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Bird Flu

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The Wrath

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I like this table showing cases of bird flu worldwide, from Wikipedia:

Confirmed human cases and mortality rate of avian influenza (H5N1)

As of May 12, 2006

Country Report dates edit this table

Total

2003 2004 2005 2006
cases deaths cases deaths cases deaths cases deaths cases deaths
22px-Flag_of_Azerbaijan.svg.png Azerbaijan 8 5 63% 8 5 63%
22px-Flag_of_Cambodia.svg.png Cambodia 4 4 100% 2 2 100% 6 6 100%
20px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png People's Republic of China 8 5 63% 10 7 70% 18 12 67%
22px-Flag_of_Djibouti.svg.png Djibouti 1 0 0% 1 0 0%
22px-Flag_of_Egypt.svg.png Egypt 13 5 38% 13 5 38%
22px-Flag_of_Indonesia.svg.png Indonesia 17 11 65% 16 14 88% 33 25 76%
22px-Flag_of_Iraq.svg.png Iraq 2 2 100% 2 2 100%
22px-Flag_of_Thailand.svg.png Thailand 17 12 71% 5 2 40% 22 14 64%
22px-Flag_of_Turkey.svg.png Turkey 12 4 33% 12 4 33%
22px-Flag_of_Vietnam.svg.png Vietnam 3 3 100% 29 20 69% 61 19 31% 93 42 45%
Total 3 3 100% 46 32 70% 95 41 43% 64 39 61% 208 115 55%
Source World Health Organization (WHO) :

Communicable Disease Surveillance & Response (CSR).

It shows not a single case in a significantly medically developed country, and the death rates (%) are lowest in countries like Egypt and Turkey with (relatively) higher levels of medical technology.

I'm not afraid of bird flu.

As to public fervor increasing research, I don't think so. With all the public and governmental screaming about bird flu, I wouldn't be surprised if the gov't ended up a) delaying any vaccine that might be developed in order to ensure its efficacy, thereby allowing millions to get sick, or B) rushing vaccine development and approval, using taxes to distribute it, and having it turn out to be ineffectual, thereby allowing millions to get sick. I think public fervor will only have negative effects.

When people say "but it kills 50% of those who catch it," I point at the chart above.

-Q

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  • 1 year later...

An article on BBC (Jan 4, 2008) says that a company is experimenting with a flu vaccine that would be different from the annual ones prevalent today.

Current flu vaccines work by giving immunity to two proteins ... on the surface of flu viruses.However, these proteins keep mutating which means doctors have to keep making new vaccines to keep up.

The Acambis vaccine homes in on a different protein, ... does not mutate.

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  • 1 month later...
SARS. I think that if something starts wiping out a couple thousand people, the world will take notice. Look at how much we concentrate on when the first West Nile bird death is every year.

The regular "every day" flu kills more than 40,000 people in the US every year.

Compare that to deaths by terrorists, west nile, the Iraq and Vietnam wars, etc, and it's easy to see where the real threats to American health and well being are coming from.

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