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Recently, Bird 'Flu, a strain of influenza more correctly known as H5N1 has been in the news. There are a number of reasons why it is reported so breathlessly, by the news media. Not least of those reasons is the extraordinarily high lethality rates of this strain.
In fact, at mortality rates in
excess of 50% it is far more deadly than that other dreaded scourge, smallpox.
Anyway, the idea is relatively simple: Provide migratory birds with resting places that are essentially great big bird traps, where they can be innoculated and released, to maintain populations but render them incapable of transmitting the disease to other birds or to humans.
The innoculation of a large proportion of those populations of birds (you don't have to get all of them, just a substantial percentage) will retard transmission rates enough to give us a headstart on it.
The alternative, if this one gets away, could be a complete fizzer or it could result in as many as 2.6 billion human fatalities, in a worst case situation.
CNN article
http://edition.cnn....ent.reut/index.html
[UnaBubba, Feb 24 2006]
[link]
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Pitch the idea to PETA, they will care more about innoculating the birds for their safety than for humanity's sake. |
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You're probably right. I guess that most of the Western world isn't really susceptible to bird migrations from Asia, in the same way as Australia. |
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Sounds good in theory, but the trick would be to get those migratory birds to cooperate and fly to the traps. |
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But if there were a vaccine, wouldn't it be easier to innoculate the people? |
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H5N1 has reached Turkey and Russia, probably via migratory birds (Geese), so we have the same problems in Europe. |
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The main problem is that these birds do not stop on migration, so providing perch-traps will not work. |
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Is H5N1 the evil twin of R2D2?? |
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"at mortality rates in excess of 50%" - actually, no. It's at mortality rates in excess of 50% for those who got really, really sick. But the cases have primarily been in rural areas with few doctors, and it is now becoming clear that most people who got the virus either didn't get sick or shrugged it off as another winter cold. |
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So the mortality rate is much more like a regular flu, the rate of transmission to humans is much lower, and human-to-human transmission appears almost neglible. So this is clearly not the pandemic we all have to worry about. |
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[Of course, it might mutate, but that possibility exists with all the other flus out there.] |
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That said, flu continues to kill way more people than AIDS (in the States, at least, can't find any other statistics). |
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But inoculating wild birds is not the best answer - people really don't have much contact with them. The problem arises when farm animals, which people do have a lot of contact with, come into contact with wild birds. So it is simpler just to inoculate the farm populations. And wise, too, since farm birds have a much lower resistance to these viruses than wild ones. But it remains a costly endeavor, which is why most countries aren't doing it systematically. |
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P.S. The chances of this bird flu spreading to the States seem low in any case: the areas American birds share with Asian birds have low bird densities, which make it less likely the virus will jump across the species involved. And yes, I realize this doesn't help you in the slightest. |
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If bird flu makes it over there to America, it might mutate into the San Andreas fault. Then you'll be laughing on the other foot. |
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//essentially great big bird traps// - so big bird has the
flu now.... |
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bring on that bird flu I say - too many people in the world
(excluding me of course) |
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//"at mortality rates in excess of 50%" - actually, no. It's at mortality rates in excess of 50% for those who got really, really sick.// |
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Oh? Perhaps you could discuss that with my friend Carl, who is working on the intervention programs for the CDC? |
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I wonder if inoculating the birds themselves wouldn't cause the disease to mutate sooner into an even deadlier strain. |
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It's possible. I know they've been innoculating millions of chickens, in China. |
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It's touching that a 157,000 pound lesbian whale would even care about human or avian matters. <sniff> |
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I strongly suspect that the world is going to do nothing substantial until H5N1 mutates to spread human-to-human, at which time it won't make any difference about bird-to-bird vectors. |
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Isn't it always the way, [sophocles]. Saaayyy, can anyone smell boiling frog? |
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//Provide migratory birds with resting places that are essentially great big bird traps, where they can be innoculated//
I believe that such a place already exists. Every year, round about migration time, millions of birds find themselves trapped in Italy, where they are nearly all subject to immediate innoculation with lethal doses of lead shot. Whilst Italy still stands, Western Europe is safe! |
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//mortality rates in excess of 50%//
//it could result in as many as 2.6 billion human fatalities// |
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Hmmmm. Your fractions are off. 2.6 bil is less than 50% of human population. |
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Is it such a bad thing that half of the population is killed off? Obviously we could get into a ' You wouldn't like it if...' type scenario here. But is this all part of the Earths self-regulation process? Should we mess with it? Should we cure all the diseases and then ask for volunteers to die? |
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Not everyone will contract it, [DF]. The lucky ones will get the antivirals before they come into contact with the bug. |
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Revenge Of The Dinosaurs... |
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