April 14 Flu Update
Cooperation between the US and Indonesia is stressed.Revere blogs the Leavitt visit to Indonesia, wishing the US had some higher moral ground to stand on.
Indonesia has taken a terribly wrong course here. But no member of the Bush administration has the right to lecture them on it. Maybe Leavitt should rephrase his question in this way: "Once a country decides to act unilaterally just because it thinks it serves its own interests, where will it all end?"
A library of bird flu antibodies has been created, which could be a great help in fighting the disease.
Interesting article....after two years, poultry industry in Egypt is recovering.
CIDRAP on outbreaks in S. Korea and Russia.
Irish bird flu emergency centre opens.
posted by Orange @ 8:48 AM
1 Comments:
Orange;
Revere sets forth a compelling and convincing argument about the Michael Leavitt visit to Indonesia, and does an excellent job highlighting the controversies surrounding US tacit support “big Pharma” and both our countries acting “unilaterally predicated on our own self interests”. In fact, you also captured the essence of the situation equally as well, by your words, “wishing the US had some higher moral ground to stand on”. Unfortunately, we in the US do not have the high moral ground at the moment, because of our actions regarding Iraq. In my view, Revere has executed excellent logic in this instance: Indonesia’s actions of withholding virus strains is reprehensible and endangers the whole world, but our continued military action and occupation in Iraq as “liberator’s”, are equally as ridiculous and unsupportable.
Another brief comment or observation I would like to make about your articles today, is that it appears that more and more countries like Egypt and South Korea, are beginning to become dependent on warmer weather or summer, for the virus to abate or “die off”. I think this is a very dangerous assumption, especially as the speculation is that the virus now appears to mutating sufficiently to adjust to warmer temperatures in regions of the world. Similarly, the optimistic article from Egypt indicates that their poultry industry is “recovering” – I think a little optimism is good for the soul, however I wouldn’t bet the ranch on local poultry businesses in these countries ever returning to normal conditions as long as the H5N1 virus is around and there are chickens and ducks in backyards being raised.
I have a feeling that this virus has some real surprises in store. Its behavior is completely unpredictable and for the most part, undetectable until after-the-fact. I predicted at the start of this year that pre-pandemic inoculations would commence sometime in 2008 by certain western nations… looks like I will only be a few months off target.
Wulfgang
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