Since December 2003, the H5N1 bird flu virus has infected some 120 people either by repeated close contact with fowl or after eating half-cooked chicken products. In not a single case has human-to-human transfer been confirmed. So long as that remains the case, there is no bird flu threat to the human population yet the Western media is spinning a scare as horrible as the flu pandemic of 1918 that claimed millions of lives.
1918 was a year when World War I was fought largely in trenches, and they were the most unhygienic of human habitats. When the units were not fighting, they were living in military barracks which were no better than the trenches. Since they were not in the best of their health they were constantly exposed to airborne diseases and susceptible to dying of flu. Half of American troops who died in the World War I did not fell at the front, but were culled by the flu. Frequent movement of military units from one front to the other and from one country to the other, the flu in 1918 broke into the civilian populations the world over. In 2005, there is war in Iraq and Afghanistan
The health and nutrition levels have radically changed in the past 80 years. Simply, the healthier a person is going into a sickness, the better his or her chances are of emerging from it. Indeed, a huge consideration in any modern-day pandemic is availability of and access to medical care. Poorer people tend to live in closer quarters and are more likely to have occupations (military, services, construction, etc.) in which they regularly encounter large numbers of people. According to a 1931 study of the 1918 flu pandemic, the poor were about 20 to 30 percent more likely to contract the flu, and overall mortality rates of the "well-to-do" were less than half that of the "poor" and "very poor."
The 1918 pandemic virus was similar to the more standard influenza virus in that the majority of those who perished died not from the primary attack of the flu but from secondary infections that triggered pneumonia. While antibiotics are useless against viruses, they raise the simple possibility of stemming bacterial or fungal infections. Penicillin was the first commercialized antibiotic and it was discovered in 1929, 11years after the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.
Comparison of Bird Flu “pandemic” with the Spanish flu of 1918 which claimed millions of lives evokes images of mayhem in the cities and indeed end of time as some claim this pandemic to be part of. The right comparison would be the “Y2K” that sacred computer users including multinationals to spend billions of dollars into finding a solution to the bug which never happened. If one understands the principle of seeking funds which is: convince potential donors how bad things could get and scare them into finding a solution, the picture becomes clear that fund-seekers are using fear only to evoke interest and action!
There’s no backing away from the fact that more research is needed into finding a cure for highly mutable viral infections. The best the world has is Tamiflu. But will the end of time come through Bird Flu? Certainly not. There is no reason to fear a worldwide flu pandemic this winter as there is no way to predict when a bird virus will break into the human population. There is no scientifically plausible reason to expect such a crossover to be imminent.
A total of 120 people catching the flu over a period of three years does not really qualify the trumpeted Bird Flu to qualify for a human pandemic. The first-ever human case of H5N1, by the way, was not in 2003 but in 1997. There is nothing new in this year's bird flu. So, as long as the virus stays in birds and does not leap into humans, its chance of bringing about a pandemic is as bright as the chance of a meteor striking the earth.
Leony Li
By
Published: 2011-09-02T13:14:00-07:00
One Flu Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
By
Published: 2011-09-02T13:14:00-07:00
One Flu Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
