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October 18, 2005
Bird Flu Overhyped?
Glenn Reynolds posts a letter from a medical researcher, who says the media may be just a bit hysterical about the dangers posed by the bird flu. To me, the focus on the story illustrates one of the most annoying traits of the media - their obsessive need to scare the living heck out of everyone.
Remember SARS? Mad Cow? Swine Flu? We should all be dead, many times over. If you watch the evening news, or the 'newsmagazines,' they are full of scare stories about the dangers posed by household items, especially if children are involved.
Ratings are important to keep media outlets alive, I understand. But it's that need for ratings that leads to the scare stories. And such stories, while interesting, do little to serve the public interest.
Posted by slublog at October 18, 2005 12:00 AM
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Comments
Well, the Taiwans keep nabbed ships full of birds being smuggled out of China, past customs and quarantine.
Turkey, Greece, Romania and a lot of Indonesian countries have started bird culls.
I think it's probably worth worrying about.
Posted by: Partisan Pundit at October 18, 2005 07:35 AM
Nope.
I'm covering my ears and blocking all of you out.
Neener neener neener.
Seriously, though, I think it's likely more a problem for the food supply and its integrity. I'm not sure on the science of passing it from animal to human, and think there is room for concern, but I just get tired at times of the media's 'disease of the week' sort of reporting.
Posted by: Slublog at October 18, 2005 08:45 AM
Dude, you should be way worried.Bird flu is currently able to infect poultry and is transmissible between poultry, and is also able to infect humans but not able to be transmitted between humans. On the CDC Stages of a Pandemic scale, this is Stage 3 of 6. Stages 4 and 5 are tiny and moderate localized areas of human-to-human transmission, and Stage 6 is when the virus breaks out of the locale where human-to-human transmission first evolves.This current bird flu virus has already demonstrated the ability to infect humans. The more cases of bird flu in poultry there are, the more opportunity there is for human infection. The more cases of human infection there are, the more opportunity there is for the virus to gain the ability to be contagious between humans. Viruses mutate rapidly in part because they multiply so rapidly.What we don't appreciate is how frequently people in Asia are in contact with poultry. In America, we keep our poultry in large farms and the average person rarely even sees a live chicken. In rural Asia, most families have a few chickens, and in urban Asia chickens are much more frequently bought live at market. No wonder Asian countries are culling infected poultry so aggressively!It is only a matter of time IMO before stage 4 or 5 is reached, if not with this particular virus than with another. The 1918 Stage 6 flu, a bird flu, infected up about 20% of the world's population, killing 30-40 million people worldwide. 1 in 40 people who caught it died of it, compared with 1 in 1000 for regular flu. We know more about fighting disease nowadays, but we also travel much more frequently and widely now than then.I think the last half of the 20th century in the Western world will prove to be humanity's high-water mark in the struggle against pathogenic microorganisms. We've used antibiotics too indiscriminately and it will come back to haunt us. This plus global travel acting as a huge incubator for all sorts of nasty viruses, and I think our generation is going to be disabused of its supposed invulnerability to disease. We'll learn what every other generation knew intimately: tragedy is just part of life.
Posted by: MainiacJoe at October 18, 2005 10:11 AM
Dang, my links got messed up. Pretty sure I got the coding right, but they aren't flagged red or ending where I want them to.
Posted by: MainiacJoe at October 18, 2005 10:12 AM
Fixed the coding. Interesting articles.
Posted by: Slublog at October 18, 2005 10:43 AM
What did I do wrong?
Posted by: MainiacJoe at October 18, 2005 10:55 AM
Forgot the " after the URL.
Posted by: Slublog at October 18, 2005 11:09 AM
Ahhh. Good catch.
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