Bird flu Pandemic? Will it happen to us? Did you watch the T.V. movie tonight?
Question:
Then I look at 911 and Kristina, they said that would never happen either. It's just that if the bird flu arrives, there won't be anyone remaining to talk about it.We will all be dead.
Answers:
I'll take you points in sequence:
1) No one, government or otherwise, can protect anyone from this flu __IF__ it mutates and becomes contagious in people. For reasons which are not clear, most flu viruses are highly contagious; if this is one, after it leans how to infect humans, there will be no possible quarantine which can possibly have any effect. The Hong Kong flu jumped from Hong Kong (where it was first seen) to the East Coast of the United States, without much of a progression across the Pacific nor in the other direction through Asia and Europe and across the Atlantic. No one knows how. Nor do we know in any other case of pandemic flu spread. And it spread more or less everywhere else too. If this virus, after it becomes readily infective in humans, is that contagious, it will be everywhere eespite anything anyone, or any government, can do.
The only known way to protect anyone from such a virus is with a vaccine, and until the mutation of the existing virus so it can infect humans easily, there is no way to build a vaccine. Not against a virus which doesn't yet exist.
2) the Tamiflu shot isn't all that effective against regular flu. It decreases symptoms some, but is hardly a cure. Or much protection either. And the same is true for the only other drug we have which has any effect on teh usual flu. No one really knows whether either of these will make any difference to people infected with this H5N1 strain of avian flu if it makes the jump to contagiousness in humans.
3) There is no vaccine now, so there's no vaccine to made available to anyone. Or withold from anyone either. There is a vaccine against the bird flu that currently exists, but that virus is hardly a danger to anyone except chickens and other birds. More folks die from falls every day than this virus has killed in the last decade. Of the 200 some folks known to have been infected with it, more than half have died, which is a very serious mortality rate. But thst's over ten years in countries all over the globe. This virus is not, as things stand today, a threat to humans anywhere, except economically to those who raise poultry or who depend on wild birds of some kind.
4) Experience with pandemics and other things in our species' past does NOT support your claim that we will all die if this flu arrives. Thus far, no disease has managed to kill everybody; we all do, after all, have ancestors who survived. The Black Plague, which is perhaps the worst sudden plague we've experienced (and that's historically documented) killed between 20% or 35% of the population of Western Europe over a couple of decades once it appeared in this or that area of Europe. England has the best surviving records and teh toll might have been a few percent higher there. This was and is a disease of rodents (and their fleas) in the Eastern Asian steppes and had never been seen in Europe until it was brought West with Genghis Khan's armies. Only it traveled fast enough that a flareup of plague woulnd't burn out before the next stop. That plague is now endemic in the Western North American plains and we know that it arrived by ship from China in the late 1800s. Some scholars even think they know the name o fhte ship. It's been spreading across the Plains ever since. Gophers and prairie dogs are the resevoir here.
Another example of a disease encountering an immunologically naive human population is smallpox. It is quite contagious, and quite deadly even amongst those descended from survivors. Among those whose ancestors had not encountered it, smallpox is more than terrifying. It was the secret weapon that accompanied Cortes into Mexico and which allowed him (with a couple of hundred men) to defeat the large and organized military Aztec empire. Even so, it didn't kill every one. Tuberculosis was also new to Native Americans, and has been especially deadly when it infects them. In fact, many generations later, it is still an acute infection in most American Indians instead of the chronic wasting disease it has been in most Old world descended people for the last few hundred years.
Other Answers:
Because in reality, they don't have enough to go around. The Tamiflu I mean..
Outbreak! There is an increasing possibility that the "bird flu" will mutate and be passed from one human to another which is a pandemic. As a healthcare worker, I am very concerned. There is not enough tamiflu available to treat all that will be affected and I wonder why when the government has had an advance warning. This is life threatening possibility for every American. Scary.
I have used natural anti-virals for years and I don't worry about the stinkin bird flu. Research colloidal silver,olive leaf extract,grapefruit seed extract,and oregano oil to name but a few and you will find that you can protect yourself without having big brother do it for you. Take charge of your health and you will never fear again.
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