Why is Bird Flu in the news so much? Is it really that dangerous?

Answer:
It's extremely dangerous.Over the last six months 78% of the people who were infected died.Most of these people had contact with poultry, but some were human to human transmission.The virus is picking up the changes necessary to pass easily from person to person. When this happens, we will have a pandemic.None of us have any immunity so we will all be in danger. We will probably be told to stay in our homes to lower the number of infections. There are already plans to close schools for three months.We should have food, baby food, pet food, medicine, water, etc. for that time.It's a very dangerous virus.The 1918 pandemic - the virus is similiar to this virus - killed 50 to 100 million people worldwide.

UPDATE:It鈥檚 true that there haven鈥檛 been as many deaths from the H5N1 avian virus as we usually have each year from seasonal flu. YET. This pandemic flu vs. number of seasonal flu patients is really not that difficult to understand. The very real fear 鈥?getting more worrisome every day 鈥?is that the virus will continue the mutations that it has undergone so far. Scientists are watching it mutate and it is acquiring the mutations necessary to spread easily from person to person 鈥?that鈥檚 when a pandemic will begin. The only thing it lacks at this point is to latch on easily in our upper airway, and scientists are saying that it is a matter of when not if.Today the World Health Organization confirmed another 15 cases in Indonesia this year. 13 of those people died including a pregnant woman last week. Seven cases could be traced back to sick poultry, but eight couldn鈥檛. That means those eight people picked it up from another person or possibly another animal that鈥檚 now spreading it. Neither of these is good.It is a terrible death. A virus enters the body and takes over a cell. It reproduces itself and spreads so quickly that our immune system literally floods the lungs with cells to fight the infection. This reaction is so massive that the cells kill lung cells and the lungs fill up with both infection, and the immune system response. This is often called a cytokine storm. The person literally drowns, and there is nothing that even our modern medical system can do that is effective to save a patient. The current patients are getting good medical care with anti-viral drugs, ventilators to breath for them, IV fluids 鈥?all of the care we鈥檇 expect to get now if we came down with a terribly bad case of seasonal flu. (Yearly seasonal flu deaths are about 36,000 not 100,000)But unfortunately these things won鈥檛 be available for patients once a pandemic begins. We have no surge capacity in our medical systems. There will be nowhere to put millions of patients. There won鈥檛 be enough healthcare workers to take care of these patients 鈥?no antiviral drugs.There isn鈥檛 a vaccine and they won鈥檛 be able to manufacture one until the pandemic virus emerges. Then it will take at least 6 to 9 months for the first vaccine. There will be only small amounts at first and this will be given to healthcare workers, firemen, first responders, etc.Most people with the pandemic flu will die and they will die at home while being taken care of by their families.At this point most of the strains of H5N1 are responding to Tamiflu. We don鈥檛 have nearly enough and just in the past month, health officials decided to double the dosage in an effort to give patients the best chance of survival. That means we have drugs for only half as many patients as we had last month.There is one strain in Egypt that seems to have been resistant to Tamiflu. I wouldn鈥檛 be surprised to see if more strains develop a resistance. However, I鈥檓 sure that every one who gets pandemic flu would like to chance to see if Tamiflu would work for them.

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It in itself is really not much more dangerous then a regular flu. The danger is if it mutates so that it is easily spread between humans because there is no innate resistance in human genes and there is no vaccine currently available that I'm aware of. Anyone that gets it they make a big deal about so it doesn't have a chance of spreading any more which would increase its chance of harmful mutation.

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u know that flue is epidemic. it is an orthomixovirus. it has many genes because of that it recombinates and in each season a new kind of this virus appeares.
dear friend for more informations see:
http://www.cdc.gov/search.do?querytext=b...

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i would be more worried about xrd tb in africa , 100% death rate amoungst hiv possitive and uncurable amoungst normal folks.

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I agree with starlight on this one. What is more interesting with this flu is that the ones who get it and die are typically young.. the older people get very very ill but dont die as often from it.

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Only about 150 deaths so far worldwide from bird flu but over 100,000 annually in the USA from normal flu. WTF?
Donald Rumsfeld used to be a major player and investor in Gilead (who ship Tamiflu all over the world) its a scam. They ramp up the fear factor using their neocon Zionist media mates, then rake in the profits from selling Tamiflu (which doesnt even friggin work).

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