avian flu?

[missy77]

someone posted something in the q & a forum about the avian flu. what is the avian flu, and are we all going to die from it? when is it supposed to hit? is there anything we can do to protect ourselves? i'm a little freaked out after i read the post. can anyone tell me more about the avian flu?

[hippychick]

Avian flu = Bird Flu right? We're NOT all going to die from it. Right now the government are a little worried about it spreading but recently even THEY admitted that if it does hit it is not going to be as bad as THEY said it would be. The media have been scaring people about this for a long time (anyone else remember SARs ??? lol) Local Governments both US and UK have been stockpiling on drugs used to treat/prevent bird flu IF it so happens to hit which we don't even know when it will and we're not all going to die from it. Precautions for quarantine are being taken if anyone happens to get it. You should probably note


"Right now, authorities believe humans primarily get bird flu from contact with excretions from infected birds, not from other people with the illness."


It IS spreading but with cases few and far between and although worried, the government are ready for this. As with any flu, the main at risk are the elderly and children IF it hits.

[ontariogirl]

On the news last night there is a place in Canada where they make the vaccines and pills etc. and this guy is getting a lot of requests from the US and abroad for these pills etc. just in case of a pandamic. I agree with hippychick there is nothing to fear as of yet. In Toronto they had the SARS going on and I live about 2 hours away from there and I was scared but in reality there was nothing to fear. My doctors office has the pills called Tamiflu, it shortens the time of being sick.
I bought a Macleans mag and there is a article; this is the title.
FORGETSARS, WEST NILES, EBOLA and AVIAN FLU, THE REAL EPIDEMIC IS FEAR. We keep bracing ourselves for one cataclysmic threat after another, Our perceived lack of safety had become an obsession.
The article is prettygood.

[angel13]

Absolutely true, ontario girl - I am studying media at university, and there's nothing they love more than a good threat, whether its terrorism, computer viruses, murderers on the run, natural disasters OR epidemics...bad news is good news, to them, its what sells their papers


This whole Bird flu thing is silly - in my opinion, perhaps if, in parts of Asia, they treated chickens and birds a little more humanely, they wouldn't get all diseased in the first place (lol, sorry, I get worked up about animal welfare). The only people who have died from it, I think, are those who have been in direct contact with birds over there. I don't know what the death toll is currently.


I think we're pretty safe, they have quarantine well under control in the airports But its been hyped into something its not...the newspapers carry on like its deadly, deadly serious, but really they've only twisted the words of government officials, to make it sound scarier than it is.

[ontariogirl]

Here is the article go to
www.macleans.ca
go to Site Search and type Real Epidemic
scroll down to October 4, 2005 and read the article at the bottom.

[s0ccer_princess]

This is a great page if you want information on it: http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/en/

For once I am actually more worried about dying from this than, you know, getting ill, hehe . I am quite worried, yes, but I agree that a lot of it is just speculation and hype. After all, what evidence is there to believe it will become a pandemic?

There is no actual shocking evdince which has made the scientists decide this, other than just the fact that people have got ill and died from it so far.

Anyway, what happened to SARs? That was supposed to be a pandemic..Edited by: s0ccer_princess

[ontariogirl]

Thats right, the web site that I put down tells you all about this stuff

[japa]

Yes, it is mostly hype. The only human infection has been transmitted from birds to humans. The fear about the pandemic is based on the idea that the virus will mutate to a new form that spreads from human to human. My sister has a Ph.d. in microbiology. She has done research on HIV and yellow fever. I asked her what are the odds that this virus will mutate in the way people fear. She said that she can't identify any exact odds, but I quote her as saying, "It definitely won't happen this season." That's her belief.


If you look on the CDC website, here are the Asian deaths:


During January 2004 to October 10, 2005, a total of 117 human cases of avian influenza A (H5N1) were reported in Asia, according to the World Health Organization (WHO); of these 60 (51%) were fatal. Human cases have been reported in Cambodia (4 cases, all fatal), Indonesia (5 cases, 3 fatal), Thailand (17 cases, 12 fatal), and Vietnam (91 cases, 41 fatal).


While it's tragic that anyone would die at all, these numbers are not staggering. It's a total of 60 deaths spread throughout all of these Asian countries of Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam,+ Indonesia. It just looks like it is astrong virus because of the high percent of fatalities, so that must be why the hype has begun.


Yet,how many car accident deaths have there been in the U.S. from January 2004-October 10, 2005?? It's gotta be a lheck of a lot more than 60, I'm sure. Edited by: japa

[chicajojobe]

Yeah all this pandemic hype is so not good for hypochondriachs like me.
I've been trying to just avoid even hearing it mentioned.



I remember I learned to get all the facts about these new diseases
before being scared ever since West Nile. I live in the southern United
States so there are mosquitoes all year round except the dead of winter
so I was very nervous there for a few months with all the reports of
people dying but then come to find out that the reason they died was
because they were elderly and in normal healthy people West Nile is
very survivable. It really pissed me off to know that the news had been
implying that I was going to die from a disease that I actually could
have already had without realizing it.

[crystalmom]

I agree with everyone. Thisis hype and speculation. They are saying pandemic only because of history. They say a pandemic hits every 30 years, or something like that, so know we should "brace ourselves". Well, sorry, gonna swear, I say BULLs***! Has the mediaand all these other people remember something called AIDS? Wouldn't That be considered a pandemic?


Also, these people who died, although tragic, probably came from remote villages in these countries.Probably don't have the medical attention for anyone, much less animals that they need to survive, like we do in the "modern nations". I hate thinking of it that way, b/c I feel horrible for anyone affected by these things, whether that be 'pandemics', or earthquakes, or hurricanes. But 60 people? Come on. More than 35 000 peopleare offically dead b/c of the earthquake in Pakistan. How many people diedb/c of the hurricanes in the states? I think we should focus on that, not on something that probably will never affect us.


How many people diein one day from AIDS, just in Canada, the US, and UK???? My guess is alot. How many times a day do we come in contact with actual chicken crap? Most of us, none.


I know I'm rambling here, but Iam trying to convay that we (as emets) don't need to worry too much about this. Actually, I don't think we need to worry at all.


Sorry, so long of a post [img]smileys/smilies_09.gif[/img]


Crystal

[hanarky]

Yeah I'm in advertisign and I live in the heart of toronto. During sars I used
to go to eveery packed bar i wore a painter's mask and peple laughed at me
cause it really didnt protect yo from anything.
Yeah I agree with the threatening the public more than its allowed for sure.
People buy into it and there's nothing to be worried about really.

[hippychick]

In the papers they say things like "bird flu will hit" and "it could kill this many people" but they don't say that it's only IF it mutates and that they don't know WHEN it will and that the expected death rate figures are not even much higher than that of regular flu. Nor do they mention the fact that only 117 people have caught it since 2002. They like to scare people plain and simple.

[gubba]

Hippychick is right...In the US we have the center for disease control watching it carefully and they have said that it cannot be transmitted from one human to the next and it is only in the birds that are contaminated from saliva or poop. Don't freak out... it is not something that will not be controlled and it is being overplayed by the media and they even claim that they are doing that.

[tiina]

Hi!


I just wanted to ask everybody something pretty stupid....if you got the bird flu would you taketablets that are supposed to make it less severe even though those pills' side-effects are nausea and vomiting and stomach pain? I guess this is a stupid question because I guess I would think that peoplewould definitely want to take something that would increase their chance of surviving,evenif one is emetophobic and the drugs can make you sick.I don't know if I could take anything for itthat can/will make youthrow up even if it's pretty likely that I'll die if I don't.


They said in the news a couple of days ago that people are stocking up on Tamiflu which is supposed to help with the (bird) flu. It's a prescription med though so I wonder where everybody got their prescription from...dunno...


Hippychick when I read about the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 it said that like 50 per cent of the people thatit killedwere 20-40 years old.The thing that I read didn'thave anexplanation for that. If it becomes a pandemic maybe it'll be different this time, who knows.


Tiina

[bexcelica]

You know what? I took tamiflu last year because I thought I had the
flu. It didn't make me sick at all... Not n* or v* or any sort of
stomache pain.