H5N1 - 'The Worst Flu I've Ever Seen'

[CVX]

From WakeUp2005

The vicious avian flu that has killed dozens of people in Vietnam, Thailand, and elsewhere in the region "has caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of animals in nearly a dozen Asian countries" in the past two years and could kill millions of people if it becomes capable of spreading efficiently among humans, Michael Specter reports in "Nature's Bioterrorist" (p.50), in the February 28, 2005, issue of The New Yorker.



"No such virus has ever spread so quickly over such a wide geographical area," Specter notes, and, unlike most viruses, "this one has already affected a more diverse group than any other type of flu, and it has killed many animals previously thought to be resistant." One farmer whose chickens were killed by the virus says, "It's damn hard to watch. One day, they're all alive and healthy-the vets were here the week before to check them-and the next day they're dying by the thousand. It happened so quickly. They started shivering, thousands of them at once. And then they started to fall. Every one of them. They just fell over, dead." Scott Dowell, the director of the Centers for Disease Control's Thailand office, tells Specter, "The world just has no idea what it's going to see if this thing comes. When, really. It's when. I don't think we can afford the luxury of the word 'if' anymore.... The clock is ticking. We just don't know what time it is."



Robert Webster, a virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, in Memphis, who has been studying avian influenza for decades, is even more stark. "This is the worst flu virus I have ever seen or worked with or read about," he says. "We have to prepare as if we were going to war - and the public needs to understand that clearly. This virus is playing its role as a natural bioterrorist. The politicians are going to say Chicken Little is at it again. And, if I'm wrong, then thank God. But if it does happen, and I fully expect that it will, there will be no place for any of us to hide. Not in the United States or in Europe or in a bunker somewhere. The virus is a very promiscuous and effective killer."

[capt_buzzard]

And the major environmental changes throughout the world are bringing about new infectious diseases and causing a rise in previously suppressed ones, the United Nations Enveronment Program (Unep) reported yesterday.

Loss of forests, road and dam building, the spread of cities, clearing of natural habitats for agriculture, mining and pollution of coastal waters are promoting conditions under which new and old pathogens can thrive.

Ailments previously unknown in human beings are appearing, such as the highly infectious Nipah virus which until recently was found normally in Asian fruit flies.



Climate change may increase the number of enveronmental refugees who are found to migrate to other communities, even countries.