Today a sick duck in my town. Tomorrow ... the Chicken Holocaust.

wingsandsword said:
for now I am preparing against the remote possibility of any disease outbreak by staying healthy, eating well, exercising, keeping clean and being mindful of disease vectors...
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Huh. I took the hedonism approach of drinking, eating fatty foods and mindless debauchery so that if I die from it I'll have lived well in my final days.

Different strokes I suppose. ;)
 

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I don't think the end is near. I just like having contingincy plans for something that the WHO keeps crying about.

In all likelyhood I'll end up giving the Tamiflu to someone else who needs it.
 


Del said:
I don't think the end is near. I just like having contingincy plans for something that the WHO keeps crying about.

In all likelyhood I'll end up giving the Tamiflu to someone else who needs it.
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I'll stick with my Cold-Eez when I feel I'm coming down with something.
 

It is probably more likely that I'll get killed driving to the grocery store than it is that I'll contract the avian flu sometime soon. It is true that at some point there will be another pandemic strain, and with the mobility of people in this world, it will likely be all over the place very rapidly. Tamiflu might or might not be effective against whatever strain finally breaks out. Local contingency plans will probably still not be able to cope with the massive influx of patients.

So what can we do? Not stress about it. Stress is known to dampen the immune system. I'm planning on not worrying about what might happen (along with good diet and exercise) in order to stay as healthy as possible.
 

Can't really say where the anti-flu vaccines are going- my Dad is an MD (Allergy/Immunology) and was only able to procure enough to cover his family and staff...

As for the fear vs fearmongering...

The reason for the fear about this strain of avian flu is that it is closely related to the 1918 strain that wiped out 50 Million people worldwide...without the benefit of the wonderful disease vector of high-speed air travel, high-speed rail, or even the prevalence of automobiles. Many people died in transit without passing the disease along. That is much less likely in the modern age- those carriers would be MUCH more likely to be able to reach their destinations today.

Furthermore, flu vaccines don't eliminate the possiblility of catching the flu or even dying from it- they just reduce the odds of either and mitigate the symptoms.

Flu is also orders of magnitude more infectious than SARS or anthrax. And while anthrax spores can last decades, flu is also pretty durable as viruses go- it can survive on a door handle for days. SARS is a relative weakling.

Still, as has been pointed out, for it to reach pandemic stage, it has to become much more virulent in humans than it currently is. And according to the stuff I've seen, no virologist knows how many mutations or how much time that would take...

One who was being interviewed on one of the cable news channels, however, did make what he called a conservative estimate of 5 years until it does actually become the killer that the media is talking about.
 

Frukathka said:
It still might. Viruses don't just go away they fade into the background, mutating. It could come back, big time.
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Interesting you say that as I'm reading a book on the Black Death and it mentions that it started in the far east... deja vu!
 

The Center for Disease Control has released a list of symptoms of avian flu. If you experience any of the following, please seek medical treatment immediately:

1. High fever

2. Congestion

3. Nausea

4. Fatigue

5. Aching in the joints

6. An irresistible urge to crap on someone's windshield.
 


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