Bird Flu in Scotland

idontknowmyname

It's finally in the UK, a migrating swan was found to have the lethal strain. http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2006/0406/index.htm#151258

Dead swans have been found in N. Ireland today

Do you think this will turn into a pandemic as predicted by experts?

monkeyfudge

idontknowmyname wrote:

Do you think this will turn into a pandemic as predicted by experts?

You mean pundits.

idontknowmyname

I mean experts

shroomfox

By the time you've decided what they are, we'll all have bird flu anyway.

Everybody...PANIC!

Archeron

I was just about to panic, as suggested, and then....Meh. When people start to drop like flies (or chickens as the case may be) I'll worry, til then I reckon its just another part of the "keep em fearful" thing. If it wasnt bird flu, it would be something else. bird flu, aids, SARS, meteors, tsunamis, nuclear war, biological weapons, rogue states, bonitis, the list goes on and on and on and on and on.......

ferdi

Kent Brockman "Professor, without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it's time for our viewers to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo inside?"

Professor "Yes I would, Kent."

monkeyfudge

To be honest I'm far more worried about the fact that to study this virus they reconstucted the 1918 virus in a lab. And that one actually is deadly. If that manages to get out of the lab it could kill millions within months.

eirebhoy

I doubt very much anybody in Ireland will catch bird flu. The worry is whether someone with the flu catches bird flu possibly making it contagious. atm there's very little to worry about.

daveirl

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Alun

daveirl wrote:

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Well, substitute 'might' for 'will' in that sentence and you're right. However, for a human to catch H5N1 from a bird, they have to be in very intimate, close contact with the birds and their faeces, as was the case in the Far East and Turkey where people keep these animals in their houses. Unlikely to happen here, since anybody keeping poultry will be forewarned and be taking the necessary precautions. It also isn't transmissible from human to human either. So the real danger comes if and when the virus mutates in someone who is infected with H5N1, most probably in the Far East, and they unwittingly come over here and infect someone here. SARS all over again, in other words.

eirebhoy

daveirl wrote:

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I can't remember where I heard/read it but here's a snippet from the NY Times:

"Everything hangs on transmissibility. But it is impossible to predict whether A(H5N1) will become contagious among people. The virus has been changing genetically, and researchers fear that changes could make it more transmissible, or that A(H5N1) could mix with a human flu virus in a person, swap genetic material and come out contagious."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/health/28qna.html?ex=1144468800&en=2074933bd9168027&ei=5070

astrofool

monkeyfudge wrote:

To be honest I'm far more worried about the fact that to study this virus they reconstucted the 1918 virus in a lab. And that one actually is deadly. If that manages to get out of the lab it could kill millions within months.

It's not deadly if treated. Better they prepare than not tbh. Even if it did breakout, it would not kill everyone who comes into contact with it, just a percentage of them, but that would still mean alot of deaths if it spread quickly, hence the need to know as much as possible about it and to try and contain it as much as possible (if possible at all).

daveirl

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Stark

Alun wrote:

So the real danger comes if and when the virus mutates in someone who is infected with H5N1, most probably in the Far East, and they unwittingly come over here and infect someone here. SARS all over again, in other words.

But if the virus mutates, is it not a different virus? Ie: Is the virus likely to have the same deadly properties in its mutated human-to-human transmissable form? When H3N2 mutated into the "Hong Kong" virus, chance struck a blow and that mutation turned out to be deadly. However the virus has since been mutating on a yearly basis and hasn't proved catastrophic for years.

Probability dictates that we're overdue for a flu pandemic, that much could well be true. My opinion is that the pandemic strain is as likely to mutate from any of the other strains of flu as it is from bird flu. I guess bird flu is the most media friendy at the moment.

I had a look at the numbers. 36,000 die in the US alone from your run-of-the-mill yearly flu virus. H2N1 has killed 98 people worldwide in the past 3 years. I'm going to stay relaxed for the time being and worry more about being killed in my car. Anxiety weakens the immune system you know

homah_7ft

Won't somebody please think of the children, err I mean chickens.

monkeyfudge

Stark wrote:

I had a look at the numbers. 36,000 die in the US alone from your run-of-the-mill yearly flu virus.

And that's about 700,000 worldwide.