Bird Flu : Hype Or Yipes!

[Egaladeist]

As an update to what could translate into a pandemic...

Amid mounting international concern over a potential human flu pandemic, a flurry of outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 bird flu were reported this week from Taiwan to Europe. There is some confusion over whether the virus has reached the European Union. But more worrying is evidence that it is still spreading in China, and the possibility that it could also reach Africa.

Fears that an apparent outbreak of bird flu on the Greek island of Oinousa was H5N1 have not been borne out by initial tests at the UK’s Veterinary Laboratories Agency, the EU reference lab for flu, in Surrey. “Initial tests are negative,” VLA spokesman Matt Conway told New Scientist, although he cautions this will take several days to confirm.

Worries that the virus had reached Macedonia were eased when a die-off of poultry turned out to be due to another virus, called Newcastle disease. But in Romania the virus has spread to wild ducks and swans near the Ukrainian border, it has been confirmed.

Meanwhile Russian scientists confirmed H5N1 in chickens in the Tula region, 200 kilometres south of Moscow – the first known outbreak in European Russia west of the Urals. Outbreaks continue east of the Urals, with H5N1 confirmed this week in two villages in Kurgan province, and suspected H5N1 in Novosibirsk and Altai

[foxyloxley]

A parrot that was in quarentine, has just been confirmed as dead from the avian flu.
Which means that it's in the UK now.........

it was in the papers, so it MUST be true ..........

Turkey , Greece and Romania also confirmed as having the latest 'doomsday bug'.......

[Relyt]

I don't know if this is real or not. It all sounds kinda fowl to me.

[|3lack|ce]

I vote hype. There are many, MANY other virii out there which are fatal and near epidemic proportions. Let's see...hrm. Last summer they found over 50 birds in my immediate area which carried West Nile, but a very few of them actually made the news, and usually in the blank space right before the weather (where they put their old news). AIDS is rampant, as is Hep C, and for that matter both viral and bacterial Menengitis. Wow. CDC's having a banner effing year ain't they?

It all boils down to: The media ran out of things to scare us with after Katrina/Rita.

[dalek]

Hhhmm that Parrot bit sounds familiar, I thought there was a similiar story from Bolton just the other day,Dead Parrot everything is running afoul nowadays, here in Canada this past summer we had to worry about stupid crows with the West Nile Virus, pretty soon it will be your budgies

[foxyloxley]

There are many, MANY other virii out there which are fatal and near epidemic proportions

all true ...........

but NOTHING spreads like the flu ..........
1918 after WWI, the flu pandemic then, killed more in a few months than was killed in the entire conflict, and that was before air travel, mass travel ................

[Egaladeist]

Latest...

Scientists try to identify bird flu strains found in Croatia, Sweden, Britain
08:40 PM EDT Oct 22

LONDON (AP) - Scientists were conducting tests Saturday to determine whether bird flu cases discovered in Britain, Sweden and Croatia are the lethal strain that has killed more than 60 people, as countries around the world scrambled to halt the spread of the virus.

Congo joined a growing list of African countries to ban imports of livestock and poultry from countries affected by bird flu and Russia recorded a new outbreak of the disease in a region of the Ural mountains.

In Croatia, the Agriculture Ministry said the country's first cases of avian flu were confirmed Friday in six swans found dead in a national park in the east of the country. British officials said a parrot from the South American country Suriname had died of the disease while in quarantine. It was Britain's first confirmed case of bird flu since 1992.

In both cases, tests were underway at a British lab to determine whether the birds had the deadly H5N1 strain, which has devastated poultry stocks across Asia and killed 61 people in the last two years. The strain has recently been found in birds in Russia, Turkey and Romania.

Sweden's National Veterinary Institute said late Saturday a case of bird flu had been confirmed in one of four ducks found dead on Friday in Eskilstuna, about 100 kilometres west of the capital Stockholm. Officials said it would take days to determine whether it was the H5N1 strain.

H5N1 is easily transmitted between birds but is hard for humans to contract. Experts are closely watching the disease, however, for fear it could mutate into a form easily transmitted between humans and cause a pandemic that could kill millions.

Fears of human-to-human transmission were allayed in Thailand, where health officials announced Saturday a father and son infected with bird flu did not transmit the virus to each other, as had been feared.

Dr. Thawat Suntrajarn, director-general of the Department of Communicable Disease Control, said the 48-year-old father and his seven-year-old son became ill after handling their neighbour's sick chickens. The father died; the son is recovering.

In Croatia, Minister of Agriculture Petar Cobankovic said "there is no room for panic" in the wake of the country confirming its first cases of bird flu, in wild migratory swans.

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/051022/w102278.html
Bird-Flu-World

More than 30,000 people could die in the next influenza pandemic if it is as serious as the 1918 Spanish flu, the Ministry of Health says.

The figure is contained in planning documents published yesterday which also warn oil companies to beef up security to protect against social unrest during a pandemic and suggest the health sector will not be able to cope.

The grim forecast comes as Europe rushes to contain the bird flu virus, fearing it could mutate and trigger a pandemic. Scientists also are working on creating an urgent vaccine for humans.

The European Union has begun an exercise to test countries' readiness to deal with a health crisis which could arise if the disease mutates and spreads among humans.

The New Zealand Health Ministry figure for potential fatalities would make it the country's worst health crisis.

Previously published scenarios for a flu pandemic were based on the 1968 outbreak and suggested that between 1600 and 3700 could die.

Health officials were careful to say the new figure was not the ministry's projection or prediction. It was simply a mathematical model, in which New Zealand's experience of the 1918-1919 global outbreak was applied to the present population.

The 1918 pandemic infected 40 per cent of people in New Zealand, of whom 2 per cent died. More than 8000 died and about 40 million to 50 million worldwide.
Based on New Zealand's population of 4,107,159, the 1918 figures translate to 1.64 million becoming ill and 32,857 dying.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/s...ectID=10351317
Ministry warns NZ of possible bird flu pandemic - 21 Oct 2005 - Health & Fitness

[{KS}]

There was a thing about this in the news here in Aus, apparently some pigeons that were in quarantine, and one of them turned up positive for this virus, and now the Aus Government is planning on stopping all birds from being sent/recieved from other places.
So to me it's sounding really serious and i'm concerned because i work at a chicken farm so i'm debating on wether or not i should quit that job and gain employement somewhere else where i'm not dealing with bird products..

{KS}

[Negative]

{KS} > Do they have large tallons?

[!mitationRust]

Hype, considering that all our current strains I believe have derived from avian flu.