Avian Flu hits edges of Europe

MrBishop

MrBishop

Well-Known Member
By Jeremy Smith
2 hours, 19 minutes ago


A strain of bird flu that can be deadly for humans has spread from Asia to the fringes of Europe, the European Commission said on Thursday, warning countries to prepare for a potential pandemic.

EU Health and Consumer Protection chief Markos Kyprianou said a strain of bird flu found in Turkey had been identified as the same H5N1 virus that killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003 and forced the slaughter of millions of birds.

The European Union's executive was also assuming that bird flu found in Romania was the same virulent strain, he said, though further tests are needed to confirm this.

"The virus found in Turkey is avian flu H5N1 high pathogenic virus," he told a news conference. "It's true that scientists caution us and warn us that there will be a pandemic."

Experts fear H5N1 could mutate into a virus which spreads easily among humans, possibly killing millions of people.

The European Commission has banned imports of live birds and poultry meat from both Turkey, where it was discovered at a farm near the Aegean and Marmara seas, and Romania.

Romania said it had detected bird flu in the Danube delta, a major migratory area for wild birds coming from Russia, Scandinavia, Poland and Germany. The birds mainly move to warmer areas in North Africa including the Nile delta for winter.

Romania's chief veterinarian Ion Agafitei told Reuters scientists detected the avian influenza virus in samples taken from three ducks which died last week.

The samples will be sent to a British laboratory, where it could take up to two days to establish the type of virus, British scientist Ruth Manvell said.
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The deeper it goes into Europe, the greater the chances of this thing hopping the ocean into North America. Lots of travel between Western Europe and N.America. :eek:

Crap!
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

Oh, I think it WILL eventually get here. The question is, will we be prepared? My best guess is that we won't, but we may get lucky and this thing won't mutate in such a way as to be passed from human to human.
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

HomeLAN said:
Oh, I think it WILL eventually get here. The question is, will we be prepared? My best guess is that we won't, but we may get lucky and this thing won't mutate in such a way as to be passed from human to human.
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We ain't all that lucky...just looking at how regular flu's mutate yearly into worse and worse varieties. :shrug:

Prepared for pandemics? I'd have to agree with you there... nobody seems to be prepared. Countries going around killing every domesticated bird in sight but that doesn't stop it. You still have the wild birds to deal with.

I just look up pretty much any day and any time of the week and I can see the Canadian Geese heading south...add that to an avain flu and voila! A quickly migrating flu!
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

This is part of the reason why they want to study past virii - like the 1918 flu. We all saw what a round of applause that drew around here, though.
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

Y'know, stuff like this never ceases to amaze me. People bleat on and on about evolution, and then do everything in their power to deny it, by eliminating one of evolutions most powerful tools. Disease. Bring it on, damnit. Quit weakening the breed by protecting the weak.
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

What the fuck is all this pandemic paranoia about? Is the news so damned slow they are following stories that don't even exist yet?

There is no pandemic. When it happens, we'll have lots of OTC arguments. Until then, there is pleanty of other stuff actually happening. :rolleyes:
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

What is the single biggest (and most influential) difference betwenn the last (1918) worldwide outbreak & today?

Medication.
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

That's pretty short-sighted, there, Gonz.

If vaccines and drugs are available too late to stop bird flu, then what can be done to battle H5N1 avian influenza if it spreads to people? Not a lot, experts say.

If a pandemic emerges in the coming year, there will not be enough supplies of drugs or vaccines to stop it and basic medical equipment that could slow its spread is also lacking.
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Won't that be fun if you catch it?

Source
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

Yeah... medicine can't touch a virus. A better advancement to attribute would be communication. At least we know what causes it and how to go about isolating and protecting ourselves. They didn't do that back then.
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

It's the job of the CDC (and related gov't & private agencies) to track, spot & do their best to stop these outbreaks. It's mother natures job to kill us, en masse, every few decades. It makes us stronger. Of course I don't want it, nor do I want my friends & family to get it.

My complaint still stands...why is the media so focused on a non-story & scaring the sheeple to death? I can't read or watch the news & all the attached horror stories about what is not happening (and isn't particularly imminent) without thinking about the horror stories about New Orleans, as it was happeing, and finding out a few weeks later that it was all made up. No overt violence, no catastrophic poisoning from the water, no chemical castrations of ever male in came in contact with the flood water. Where are teh tens of thousands of dead bodies?

It was all paranoia & made up. In the end, New Orleans got wet & lost some structures & some infrastructure.



Reference Washington Post
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

Gonz said:
What is the single biggest (and most influential) difference betwenn the last (1918) worldwide outbreak & today?

Medication.
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I beg to differ. I say sanitation. At least in the developed nations.
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

Rome had a sewer system. Penicillin is a new comer.
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

SouthernN'Proud said:
I beg to differ. I say sanitation. At least in the developed nations.
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I'd say transportation and the ability to cross the globe in ~24 hours. With people zipping around the globe in the hundred's of thousands daily...the days of taking a village and/or town and keeping it secluded from the others in order to stop disease from spreading is over.
Sanitation and population density play large roles but it's fast and available transport that turns an epidemic into a pandemic.
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

HomeLAN said:
This is part of the reason why they want to study past virii - like the 1918 flu. We all saw what a round of applause that drew around here, though.
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Plenty of existing varieties of flu strains to study without effectivly recreating another one.
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/research_data/health_consequences/mortali.htm said:
Each year, more than 400,000 Americans die from cigarette smoking. In fact, one in every five deaths in the United States is smoking related. Every year, smoking kills more than 276,000 men and 142,000 women.

Between 1960 and 1990, deaths from lung cancer among women have increased by more than 400%—exceeding breast cancer deaths in the mid-1980s. The American Cancer Society estimated that in 1994, 64,300 women died from lung cancer and 44,300 died from breast cancer.
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And we are worried about a virus that killed 60 people in the last two years?
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

The issue is that it used to be transmitted from bird to bird.

Then it went from bird to human - mostly handlers working in chicken slaughterhouses.

Now there are two cases of human to human.

***
As a bird-to-bird issue... it's spreading quickly. It requires that all birds remotely in contact be destroyed. No big deal...they're just birds right?

Think about the mad-cow scare for a second. Closed borders and millions of destroyed cattle...and this from a disease that isn't transmitted from cow to cow. It's caught through feeding cows bonemeal made with sick cows. Cow canibalism, so to speak. (human assisted only)

Cow's don't move abouts across borders very often without human assistance. Certainly not across the country.

Birds though...they fly greater distances, several types across countries...and this flu does transmit directly from bird to bird...without human assistance.

Bird to human. Also not such a big deal because most cases are in slaughterhouse workers. Make sure the sites are clean, keep sick birds out and no issues.

Human to human - well, that's an issue of the right shots. The problem...there are only about 1 million doses available....across the globe and they aren't sure it'll work.

Take bird to bird plus bird to human plus human to human and you've got a serious illness that travels effectivly and for which we humans don't have a cure...oh, and it kills healthy adults.

Now...I'm hardly advocating stocking up on cement and dry/canned foods and water..plus guns, but maybe brushing this issue aside as 'healthy for the overall human population' in that it kills the weak etc etc... isn't exactly the way to go either.

We can either act or re-act. Re-acting means waiting for this to start killing people in sufficient numbers before doing anything about it.

george%20bush%20senior.jpg


"Wouldn't be prudent"
 
Re: Avain Flu hits edges of Europe

If you think something is only worth worrying about when it starts to happen, isn't it too late by then?

That kind of short-sighted attitude costs lives. In this case, it could cost millions, or hundreds of millions.

This is the early stage of the emergence of a pandemic strain (animal to human transmission, some evidence of human to human transmission). History tells us that.
 
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