Avian flu: hype, or imminent collapse?

[Antiochus Epiphanes]

admin says 2 million dead in USA possible. that's something to think about folks. place your sell orders, the market will tank if it gets anywhere near that much.

Officials race to head off a bird flu pandemic By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY
Tue Oct 11, 7:05 AM ET



Health officials from all over the world are scrambling to figure out how to ward off a global outbreak of deadly flu. President Bush, fresh from reading a 546-page tome on his vacation about the 1918 "Spanish flu" outbreak, has been consulting with the heads of vaccine companies, and he warns that the military might be used to enforce quarantines. His administration's flu battle plan reportedly predicts that almost 2 million Americans could die in a major outbreak. (Related: Tracking a deadly virus)


The dire projections are prompting new anxiety among Americans already reeling from hurricane disasters. But the experts have been warning for years about a possible flu pandemic. Why suddenly are all the government's alarm bells going off? Are there real reasons to be frightened now? And if there is a flu pandemic, how bad could it be?


Two recent, unrelated events have put the possibility of a flu pandemic into sharp focus:


• An avian flu that had largely been confined to Southeast Asia has spread to Europe and Turkey.


• Two back-to-back hurricanes in the Gulf demonstrated nature's potential for devastation.


Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt was visiting hurricane emergency shelters after Katrina and Rita when it hit him just how bad a flu pandemic could be. "What if it weren't just New Orleans" struck by catastrophe, Leavitt recalls thinking. "What if it were Seattle, San Diego, Corpus Christi, Denver, Chicago, New York? Make your own list."


Unlike a hurricane that's confined to a specific area over a short time, a pandemic flu strikes everywhere and can last a year or more, says Leavitt, who left Saturday on a fact-finding trip to flu-stricken regions of Southeast Asia. Waves of illness would shutter schools and businesses, swamp hospitals and send tens of thousands to overflow medical shelters and early graves.


"The big lesson I learned from Hurricane Katrina is that we have to be thinking about the unthinkable," Leavitt says, "because sometimes the unthinkable happens."


The unthinkable has become all too real in Vietnam, Thailand and other Asian countries where an especially deadly flu virus, influenza A/H5N1, has been spreading through millions of birds for the past two years. The virus recently has shown up in birds in Romania, Russia and Turkey.


So far, the virus has infected 117 people, killing 60, a death rate of nearly 50%. Most people have been infected through close contact with infected poultry. In rare cases, the virus is believed to have spread among family members through close contact. If the virus learns to spread readily from person to person through the air, it could cause a pandemic that rivals the worst.


No one can predict when a killer flu will strike, how bad it will be or even whether the virus will sustain its virulence after it begins to spread widely among humans. "It's clear the warning signs are troubling, but there is no certainty," Leavitt says.


The 'ugly truth'


Health experts agree that a pandemic is inevitable sometime, that the best defense is preparedness and that the world isn't ready. Katrina laid bare America's inability to deal with a massive emergency.


"We're not prepared. It's the ugly truth," says Shelley Hearne, executive director of Trust for America's Health, a non-profit public health advocacy group. "If our emergency response failed so badly for a Category 5 hurricane, imagine what would happen if a Category 5 viral storm hit every state."


Among other things, she says, there is no human vaccine against the avian flu virus, the U.S. government has stockpiled enough anti-viral drugs to treat only 1% of the population, and the hospital system couldn't handle the overload if flu victims flooded emergency rooms.


Health experts such as Hearne have been sounding the alarm about a possible flu pandemic for at least two years, but their cries went largely unheeded until now.


Katrina hit just days after Bush finished John M. Barry's The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History during his August vacation on his ranch, White House spokesman Scott McClellan says.


Apparently motivated by the frightening tale of the 1918 epidemic, which killed an estimated 150,000 people in the USA and 50 million worldwide, Bush said last week that the military might be needed to enforce quarantines.

Michael Stebbins of the Federation of American Scientists and others challenged the suggestion as unworkable. "It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of public health emergencies," he says. "I would be fascinated to see whether the president has a plan to quarantine a city like Washington, D.C., New York or Boston with so many roads in or out. Is he going to send in tanks and armed men?"

Assistant Secretary of Defense William Winkenwirder declined to comment on the president's statement but said the military is often called upon for logistical and medical support in emergencies.

Scientific reports released on the heels of Bush's statement increased the nation's anxiety. In one, Jeffery Taubenberger of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and his team said in the journal Nature that the 1918 pandemic began when the virus leapt from birds to humans, a scenario that mirrors what is happening in Asia today.

In a bid to contain the current epidemic, officials in Southeast Asia have slaughtered 140 million birds. That has not stopped the virus from spreading.

Bush met last week with the chief executives of four vaccine companies to determine how he can help them boost production enough to safeguard the population. The State Department on Friday convened a meeting of health officials from 80 countries to map out plans to arrest the flu's spread.

The administration's plan

The administration is putting the finishing touches on its long-awaited pandemic plan to be released after Leavitt returns from his trip. A draft version, dated Sept. 30 and leaked to The New York Times, reportedly predicts a major outbreak might kill up to 1.9 million people and make half the country sick.

Sen. Tom Harkin (news, bio, voting record), D-Iowa, says he learned of the administration's prediction on Sept. 28 in a top-secret meeting in a secure room in the Capitol. He and a few other senators met with Leavitt; Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; and Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The administration, Harkin says, predicts U.S. deaths from pandemic flu could range from 100,000 to 2 million, and as many as 10 million might be hospitalized. Up to 100 million might become sick. Seasonal flu epidemics kill about 36,000 people each year in the USA.

The briefing prompted Harkin to push for $4 billion in supplemental funds. "We saw what happened when you're not prepared," he says. The money will bolster surveillance, increase stockpiles of anti-virals, increase the vaccine supply, and help state and local health officials prepare for epidemics.

Fauci says the scary statistics resonate at the White House: "The president has taken a strong personal interest in getting this country prepared for pandemic flu."

Soon after he gets back from Asia on Oct. 18, Leavitt will unveil the administration's pandemic plan. He offered few details, but he sketched out the administration's aims:

•Improving the global network to detect disease outbreaks. The United States is working with China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and others to strengthen surveillance.

•Heightening vigilance at home. Among other things, CDC is sending avian flu test kits to a network of labs.

•Stockpiling anti-viral medications. Leavitt has entered into negotiations with companies that make anti-virals, seeking enough to treat 20 million people.

•Increasing vaccine capacity. The United States wants to rebuild the vaccine market to give drug makers appropriate incentives to end shortages.

"A major part of our domestic plan needs to be domestic capacity, because in a pandemic, the emergency will be managed across the globe," Leavitt says. "Anyone with a supply produced in their country will want to keep it there."

Vaccines are less profitable than drugs, and drug makers worry about liability issues, such as those that arose when swine flu vaccine, produced in 1976 to avert an epidemic that never materialized, caused a nerve disease. The administration seeks to solve both problems by providing vaccine makers with a stable market and protection against lawsuits.

Hearne says health officials hope the administration's plan will be enough to deal with a flu pandemic. "The reality is that if a pandemic hits, it's not just a health emergency," she says. "It's the big one. It requires big thinking to make sure all those dots are connected. Katrina was a wake-up call."

[janewhite88]

Gee, why do I feel like this is the latest biggest distraction the jews have going on us. I have seen a lot of time given to this subject. Every year the hype gets worse. Someone is making money with all this stockpiling. Um, when Bush is in office, a lot of money is made for the pharmaceutical companies. Bush family very involved in this business.
The function of the pres and the government these days is only to serve ZOG and make money for their friends.

just my two cents....

[Antiochus Epiphanes]

I dont think this is a distraction. I think it's for real. I had kin who croaked in the 1918 flu. This could be for real.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051012/...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl

No quick fix for bird flu, experts caution By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
2 hours, 9 minutes ago

If vaccines and drugs are available too late to stop bird flu, then what can be done to battle H5N1 avian influenza if it spreads to people? Not a lot, experts say.
If a pandemic emerges in the coming year, there will not be enough supplies of drugs or vaccines to stop it and basic medical equipment that could slow its spread is also lacking.
World leaders have been stepping up their efforts to battle avian influenza in recent weeks, holding meetings, making international visits and ordering vaccines and drugs.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt and a contingent of U.S. and World Health Organization flu experts are visiting affected southeast Asian nations this week and diplomats are working to make better alliances for sharing information quickly about any human outbreaks.
But many experts agree that little real progress has been made in stopping the spread of H5N1 bird flu.
"To believe that you can contain this locally is to believe in fairy tales," said Mike Osterholm, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Minnesota who has advised the U.S. government on avian flu and warned of the danger of a flu pandemic for years.
World Health Organization officials say many countries still seem to be reluctant to share information and to ask for help if the pandemic begins within their borders.
Dr. Margaret Chan, the WHO's assistant director-general for communicable diseases, told Britain's Times newspaper that cooperation had worsened since the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, which killed about 800 people before it was contained.
"That was a time when we were really working together as an international community of academics, politicians, public health experts. Everybody really was so focused," the newspaper quoted Chan as saying.
NOT SCARY ENOUGH YET
"Everybody was trying to do his or her best to contain the spread of this disease. The thing with avian flu is we are not yet in a pandemic."
The H5N1 bird flu virus has killed at least 65 people in four Asian nations since late 2003, and has killed or forced the destruction of tens of millions of chickens, ducks and geese.
Experts say it is mutating steadily and fear it will eventually acquire the changes it needs to spread easily from person to person. If it did, it could sweep around the world in months or even weeks and could kill millions of people.
Even in advanced nations like the United States, little has been done to help provide even basic care for pandemic flu patients, the American College of Emergency Physicians said.
"Many hospital emergency departments in this country are operating at, or over current capacity," said ACEP president Dr. Rick Blum.
"We as a nation, have poured millions of dollars into preparedness, but virtually none of that has gone to the one place that is the true first response to something like a flu epidemic, or a hurricane, or a terrorist attack -- the nation's emergency departments."
And even if the drugs and vaccines were in place, it would take immediate detection of a mutated virus in a group of people and immediate action to contain it.
That would mean having diagnostic tests and experts on hand in rural and remote parts of Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia and other countries to immediately test patients with flu-like symptoms and then isolate and treat them and their families.
"If you can't do it with the speed of a smoke alarm and a fire truck, you don't have a chance in hell of stopping this," Osterholm said in a telephone interview.
Animal experts say good hygiene could help contain H5N1 before it spreads to people.
Measures would include penning in ducks and chickens, who often wander freely on Asian farms, allowing the spread of virus from animal to animal and perhaps allowing it to spread in droppings.
Leavitt inspected a Thai farm on Tuesday where a shoe bath, disinfectant room and plastic netting had been installed. But few farms have such equipment, said Alejandro Thiermann, President of the International Animal Health Code at the Paris-based animal health body OIE.
"There is much talk about humans but not about birds," Thiermann said, echoing complaints from other U.S. experts.

[Antiochus Epiphanes]

Keep reading VNN. If this breaks out in the USA we will track it. If it mutates to airborne transmission it will spread like wildfire and we're talking a 50% casualty rate. That means that if you're in a big shitty and it breaks out, you'd better seriously consider keeping kids home from school for a few days. Or maybe taking a short vacation to your cabin. You get the idea. Tons of survivalists in WN, I dont need to point out the obvious.

[Antiochus Epiphanes]

Here's one I just dug out from couple months ago

Britain's elite get pills to survive bird flu
Sarah-Kate Templeton and Jonathan Calvert

MEMBERS of Britain’s elite have been selected as priority cases to receive scarce pills and vaccinations at the taxpayers’ expense if the country is hit by a deadly bird flu outbreak.
Workers at the BBC and prominent politicians — such as cabinet ministers — would be offered protection from the virus.

Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, has already spent £1m to make sure his personal office and employees have their own emergency supplies of 100,000 antiviral tablets.

If there is an avian flu pandemic in the coming months there would be enough drugs to protect less than 2% of the British population for a week.

The Department of Health has drawn up a priority list of those who would be first to receive lifesaving drugs. Top of the list are health workers followed by those in key public sector jobs.

Although senior government ministers would be among the high-priority cases, the department said this weekend that it had not decided whether to include opposition politicians.

BBC employees would be protected because the corporation is required to broadcast vital information during a national disaster.

Politicians and the media have been placed before sick patients, heavily pregnant women and elderly people by government planners.

Yesterday, leading BBC presenters were surprised to learn that they would be given preferential treatment. Jeff Randall, the BBC’s business editor, said: “Are you really telling me that I am on a priority list for bird flu jabs? Marvellous. I always knew there would be an advantage from working at the BBC.”

John Humphrys, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, said: “I think if I were offered the jab I would probably pass it on to someone 40 years younger than me.”

Nick Clarke, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s World at One, said: “I’m sure I wouldn’t qualify. My programme has news and comment and the one thing you can do without in a pandemic is comment . . . They would want to have Huw Edwards and reassuring newsreaders on radio.”

Fears that a “doomsday” virus may sweep the world have been heightened by the recent spread of the lethal strain of avian flu, H5N1. The death toll, estimated at 120, has been of people whose work brought them into close contact with infected birds. Scientists have warned that millions could die if H5N1 mutates.

The Department of Health would not currently be able to cope with such an onslaught. Although it has ordered 14.6m doses of Tamiflu, an antiviral drug thought to be effective against the H5N1 strain, only 900,000 doses are in stock so far. The full supply will not be delivered until March 2007, at a total cost of about £100m.

Besides the NHS and BBC, firemen, police and the armed forces are among those listed in the two top-priority groups to receive the vaccine

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...753892,00.html

[janewhite88]

One thing I notice is how the media keeps bringing up that early 1918 flu.
A while back I was watching some boy TV about two groups competing to dig up the virus that could be frozen in time if the corpse had been buried deep enough in a northern area.
One team was lead by a woman, the other one lone man.
The woman brought on a lot of attention and in the end the bodies she dug up were not buried deep enough.
The lone man went to Alaska, I think, hung with some Eskimos, asked permission to dig up some of their ancestors I think, they did a little dance and he quietly dug it up and got samples that were preserved.
That was quite a few years back. Can’t remember who was behind the project. Flu vaccine is the big seller every year. I don’t understand it. I never have had one. I have known people who get a flu shot every year. In fact some places send a med truck around to give them to many healthy young and mid age folks. I thought it was a strange habit to get into. For some reason I clump that in with antibodies overuse. Not sure it is good for the public.

Personally, I am getting quite confused with it all. SARS, West Nile, bird flu? All different, all the same? It is getting hard to keep it all straight. Hard to figure which is good info and bad. Ugh. That is why I question if it is hype or not. Hard to tell. People make money building on fear. Or hell, maybe someone let a big bad bug out of the lab and they are trying to cover ass with all this talk of a new flu coming around that could be worse that 1918.
My thoughts go from one end of the extreme to the other.

[Antiochus Epiphanes]

I understand your perspective. I'm not trying to be paranoid or encourage the government to abolish the Posse Comitatus restrictions on the army. But I think that if you could see the 1918 flu coming, you would have wanted to know this. I think this is a bona fide public health threat of serious proportions.

SARS was too. Remains so. All the flying around people do today, the mass migrations, all add up to "some fucking disease" as Axl Rose said, constantly being brought into places that would not have seen it before.

Yet another reason to curtail illegal immigration? Well, if a million people croak in a month, and it turns out the bug was brought in by an illegal immigrant? Well you can imagine that with the right timing and propaganda push, we might actually get the border sealed and a few of these 11 million illegals deported.

See what I mean?

Louis Pasteur said "chance favors the prepared mind."

[Whirlwind]

Chance favors those in the right place, at the right time. Some of those will be there out of preparation. But some will get there with dumb luck. SARS victims were all asians. Not much you can do to prepare for a bug with genetic homing device. Vaccinations will "save" all those not in that genetic group. Like f'n magic. Got to wonder what else might be in that jab.
Don't believe SARS had a genetic component? Show me a picture of a non-asian SARS victim. Or even a list of the dead.
I remain unconcerned, having complete confidence I have 0 asian genetic material. NWO wants to shrink the population, and china is not really in the fold with NWO. Or I could be a crazed conspiracy theorist.

[Bardamu]

The Kwa always looks to increase FEAR amongst zoggite consumer units so I take Avian hysteria with a grain of salt. If true, though, look for the Pacific Rim to get hit especially hard.

[Antiochus Epiphanes]

They say it's in European birds now. Thousands dead, thousands already culled to retard the progress of the disease. That puts US birds about a week away I'd guess. We'll see if it starts infecting people in Europe like it does in
Asia and then at any point, if it jumps to airbone transmission then we're fucky-fuckeed.

Deadly Asian bird flu reaches fringes of Europe By Jeremy Smith
2 hours, 45 minutes ago

A strain of bird flu that can be deadly for humans has spread from Asia to the fringes of Europe, the European Commission said on Thursday, warning countries to prepare for a potential pandemic.

EU Health and Consumer Protection chief Markos Kyprianou said a strain of bird flu found in Turkey had been identified as the same H5N1 virus that killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003 and forced the slaughter of millions of birds.
The European Union's executive was also assuming that bird flu found in Romania was the same virulent strain, he said, though further tests are needed to confirm this.
"The virus found in Turkey is avian flu H5N1 high pathogenic virus," he told a news conference. "It's true that scientists caution us and warn us that there will be a pandemic."
Experts fear H5N1 could mutate into a virus which spreads easily among humans, possibly killing millions of people.
The European Commission has banned imports of live birds and poultry meat from both Turkey, where it was discovered at a farm near the Aegean and Marmara seas, and Romania.
Romania said it had detected bird flu in the Danube delta, a major migratory area for wild birds coming from Russia, Scandinavia, Poland and Germany. The birds mainly move to warmer areas in North Africa including the Nile delta for winter.
Romania's chief veterinarian Ion Agafitei told Reuters scientists detected the avian influenza virus in samples taken from three ducks which died last week.
The samples will be sent to a British laboratory, where it could take up to two days to establish the type of virus, British scientist Ruth Manvell said.
THOUSANDS OF BIRDS CULLED
Thousands of birds have been culled in Turkey and Romania to prevent the spread of the disease.
In Turkey, Yuce Canoler of the Poultry and Breeding Stock Producers, told Reuters there was no need for additional measures on top of steps already being taken by Turkey. "We've already tried to take measures by considering the worse case scenarios."
Farm Ministry official Beytullah Okay told CNN Turk there were no plans to widen the current 3-km (2-mile) quarantine zone around the one farm affected to date.
"All the meat from birds killed in the zone by veterinary teams is healthy. Well-cooked, it can be eaten," he said.
Bird flu began sweeping through Thai poultry flocks in late 2003, all but wiping out markets for what was then the world's fourth largest poultry exporter.
Avian flu is currently transmitted to humans only if they eat or live in close contact with infected birds. But scientists say the H5N1 strain is mutating toward a form that could pass between humans.
Kyprianou said the European Commission was considering establishing a 1 billion euro "solidarity fund" to help pay for anti-virals in the event of a pandemic.
He said the Commission had been in talks with pharmaceutical companies about boosting the capacity to produce such drugs.
EU experts on avian influenza and migratory birds will hold an emergency meeting in Brussels on Friday.
The Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health said on Thursday that 3,673 wild waterfowl had died in Iran, but the cause was unclear.
"No pathological agent has been identified yet," it said on its Web site, citing a report from Iran's chief veterinary officer. "No post-mortem lesions are seen in the dead birds; weakness and death are the only evidence."
In Iran, the veterinary authority said no signs of bird flu had been discovered. "We don't know the reason," spokesman Behrouz Yasemi said. "We have quarantined the area."
Bulgaria has tested around 30 birds discovered dead around the country for avian flu but found no cases of the disease, officials said on Thursday.
Greek health authorities were checking a Portuguese-flagged cargo ship near the port of Piraeus after finding suspect dead and living migratory birds on board.
(Additional reporting by David Evans in Paris, Parisa Hafezi in Tehran, Radu Marinas and Martin Dokoupil in Bucharest and Aine Gallagher in Brussels)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/birdflu_d...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[A. Ryan]

Certainly the avian flu could get very bad very quickly. However there
are some anti-virals that might be of use in the treatment of bird flu,
namely Tamiflu and Relenza. There is a report that Tamiflu is proving
less effective against the H5N1 strain of avian flu that surfaced in
northern Vietnam this year. I have seen no such reports on Relenza. Of
course neither would be as effective as a vaccine. On the negative side,
the cost of these drugs is high and a sufficient supply may not be available
to provide dosage for a large number of people. This would translate into
the masters having easy access to treatment leaving the rest of us on
our own.

http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHe...Health/tb/1850

http://www.fda.gov/cder/news/relenza/default.htm

Allow me to comment that I am totally disgusted but not surprised at the
malignant opportunism used by the kikes and their minion The Chimp to
manipulate this news in furtherance of their blatant thrust to erase
the Posse Comitatus act.

Anyway, in the event that the worst happens it is possible that a positive
side effect could result. An airborne contagious mutation of the avian flu
might go a considerable way toward elimination of our mexican problem
given the crowded conditions under which the mestizo invaders live.

[Antiochus Epiphanes]

Bird flu reported in Greece and Romania 10/17/05.

10/18, Thailand reportedly going to test a bird flu vaccine with help from Japs.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051018/...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand, where bird flu has killed 12 people since 2004, will start human trials of an H5N1 vaccine next year, a senior Health Ministry official said on Tuesday.


Thailand has asked the University of Osaka to produce between 30,000 and 100,000 doses of test vaccine from a seed virus provided by the World Health Organization (WHO), Paijit Warachit, head of the Medical Sciences Department, told Reuters.

In an interview, Paijit said the Japanese university had pledged to deliver the vaccine, estimated to cost about 20 million baht, as early as January, paving the way for trials to start in March.

[Joe_J.]

Well, that might look like a shame, throwing a chicken into an oven to be incinerated, but in China those things taste just like cat. I doubt they will miss all of those birds.

China faces a "grave" threat from bird flu, the country's Vice-Premier, Hui Liangyu, has warned.

China said it was intensifying its battle against the virus, by introducing more rigorous monitoring and immunisation of birds.

"We cannot let down our guard, we cannot underestimate the risks of the outbreaks," Mr Hui said.

The ministry of agriculture revealed more than 91,000 birds had been culled following a new outbreak.

On Wednesday China said 2,600 birds had been found to have died from the disease in Inner Mongolia.

The deaths, at a farm near the region's capital of Hohhot, were due to the H5N1 strain, which is potentially lethal to humans, the Xinhua news agency said.

Joint measures

A local official told the AFP news agency that the latest outbreak had been detected at a small farm with fewer than 10,000 birds, mainly chickens, geese and peacocks.

In Thailand a villager has become the 13th person in the country to die from bird flu, but the first this year, while the man's son is being treated for flu-like symptoms, the Thai prime minister said.

Bird flu has killed at least 60 people in Asia since December 2003.

It has also now spread to Europe, with cases confirmed in Romania, Turkey and Russia, and suspected in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Greece.

On Thursday European health ministers met in the UK to discuss how to implement a joint response to bird flu on the continent.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Agency has also warned of a risk the disease will now reach the Middle East and Africa as a result of the European outbreaks.

Scientists fear the H5N1 strain could combine with human flu or mutate into a form that it easily transmissible between humans, triggering a flu pandemic.

[Joe_J.]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.a...55E1702,00.html

Bird flu suspected in dad and son
From correspondents in Jakarta
October 20, 2005
INDONESIAN doctors said today they suspect a father and son of having contracted bird flu, in a case that prompted warnings of the possibility of human-to-human transmission of the virus.

"Two adults, a man and his son, and an infant were admitted yesterday on suspicion of having contracted the bird flu," Ilham Patu, a doctor at the Sulianti Saroso hospital for infectious diseases in Jakarta, said today.

Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said the father and son were the third cluster of related people suspected of having contracted the bird flu virus since the first case was discovered in Indonesia in June.

The first, a father and his two daughters, all died.

In the second instance a woman died, but her nephew survived and has since been declared free from the virus. In the latest case, the infant was not related to the father and son.

"This is still a very limited number of cluster cases, but if they become more widespread, human-to-human infection could be suspected," Ms Supari said.

"It is just a worry that has yet no base. What is certain is that we need to improve environmental hygiene to prevent the spread of the disease at a particular environment," she said.

Indonesia has confirmed three deaths from bird flu, based on local tests and confirmation from World Health Organisation (WHO) facilities in Hong Kong.

At least six more people have died of suspected cases of the deadly H5N1 virus, but they are not officially listed as bird flu victims.

Indonesia has another two confirmed bird flu patients who are still alive, while there have been more than 85 suspected cases.

At least 60 people have died from bird flu in the South-East Asia region since 2003, the majority of them in Vietnam.

The WHO fears the current H5N1 virus may mutate, acquiring genes from the human influenza virus that would make it highly infectious as well as lethal – possibly killing millions worldwide as the influenza pandemic of 1918 did.

Russia, China and Romania all confirmed new outbreaks of H5N1 this week, fuelling fears of a pandemic.
Reply With Quote

[Joe_J.]

Good resource for compilation of bird flu articles both pro and con.

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=136

[Kind Lampshade Maker]

Originally Posted by Antiochus Epiphanes

I dont think this is a distraction. I think it's for real. I had kin who croaked in the 1918 flu. This could be for real...

1,000 people die yearly, in Switzerland, from flus. And, Americans are vaccinated, yearly before Winter, against flus. So, yes this is hype.
Let's identify which alterior motives are used for stirring up panic

[Joe_J.]

Originally Posted by hateemall

I often wonder If this "flu" has any relation to "Parrot Fever" Psittacosis - parrot fever. I had this yrs ago when I was working at a Pet store when parrots were imported, wild caught & this spread like wild fire.
Of Course I was the only one to contract it, because I am sickly & have asthma, and It didnt help that they were mixing the sick birds gavage food in My Coffee cup! That bout with it about killed me, I didnt go to the Doctor, until 3 weeks after I had it, And my hair was falling out from the high fever & all. I took a wicked beating from that. But Psittacosis is treatable with Tetracycline , which is very cheap.( I found out afterwards) I could have medicated myself, as Its sold in the petstores.
Perhaps the drug companies are Pulling a "Bush" getting people all hyped up & selling more "anti flu" drugs.tamiflu??
And sadly alot of people think mistakenly that the Flu shots will prevent this.
??? Has any one heard of any comparision to the original "parrot fever'?

http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/b...t_fever?OpenDo

Sorry to hear that you got so sick.

Something that might be of interest:

A parrot that died in quarantine in the UK has tested positive for avian flu, the government has said.

The Department for the Environment, Fisheries and Food said the H5 strain of the disease was found, but has not said if it was the lethal H5N1 strain.

The bird was imported from south America and arrived in mid-September.

It is the first case of avian flu in Britain - it has been found in Romania, Turkey and Greece after apparently being carried from Asia by wild birds.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4365956.stm

[Kind Lampshade Maker]

Sparrows should carry this virus effectively, also. Nobody has ordered that they stay indoors as the government here and elsewhere in Europe has done regarding poultry.
I live above my neighbors, in the uppermost flat. A couple of the neighbors, below me, have complained about my bird feeding, among other petty things. Now, I feed the birds, on the edge of my balcony, to where my neighbors will intercept all edge droppings, with help of the usual south-west wind. If anybody's gonna catch this flu, itz them

[Antiochus Epiphanes]

I have not kept up with these stories as they have accelerated. Today however we have bad enough news to add.

Turks breeding bird flu-- reason enough to expel them yet?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060109/...urkey_bird_flu

Five More Infected With Bird Flu in Turkey By BENJAMIN HARVEY, Associated Press Writer
20 minutes ago


Preliminary tests showed five more people have been infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus in Turkey, a Health Ministry official said Monday. The new results raise the number of human cases in Turkey to 15. Not all have been confirmed yet by the World Health Organization.

A WHO official warned that the chances the disease may mutate into a dangerous form increase with every new human infection.

Turkish labs detected H5N1 in the five new cases, which were discovered in four separate provinces, according to a Health Ministry official speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the media.

In addition, more than 60 people with flu-like symptoms who had come in close contact with fowl had been hospitalized around the country by Monday and were undergoing tests, officials said.

"The more humans infected with the avian virus, the more chance it has to adapt," Guenael R.M. Rodier, a senior WHO official for communicable diseases, said during a visit to Dogubayazit, a largely Kurdish town bordering Iran where three children from the same family have died.

Health officials are watching the disease's spread and development for fear it could mutate into a form easily transmitted between people and spark a pandemic. Apart from confirming the Turkish cases, WHO labs are also watching for genetic changes in the virus that could allow it to move from human to human.

The four cases confirmed so far involved people who were in close contact with fowl, suggesting they were likely infected directly by birds, health officials say.

The five newest cases came from four provinces in eastern and central Turkey, as well as the Black Sea coast, according to Health Ministry official Turan Buzgan.

Ten people earlier had tested positive for H5N1 in tests in Turkish labs, four of which have been confirmed by the WHO.

Those four include two siblings who died last week in the eastern city of Van — the first confirmed fatalities caused by the virus outside eastern Asia, where 74 people have been killed by H5N1 since 2003. A third sibling also died in Van of bird flu, but a WHO lab has not yet confirmed H5N1.

"It's clear that the virus is well established in the region," Rodier said. "The front line between children and animals, particularly backyard poultry, is too large," he said, adding that contact between poultry and people must be minimized.

On Sunday, three H5N1 cases were reported in Ankara, and two more in Van. Ankara is about 600 miles west of Van.

The cases in Ankara included two young brothers and a 65-year-old man, who tested positive for H5N1 in preliminary tests by Turkish labs.

The boys in Ankara — aged 5 and 2 — caught the virus while playing with gloves their father had used to handle two dead wild ducks outside Ankara. An 8-year-old girl hospitalized in Van with what Turkish labs showed was H5N1 apparently contracted the virus by hugging and kissing dead chickens.

On Monday, Health Minister Recep Akdag arrived in Dogubayazit, where most of the cases have originated, along with WHO officials.

"If as a community, we take the necessary measures and educate (people) we can in a short period of time combat this," Akdag said. "We will manage to slow its progress."

He said, however, that because Turkey was on the path of migratory birds, the country would continue to be at risk in years to come, and urged people to abandon raising poultry in backyards.

"The earlier we realize this, the earlier we will be rid" of bird flu.

Akdag climbed up a snowy hill to visit Zeki Kocyigit, whose three children died of the disease. As he left, villagers shouted complaints about a lack of doctors.

The doctor who treated the three children in Van said they probably contracted the illness by playing with dead chickens.

Health officials believe the best way to fight the spread of bird flu is the wholesale destruction of poultry in the affected area. But they often run into problems in rural areas such as Dogubayazit, where villagers resist turning in their animals.

On Sunday, a group of Turkish workers in Dogubayazit had to climb over a wall when a woman refused to open the door and hand over her several chickens, insisting they were not sick. The workers could not persuade her to part with the chickens and left, saying they would return with police.

In Istanbul, where bird flu in fowl was detected in some neighborhoods on the city's outskirts, authorities imposed a quarantine, banning the entry and exit of poultry and disinfecting people leaving the area.

[Kind Lampshade Maker]

The fowl are busy expelling that scum from the face of the Earth. Any of them found on the European continent deserve it.
On the German news today, they're telling people not to go there. If they want to go, I certainly hope they do. The German customs are increasing spot-checks. Because, they are aware of travellers smuggling in live animals in baggage. May those doing so get to die sufficated in a suitcase