How about that "Bird Flu?"

[Minion5]

A recent realization has come to me about the previous "Bird Flu" scare.

It use to be all over the news, the threat of Bird Flu. They say that they didn't have enough vaccinations out there for it, and that there was a high risk of it hitting the U.S.

So, one day, while I'm thinking (before I joined this forum), I realize that this just might-JUST MIGHT :rolleyes: -be a conspiracy. Wouldn't bird flu have hit the U.S. already? What about the other countries? What happened to the news articles? Perhaps this is a way to help boost the sales of vaccines (they were selling them at first, to my knowledge)? Why are they discussing this virus and its effect in third world countries? . I wonder sometimes...

Please discuss your thoughts.
Conspiray?
Truth?
Sheer Luck?

[Chris The Great]

The virus is still out there, slowly mutating to become more and more adapted to spreading amoung mammals such as humans. Some worrying developements include the fact that most of the human cases do not genetically trace back to the birds that where assumed to have given the people the virus. Which indicates the carrier wasn't the birds in most cases, or if it was, not the birds that the person has been in close contact with.

The media can't keep up with a story for a long time because otherwise the sheeple with their 10 second attention spans would be unable to follow it. Obviously big pharma is going to milk it for all it is worth, but that doesn't mean that the virus still has some extreme potential if it completes mutating.

It's currently in third world countries because that is where the unevolved virus has the best chances of spreading to humans. Nor have birds carried it over to North America yet. When that happens, expect a media shitstorm for a week before everyone who watches the news gets bored, so the media switches to something new.

[c.Tech]

If it does mutate and be able to jump from person to person everyone predicts it will be a catastrophe.

But, who says this isn’t just going to be another virus such as SARS which will be quarantined or cured.

With vaccinations, is there any potential that the virus will become like HIV and mutate to beat every medicine and treatment that is made?

[TreverSlyFox]

c. Tech,

That's the problem with mutation, no one knows what it will mutate into. It's possible that Bird Flu could mutate into a virus that's spread as easily as the common cold, have a death rate of 10% and an incubation time of 2 weeks. That gives it plenty of time to spread before anyone knows it's here.

Now even on a "good day" it could easily take 6 months to find a vaccine against it, if one is found at all. Plus even after you have spent 6 months finding it, now you have to produce enough of it to make it worth while. So now it's 9 months later and you have enough to vaccinate the population, which might take another month at least. So now it's 10 months after the "Bird Flu" hit, 50% of the population got it and 15,000,000 are dead just in this country.

Then again "Bird Flu" might never mutate into something that bothers humans on any large scale. Of course SARS could mutate into something twice as worse as people think "Bird Flu" might become.

[knowledgehungry]

A large part of why the story is not currently being covered is that it is not our flu season yet. As soon as people start talking about flu shots Bird Flu will also make a comeback in the news.

[akinrog]

Actually a few kids and elderly died on Bird Flu in my country and led to collection and extermination of domestic birds by the government.

However, this, I reasonably believe, resulted in a much more serious disease called Crimean - Congo Hemorrhagic Fever tranmitted by Crimean - Congo Ticks.

This disease is much more dangerous than Bird Flue and I believe several types of diseases transmitted by ticks are available throughout the world even plegic (i.e. paralytic) ones.

I believe this was caused by the mass fatality of the wild birds and extermination of domestic / farm birds, which, as you may guess, feed on the insects, including ticks.