Outbreaks in Turkey and China appear to have been under-reported. But we can rest assured that the Bush Administration will (coughKatrina!) manage the situation.
The spanish flu was reputed to have started in the trenches of world war 1. OPB broadcast a documentary about it a year ago. I think stress and lack of potable water may play a larger role in immune system suppression than background radiation, but all the ingrediants are there. Such are the wages of war.
Did Bush consider the consquences before plunging America into war?
Does he care?
Does he already have an excuse lined up?
World Health Organization scientists are concerned Report: Avian flu may not show symptoms
Jan. 19, 2006 at 9:33AM
World Health Organization scientists are concerned that a growing number of people are turning up who have been exposed to avian flu but showed no symptoms.
The organization said four people who culled sick birds in Japan and two attendants caring for infected tigers in Thailand were found to have antibodies to the virus but showed no symptoms.
That leads to concern the H5N1 virus could be more widespread among humans than scientists are aware, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Hundreds of undetected cases would mean "there's that much more opportunity for this virus to learn to be transmissible," said Scott Dowell, head of global disease detection for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "With every case, we worry about the possibility of the virus acquiring the ability to transmit from human to human."
Actually, in the case of the 1918 bird flu, and the bird flu right now, having a weak immune system would be an asset. Because nobody has been exposed to anything related to this virus before, nobody has any antibodies prepared to deal with it, and the way people are dying of the bird flu is with an extreme overreaction of the immune system (just google for a better explanation) which causes the lungs to fill with fluid.
So the pattern is that now, and in 1918, it was people in midlife with the strongest immune systems who died at the greatest rates, while very young children, and older people with bad health who were most likely to survive after being infected.
Did Bush consider the consquences before plunging America into war?
Does he care?
Does he already have an excuse lined up?