riots to almost civil war.

Have they jumped the gun? Is it an accurate depiction of what may come?

Originally Posted by Andy '85

So ABC has decided to air on Tuesday, May 9 a made-for-TV film about the effects of Avian Flu in America titled: Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America, and of course, they play it up like it has apocalyptic proportions, ranging from riots to almost civil war.

Have they jumped the gun? Is it an accurate depiction of what may come?

I'm betting on crass commercialism as a motive. Disaster movies sell, or in this case, catch eyeballs (ratings). Some network execs brainstormed up a cheap, quick topical movie for sweeps and this is what we get. I plan to watch, 'cause I love really bad disaster movies with wildly implausible plots and B-grade (or worse) actors. Stacey Keach apparently is in this, and he certainly qualifies as real cheese.
In other words, don't try too hard to read prophecy into this little two hour treat.

Originally Posted by mandelbrot5

Originally Posted by Andy '85

So ABC has decided to air on Tuesday, May 9 a made-for-TV film about the effects of Avian Flu in America titled: Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America, and of course, they play it up like it has apocalyptic proportions, ranging from riots to almost civil war.

Have they jumped the gun? Is it an accurate depiction of what may come?

I'm betting on crass commercialism as a motive. Disaster movies sell, or in this case, catch eyeballs (ratings). Some network execs brainstormed up a cheap, quick topical movie for sweeps and this is what we get. I plan to watch, 'cause I love really bad disaster movies with wildly implausible plots and B-grade (or worse) actors. Stacey Keach apparently is in this, and he certainly qualifies as real cheese.
In other words, don't try too hard to read prophecy into this little two hour treat.

And if you need more, there's always the 21st century remake of 1972's "The Poseidon Adventure", due in theatres also next month :P

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

Originally Posted by mandelbrot5

Originally Posted by Andy '85

So ABC has decided to air on Tuesday, May 9 a made-for-TV film about the effects of Avian Flu in America titled: Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America, and of course, they play it up like it has apocalyptic proportions, ranging from riots to almost civil war.

Have they jumped the gun? Is it an accurate depiction of what may come?

I'm betting on crass commercialism as a motive. Disaster movies sell, or in this case, catch eyeballs (ratings). Some network execs brainstormed up a cheap, quick topical movie for sweeps and this is what we get. I plan to watch, 'cause I love really bad disaster movies with wildly implausible plots and B-grade (or worse) actors. Stacey Keach apparently is in this, and he certainly qualifies as real cheese.
In other words, don't try too hard to read prophecy into this little two hour treat.

And if you need more, there's always the 21st century remake of 1972's "The Poseidon Adventure", due in theatres also next month :P

Not to mention Flight 93, opening at your local multiplex.

I love fun disaster movies, thank you very much.

Oh no, could this be it:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...CFE&refer=asia

pandemic

Note that a miniseries is due to be released in 2008.

@

@

Epidemic! The World of Infectious Disease edited by Rob DeSalle

The Resurgence of Infectious Diseases

by Anne Platt McGinn

"...An Epidemic Of Epidemics....

Biological Mixing

"The great increase in human tourism, migration, and trade has caused microbes that were once hidden in remote locations to have access to large human populations....

Bad Water

"...Infectious illnesses are widespread in areas with overburdened sanitation facilities and unsafe drinking water...The worldwide population growth is increasing the demand on scarce water supplies in many areas; therefore we can expect the incidence of water-borne infections to keep rising....

Bad Weather

"...many outbreaks seem to stem from climate changes: warmer weather can expand the range of vectors. The Netherlands-based institute, Research for Man and the Environment (RIVM), estimated the effect of a global mean temperature increase of three degrees Celsius in the year 2100: it would increase the epidemic potential of mosquito populations in tropical regions twofold and in temperate regions more than tenfold....

Social Disruption

"...With a about thirty civil wars now taking place, the systems needed for prevention and treatment of disease have been repeatedly shattered-often opening the way for infection to spread unchecked...."

The Winds Of Change Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations by Eugene Linden

"...sudden climate change unleashed a cascade of reprecussions took place in A.D. 536, when some mysterious event darkened the sun for over a year....immediate global impacts included a drought in Mesoamerica that foreshadowed the end of the Mayan civilization four hundred years later, and famines in Asia. Indirect events included waves of migration and disease, perhaps including the so-called Justinian Plague, a late-Roman-era pandemic....

"...accounts suggest that some huge explosion poured enormous amounts of material into the air, creating a 'nuclear winter,'....

"...Keys believes that he found the culprit in two calderas just under the sea surface between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia not far from Krakatoa....

"...The A.D. 536 event had such profound consequences that some historians argue that it marks the dividing line between classical and modern eras."

"...Changing climate can unleash disease in a variety of ways. When precipitation patterns and temperatures change, for instance, creatures in the affected ecosystem must adapt. Typically, the organisms that adapt the fastest are those that have short generations and many offspring-so called R-strategists. These include microbes, pests such as cockroaches or rats, and other 'weedy' species. Its a blind numbers game: if change increases the food supply, populations can expand rapidly. If, on the other hand, change diminishes or changes food availability, the R-strategists have masses of offspring and short generations, so a successful adaptation can rapidly take hold.

"The animals that prey on these weedy species typically have fewer offspring and longer generations since they have fewer enemies in normal times. This makes them either less able of slower to adapt when climate pulls out the rug. During and after rapid changes of climate, it's possible to have a temporary situation in which pest numbers explode as either food increases, the pests adapt, predators temporarily diminish, or some combination of these elements...."

Describing effects of unchecked climate change:

"....kind of tax would fall on the already beleaguered natural world, which in turn would be passed on to humans. As changing climate tilted the board in favor of microbes and other fast-adalpting and fast-reproducing pests, pandemics would sweep through animal and plant populations (including staple crops)...As animals go extinct and habitat disappears, some mammalian diseases would jump over to humans and find fertile incubators in the weakened immune systems of the overstressed poor."