October 17, 2005

• Please excuse me from gym I've got this terrible cold coming on...
• Seems like the Personal Hygiene tips could come in handy for a lot of things.
• I'm still looking for the page that explains how to scream and shout and run about waving your sanitized hands over your head. And how about a useful article like Shoveling in Your Loved Ones
• I realize that it is much more fun to joke around and make snarky comments (which seems like MoFi has become) but anyone who is not taking H5N1 seriously is not paying attention. It is easy to keep up with the latest by doing a Google News search on "H5N1". By definition, this is a fairly slooooow moving process, so it doesn't grab one's attention in the same way that most of the day's headlines grab you. But this story is probably going to be one of the most significant stories of the early 21st Century. This virus is moving slowly but, it seems, inexorably toward a virus that will achieve human-to-human transmission. When it does millions will be affected and hundreds of thousands of people will die (and, as with the Spanish Flu, it won't just be the old and the babies... it will be otherwise healthy people in the prime of their lives). I don't see how it does anyone a service to point to something and then say, "but I'm not taking it seriously". It's like pointing at someone in your car who buckles their seat belt and saying: "Oh, you think we're all gonna die." There is fear-mongering and there is actual information (that may induce fear, which is useful as a natural self-preservation emotion). That being said, I'm not sure that a Wiki is the best way to distribute information like this. If I want reliable, quality information, I'm not looking for a site that anybody can edit.
• gee, mecurious.... take the fun out it why don't ya... other than that, you communicated that very nicely, well done!
• All in all, it behooves us to stockpile drugs immediately. Governments are also creating stockpiles to help cope with an emergency, but the WHO is not advising people to stockpile the drug themselves, Ryan noted. . . . *stockpiles anyway*
• I'm with mercurious. This is serious shit, and it will be coming to a neighbourhood near you. If you are not prepared you will most likely get sick, and some of you will die. If you don't take it seriously, don't at least try to prepare yourself, and so die, you'll simply join the pantheon of dumbasses including but not limited to; cyclists and motorcyclists who don't wear helmets; people who think seatbelts are part of a plot by 'The Man'; and people who drive after a few. Yay.
• The reason I'm not taking it seriously, mecurious, is because compared to war, drugs and road accident casualties, the deaths from H5N1 have been infinitessimal. Like I said, I'll be more worried when the thing looks like really going apeshit, cos there's fuck all I can do about it anyway. And I keep a hen. And MoFi has always been joking around and making snarky comments, from what I can see.
• Bird flu pandemic is stoppable.
• H5N1 is the new Y2K. It's mostly fearmongering and partly realistic. I don't think there have been any cases thus far where the flu has passed from person to person; it's always been bird-to-person. We're all just sitting around waiting for it to mutate. A while ago, related to Katrina, I mentioned that our Yellow Pages here have disaster preparedness instructions on the back pages. The newest editions have a "What to do in case of bird flu" section.
• For the past year or so, WHO has been sounding alarm bells over bird flu. Now that the mainstream media has picked up on it, and people are starting to take it seriously, the WHO is downplaying the risks. If there's a long enough gap between the isolation of a human-human mutation and widespread pandemic, then flu shots can be developed and we can all get one. Until that mutation appears, there's nothing we can do about it, except joke around and make snarky comments. In that vein, flu wiki is really fun to say. flu-wiki flu-wiki flu-wiki!!
• ...ok, so as far as I can tell, only 65 people have died from this, and a few hundred birds.
• Yeah...and that's great, only that's not what we're worried about. We're worried about the mutation of bird flu that can make it transmissable from person to person. How many people died in the 1918 pandemic would be a more relevant question.
• There is quite a bit of difference between our living standards now, and the living standards in 1918. Technological advance has been incredible. Hygeine and medicine are way beyond those levels. A pandemic from a mutated H5N1 may decimate the third world, which is bad enough, but I doubt it will have a serious impact in the West. Now, I hasten to add, I don't pooh-pooh the possibilities, which is why I posted the link. I did not post the link to make fun of it, even though I made a couple of comments. I've got a chicken out the back, there's a yard full of them over a fence, and myriads of water fowl just down the road, so if the thing mutates, I'm in rather a bad position.
• People saying there's nothing they can do about it is silly. The most likely scenario that will affect the largest amount of people is the disruption of your employment and quarantine. At the first hint of infection in your area, shelves will be stripped. Don't have a car? Tough shit for you. You won't be able to carry enough supplies to see you through a couple rough weeks. If you can't go to work, and aren't getting paid, do you have enough cash stashed to be able to buy things you need if they're even available? Supplies to stores will be disrupted and they'll not be keen on people congregating in places like large food stores anyway. And that presumes you're even allowed to be in the streets to find those things. Do you really want to be the people who, caught out, become a drain on horribly over-worked emergency workers? Cynical doesn't feed you. It is really that horrible to buy extra food and essential supplies that, should this not happen, you can use anyways?
• Would it get me jumped all over to say that if people stopped eating chicken, it might ease the numbers of chickens being bred/shipped/crammed into warehouses and lessen the risk? Mind you, I'm talking completely out of my ass on this, but it seems logical to me. I'm not a moralistic vegetarian. (I am a vegetarian, but I never, ever comment or judge anyone about their eating choices, so that's not where this is coming from.) Also, this has me scared to death. My sister is a type-I diabetic cancer patient with a compromised immune system, and I have a compromised immune system as well. If/when this comes, it'll be ugly for us.
• We're all just sitting around waiting for it to mutate Well that is what viruses do. They mutate. H5N1, for example, has developed a resistence to one of the main drugs for treating it: TamiFlu. Now there's a happy thought. If you are all expecting your government to do something, I hope you understand that governments respond to the outrage of the people (See: Hurricane Katrina) and not apathy. Apathy says "I don't care so why should you."
• Another big difference between now and 1918 is that an infected person in Bankok wouldn't be able to get off a plane in Vancouver in simply a matter of hours. It's a two-edged sword.
• "People saying there's nothing they can do about it is silly." I can't stop myself from catching a flu, moneyjane. I don't have that kind of close control over my immune system, sad to say. All those other things you wrote about are fair comment, and that's the reason for the existance of the flu wiki.
• "I hope you understand that governments respond to the outrage of the people (See: Hurricane Katrina)" Governments respond well to the cessation of revenue. In any case, most Western governments respond a good deal more efficiently to crises than did the retards in charge when Katrina bowled on thru'. "...1918 is that an infected person in Bankok wouldn't be able to get off a plane in Vancouver in simply a matter of hours." True, true. "..if people stopped eating chicken, it might ease the numbers of chickens being bred/shipped/crammed into warehouses and lessen the risk?" I just eat their eggs. I am vegetarian because I value the lives of animals. If we all stopped eating chicken, those billions of birds are still gonna be slaughtered, it's just their carcasses will go to waste, or, worse perhaps, rendered down and fed to other cattle. I favour a more humane method of keeping the animals, and a total negation of suffering in their eventual harvesting, which is completely do-able. At this point I don't harbour any illusions about the world going vegan; it just aint gonna happen. Best we can hope for is an awakening in people's attitude to the suffering of creatures. We can harvest food-animals without them suspecting, fearing, or feeling a damn thing. It's still not good, in terms of arbitrarily deciding when a living thing's existance ends, but it's a whole lot better than the present situation.
• WHO FAQ on Avian Influenza. If you feel we should downplay what the WHO tells us, then perhaps you'd like to install snooze buttons on your house's smoke alarms, as well.
• I am in absolute agreement with you, Chyren, on a more humane process being much more realistically achievable. Still, though, if the carcasses go to waste (and those animals will have died either way), won't the industry realize the demand isn't there and reduce the numbers of new ones being bred/slaughtered/shipped and reduce the risk? Still talking out of my ass, and it's not going to happen anyway, but in theory, it still seems to me like it could make a difference.
• And looking at my comment, I think I may seriously be in the running for the comma-crazy award of the day. ,,,,,
• Chy? It's more than a few hundred birds. From the WHO FAQ linked by mercurious above:

  Despite the death or destruction of an estimated 150 million birds, the virus is now considered endemic in many parts of Indonesia and Viet Nam and in some parts of Cambodia, China, Thailand, and possibly also the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Control of the disease in poultry is expected to take several years.

• "perhaps you'd like to install snooze buttons on your house's smoke alarms, as well." I just don't put batteries in them, and avoid making campfires in the middle of the floor. :) If there is evidence that I have to worry about bird flu more than I have to worry about, say, cancer, or getting hit by a car on the main road out here, I'll give it my strict attention, I can assure you. Anyway, aren't we all supposed to be dead from AIDS by now?
• 150 million birds is awful. I must have misread it or my brain refused to accept it. I was looking for the human toll and bleeped over the other bit.
• This is what happened where I live, and SARS in Toronto. Of 224 cases, 38 died. That's pretty damn high, and Toronto isn't exactly third world. At a certain point, the medical system can no longer sustain itself and services topple like dominos. In my opinion, the most important thing to do is be able to isolate yourself with enough supplies that you can avoid contact with others. Odds are that you will have to come close to other people or touch surfaces other people have touched to get whatever it is, and so staying the hell out of that mix is a very good idea - you can take precautions to avoid exposure to a virus, and I think it's your duty as a reasonable person to do so to prevent yourself becoming ill and passing it along to others. I'm going to have little sympathy for the ironically-sloganed t-shirt hordes wandering around going, "Dude!" *hack* *wheeze* *die* "Dude! *hack* *wheeze* *die* Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
• I'm also growing a fatter ass in the name of Pandemic Awareness; my asscular fat reserves could carry me through times of trouble. I've heard that men growing a larger penis works in a similar fashion. That would be 'peniscular' fat.
• Ok, then I've got my fat reserves covered.
• I think I'm with Chy on this one. Everytime we hear about something to worry about like this it turns out to be BS. Does anyone remember when our computers were supposed to melt down in the year 2000. I think part of this is a way for the US government to take people's minds off our stagnant economy and the war in Iraq. Besides, what can we actually do about this flu? I'll get a flu shot, but I do that every year. "Pay no attention to the bodybags, you all are going to die from this scary disease."
• from islander's link: A global pandemic of bird flu claiming millions of lives could be stopped if governments work together, say experts. Sorry, they'll have to repeat that after the governments stop laughing.
• This is the problem with protecting the public's health--no one gives a fuck about prevention and preparation, they only start worry after the fact, when people start getting sick. And then they'll complain that not enough was done to prevent it from happening in the first place.
• Hmm, that came out much crankier than I planned it to. It just frustrates me to see so many people mocking those whose job it is to educate the public about such things.
• I know how you feel. I'll take Chicken Little over Chicken Bodybag any day. It's not like anyone's being asked to donate a kidney or run a marathon for fuck's sake. Stock up on extra food and supplies. That's it. This is something I think it's important to be cranky about. Too bad there hasn't been some huge natural disaster in North America to wake people up.
• If there's a long enough gap between the isolation of a human-human mutation and widespread pandemic, then flu shots can be developed and we can all get one. That's one helluva big "if" - there's an interesting graphic here that gives some indication of how fast the 1918 outbreak spread. How quickly could the vaccine be developed and produced in large quantities? This Economist article isn't overly optimistic. 150 million birds is awful Yeah, but that's only(!) about the same as the number of chickens currently slaughtered worldwide every single day for food production (based on the most recent figures I've seen of ~55 billion per year) . The greed and depravity of intensive poultry farming may well backfire on the humans that tolerate and/or support it (i.e. all of us).
• Lara: It's not the eating the chicken part that's so bad, it's the cramming them into the warehouse and feeding them antibiotics that's going to kill us. In the East, they have piss-poor sanitation, here in the States, it's the cramped and unhealthy warehouse conditions that promote virus/bacteria growth and mutation.
• Yeah, like Mandyman says, it's lack of preparation what kills us. Knowledge about which medications might be useful as well as the basic 'bug-out-bag' and home provisions are things we can do; no need to go all out tinfoiy-survivalist and run out the streets or invest in bunkers and antipersonnel weapons. Yet. Personally, I have to plan for myself, eldery mother across town (and she keeps a pet chicken, oh boy...) and sister in the other side of the city. We've set up a simple system of keeping provisions (basically, bottled water and some canned goods) so any funny stuff happens, we have at least two places to run into. Of course, it all sounds simple until the city is teeming with zombie chickens... I've heard that men growing a larger penis works in a similar fashion. That would be 'peniscular' fat. / thru, eh, mind-power, attempts to increase penis-fat / no noticeable increase observed Shit, I'm fucked. *sigh*
• You know...I've heard there are people on the Internet that will help you increase your penis size. The Internet is invited to my birthday party.
• Mandyman has it. Unsurprising, as it is her field of expertise.
• The Daily Show on bird flu
• err, that's a quicktime movie, sorry forgot to mention that
• The annual death toll in USA of those who suffer 'common' flu is 50,000 .. give or take. These are usually the very young, the aged and those too poor to afford either to maintain a healthy immune system or medication to combat the virus. This figure does generate concern when considering bird flu. However, I understand that there have been no recorded instances to date, of human to human transference of bird flu. Given the number of 150 million birds which have died as a result of this flu against the number of humans who have died, it would seem the odds against mutation of a human to human strain are rather high. One feels a great deal of compassion and pity for all creatures who suffer needlessly for want of a little humane action. Given also that some if the most virulent viruses (virii?) seem to have been transferred from animals to human in recent times, logic must tell us that wide-spread education in ethical and humane treatment of animals and birds (if for no other reason than a necessity for future human health interests) would be a thoroughly sensible move.
• Another resource: Personal Pandemic Preparedness Plan Another wiki: ProfaniWiki
• Report shows U.S. only half ready for flu pandemic