Bird Flu?

[Dorrin]

What the hell happened to bird flu? we heard dire warnings of how bad it was and people were talking about putting their budgies down, daily reports on how close it was getting and now nothing. Maybe it was hyped up by the Government (with the help of our media) to divert attention from something they wanted ignored.

[Jacques]

Probably the same as happened with SARS. Bad news is good news - it sells newspapers. If the bad news isn't happening they move on to something else.

[Pervert]

Hit the nail on the head there, Jacques.

And that's worth bearing in mind when next year's scare comes along.

[diplodocus]

it was only ever going to be an issue if it jumped species and mutated with the human form allowing it to be passed directly from human to human, this has't happened and probably is unlikely to
the media are totally irresponsible in reporting science, putting out big scare stories where there is none, such as SARS and MMR

[alec]

Dorrin wrote:

> What the hell happened to bird flu?


Summer.

[jackal]

i would not say its unlikely to id say it probably will happen , it happened during world war 1 in which it killed millions around the world, your right it happens when the human form meets the bird form and mutates and this
could easily happen during a human form outbreak in asia

[diplodocus]

yeah but one case of mutation in the last 100 years doesn't really make it likely to happen, if it does happen there could be some serious problems but i'm not holding my breath (geddit, breath...holding...forget it, !tumbleweed!)

[Sam Slater]

Looking at the math. If you count the number of flu strains, multiplied by the number of birds that can be contaminated. Then multiplying the number of people that get flu every year divided by the amount of people that are in regular contact with live chickens then it's almost a miracle it's not happened more often!

Ok, the equations wrong but it's still a miracle.

Stuffing livestock(and people) full of antibiotics may stop disease in the long run, but while bateria & virus's are mutating, our immune sytems are getting weaker as they don't need to mutate at the same speeds as disease these days.

When all bacteria have become immune to all anti-biotics then our weak immune sytems will be unable to cope and we'll all die.

Some bacteria feed on some virus's. Some virus's can attack some bacteria. Farming differing bacteria & virus's to kill off eachother is the only way we'll survive. Mark my words.......... !teacher!

[Steve R]

Interesting.

(By the way, the correct plural is viruses, not virus's, for future reference)

[Sam Slater]

Yeah, I knew it didn't look right, but couldn't be arsed to check. Thank's anyway!