By now, we have all heard of the bird flu. At first, I chalked it up as another disaster wannabe, like Y2K, and sars. Y2k was suppose to make defesive missles explode, and computer systems to crash, while Sars was suppose to sweep across Canada after it popped up in toronto. Thinking back o these, I convinced myself tgis was just a false alarm. But if you think about, it, it's a frightening possibility. Sars was proven by scientists to lack the ability that is mutation. Bird flu, they say, has the possibilty of carrying this ability, and the more the disease comes in contact with humans, the more it has a chance of mutatiing from bird --> human to human --> human. And you may think "Well, contact with humans is pretty limited right now. Wrong. Infected chickens are being slaughtered in the middle east, which is good, but peasants are stealing the dead chickens and eating them before the corpse can be burned. Well. That isn't to bright, now is it? I know they are hungry nd ll, but these chickens threaten millions of human lives. So, why would they take that risk. Again, because they are hungry. So what are we gonna do about it? Sadly, we can't do anything right now. They are making a vaccine to combat this didease, but since the disease hasn't mutated yet, we are not sure if the vaccine works. The only way to get a guaranteed cure is for the disease to mutate from human to huamn, and then to harvest infected cells from a human victim. But it takes usually nine months to design a cure for such a disease. Nine months is plenty of time to wipe out millions of people. And it doesn't end their. There is another mutation that is a scary possibility. Right now, the disease is passed through cells, but what if it become air borne? You cough, and everyone in that room is infected. one cough equals a group of people. How many times to you cough or sneeze a day? Millions would die within weeks, rather than the nine months I mentioned earlier. Of course, this is worse case scenario, and I personally don't take it to seriously. But it really is something to think about. Any one have any views on this matter?

There have only been around 150 deaths, even in third-world countries that don't have advanced drugs or methods for sickness isolation, so based on that, I'm going to say it was an overestimated catastrophy (like the Y2K bug).

Bird FLu could become a pandemic it just needs to manipulate so humans can pass it on. And to be honest even then it would be hard because people now seem to stay away from chicken.

A Friend of mine works a a super market and he siad that chicken isnt being bought as much. Meaning people obviously wont be around live chcken's. Human nature called self preservation.

Your right about these other so called Disaster's. Theyare just there to scare people, If you read the news you always hear the worst possible thing that "could" happen.

its perfectly capable of becoming a pandemec, but let's not forget that diseases that are brought from animals don't always have the exact same effects ( For example, HIV/AIDS dont affect anything except humanoid animals such as gorillas, monkeys, or humans)

But in this case, we know they can affect us, and is lethal, back to topic though
A pandemedic is possible, but the thing is we need to know how it spreads, and what conditions, it may live through air, but die in water,
once we learn that, we can learn a way to control it, once controlled we can make a cure

basically its that

I think it was only a few days ago when I heard a story on the news about a particular family in Indonesia. This family has international health officials worried because of the possibility that the H5N1 virus was beginning to spread from human to human.

All in all, I think that this is no small problem and with the rise of so many diseases and so many ways that they are transmissible, I think that a pandemic disease is rather imminent.

Personally I don't think it's going to ever be a problem.

Really.

You can quote me on that in five years when we're all infected with it.

Personally, I think it won't be a problem. Now, I'm not omniscient ar anything but i do get Popular Science. What that magazine has told me is that the current limitations on vaccination are as such: 1.The number of vaccines is equal to the number of eggs that we can grow it in. 2. The incubation period of said vaccine is the same as the incubation period of the egg. Now, what was in a semi-recent arctle was as thus, Scientists are working on ways to grow the vaccine outside of an egg, kind of like hydroponic farming for vaccines. That would both expediate the incubation period and allow the number of vaccines to exceed the number and rate of supply of eggs. That being said, as far as i know, tommorow Iran could nuke the U.S. and i believe that we should focus more on more urgent problems and make preparations so we can cross the bridge of the Avian Flu when we get to it (or if there is no bridge human ingenuity will build a brige)

I don't think it will be a problem. As of now, it's only from animal to human, not human to human, right?

Besides, I think we're all gonna die in a different way xP

Well that's a really scary theory.. I know over the past thousand years there where big diseases who costed the lifes of many humans about every 100 years... These diseases don't just disappear, every time we addapt to counter this diseases, the diseases will counter us, so they can still take a lot of life's away...