March 8 Flu Update
Food sales in Bangladesh are down....as people avoid poultry.An Egyptian boy now has H5N1.
ProMed has this story as well.
ProMed also has avian outbreaks in Vietnam and Hong Kong.
posted by Orange @ 11:10 AM
Sunday, March 09, 2008
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!
View blog reactions
Previous Posts
- March 7 Flu Update
- March 6 Flu Update
- Not today.....
- March 4 Flu Update
- March 3 Flu Update
- March 2 Flu Update
- March 1 Flu Update
- February 29 Leap Day Flu Update
- February 28 Flu Update
- No Update Today
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."
1 Comments:
Orange;
News about bird flu is scarce these days, but your first article out of Bangladesh about the “the bad days for fast food shops in the city”, jolted my memory about a significant bit of news I read last week on the business wires.
I think if the experts are correct, bird flu infested countries like Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, China, Pakistan and Egypt, are going to face another gigantic problem in the near future: famine. Whether or not to buy a beef or fish burger at their favorite fast food restaurants, won’t be in the bag of solutions. It could be a far worse situation than infected chicken and cooking them at over 70 degrees Celsius.
The world could literally run out of basic food. The following article appeared last week on the business site of MSN, a very well respected international news source for investors and financial types. My guess is that it has been viewed by several million people world wide:
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/SuperModels/CouldWeReallyRunOutOfFood.aspx
I have written several times over the last few months that many, if not all, of these H5N1 endemic countries could be living on the cusp of starvation, especially as they lose one of their primary protein sources, and they haven’t recognized it yet.
I am not an overly religious person, but it seems to me the Bible says something in Revelations about “famine and pestilence”.
(Maybe laying in a 3-6 month supply of food and necessities isn't such a bad idea after all.
Wulfgang
Post a Comment
<< Home