ON VACATION
The Coming Influenza Pandemic will on on hiatus until August 14, 2005. Look forward to being back with you then....
posted by Orange @ 6:07 AM
Friday, August 05, 2005
The Coming Influenza Pandemic will on on hiatus until August 14, 2005. Look forward to being back with you then....
The Coming Influenza Pandemic?
Is a global influenza pandemic on the way that could kill millions of people? Are we going to relive the horror of 1918? If it happens, are we even remotely prepared to save ourselves? Scientists from around the world are concerned about bird flu...since 2004 our site has tracked news of H5N1 influenza from around the world.
Read the Most Influential Pandemic Book Ever Written
Bird Flu Death Toll
243
Technorati Bird Flu hits per day for the last 30 days.Get your own chart!
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Previous Posts
- August 4 Flu Update
- August 3 Flu Update
- August 2 Flu Update
- August 1
- July 31 Flu Update
- July 30 Flu Update--this is a big news day.
- July 29 Flu Update
- July 28 Flu Update
- July 27 Flu Update
- July 26 Flu Update
Links
- FluWiki online.
- Wikipedia on Influenza
- CDC Flu Page
- WHO Flu Page
- CDC Avian Influenza
- New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell on the search for the flu in permafrost
- New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell on Flu as our most deadly contagion
- The Planning and Politics behind the flu from Greenhammer
- Preparing for the Next Pandemic
- Michael T. Osterholm, Ph.D., M.P.H.
- New England Journal of Medicine, May 5, 2005
- Is there anything we can do to avoid this course? The answer is a qualified yes that depends on how everyone, from world leaders to local elected officials, decides to respond. We need bold and timely leadership at the highest levels of the governments in the developed world; these governments must recognize the economic, security, and health threats posed by the next influenza pandemic and invest accordingly. The resources needed must be considered in the light of the eventual costs of failing to invest in such an effort. The loss of human life even in a mild pandemic will be devastating, and the cost of a world economy in shambles for several years can only be imagined.
- ABC Primetime, September 2005
- "Right now in human beings, it kills 55 percent of the people it infects," says Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow on global health policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. "That makes it the most lethal flu we know of that has ever been on planet Earth affecting human beings."
- Dr. Robert Webster
- Society just can't accept the idea that 50 percent of the population could die. And I think we have to face that possibility," Webster said. "I'm sorry if I'm making people a little frightened, but I feel it's my role.
- Dr. Robert Fedson
- "There is nothing in Darwinian evolution that says that our DNA has to survive compared to say the DNA of an earthworm. I mean Darwinian evolution is completely indifferent to which DNA happens to persist. We are not necessarily unique as a species as far as evolution is concerned and we can disappear like other species have already disappeared."
16 Comments:
Vacation, just when things are heating up in the world! Lucky you, hope you have a great time and stay safe.
Vacation. Or have you run for the hills?
Stephanie---thanks, will do.
Anonymous--No, not yet :0
Now's a fine time for a vacation. Once the avian flu starts leaping around, travel restrictions might prevent all but local excursions.
Orange, here's my wish that you'll have a safe, happy and relaxing time away.
BTW see my blog for some praise for you!
Have a good one, stay away from sick animals and stray bird droppings, take mask(s) & gloves & a
thermometer. A hut on the Huron could be good quarantine.Your efforts on this blog entitle you to a rest ... who knows what is around the corner ?
I hope you see fit to make it a "working vacation" on at least a couple of days.
Saw on the news that scientists have made a vaccine for the bird flu now :)
Looks like we may have been over worried for nothing.
Worried for nothing? Maybe not. I suggest you read " Bird flu vaccine? Taking the (very) long view" at http://effectmeasure.blogspot.com/. It is a great breakdown on the all the basic questions we all should have about the vaccine. I then suggest you have a little visit at Henry Niman's site for his input on vaccine topic at http://www.recombinomics.com/News/08060504/H5N1_Vaccine_Evolution.htm. True critical thinking usually requires more than one source.
I also heard from many credible sources that we now have a vaccine which they are going to mass produce as of now. This does mean the risk of the flu has gone down a considerable amount doesn't it?.
Matt
Matt, have you read the two items daviddonovan suggested?
Interesting read there. I guess it isn't as easy as I thought it was to come up with an effective vaccine. At least people seem to be taking the bird flu seriously now.
When I mentioned
bird flu at the local pool the attendant stiffened and asked me - from memory -
"Is it the The Final Coming ?" [aka the End Times of Christian Reconstructionism].
I could not answer.
For those fundamentalists who ask 'is it the final coming', tell them 'well, the virus would have to *evolve* to cause a pandemic in humans.'
Maybe you can get their heads to explode.
I really didn't want to hurt her feelings.
But you are right, it
is ironic that the
President is pushing
'intelligent design'
at this time. What
does this argument make of the prospect
of a 1918-like pandemic ? Biowarfare ? By whom ? Implying
what course of action ?
Hey, guys, we're back. Thanks for the good wishes and for keeping the activity going here. The blog will be updated later tonight. We had a good and restful time, and its good to be home again. Nature is a wonderous thing, is it not?, even when it scares us.
Read Guns, Germs and Steel while I was gone. There is a nice section on "germs" which includes the flu. I try to be a tolerant person, but upon reading this book, anyone who should know better and refuses to admit that evolution and natural selection are the driving forces of life is beneath contempt. If they are merely ignorant, than so be it.
While I was gone, we only had dial-up access, so no updating was possible. I was taken by the reaction to the vaccine. The MSM seems to always put things in the most positive light, and the blogosphere seems to apply maximum skepticism. Somewhere in between, I hope the truth lies.
But believing in cures that aren't real is often more dangerous than the disease was in the first place.
Finally, I'll be watching with interest what the readction of the Fox News crowd is to mass immunization. My bet is we couldn't get it done even if we had a vaccine. Its natural selection of its own kind.
Welcome back. I hope you had a wonderful time.
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