What the Bird Flu and The Bush Administrion reminds me of...

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

thirty years after I heard it first. (MP3)

http://www.knology.net/~rareandfirsts/soworr.mp3

They were trying to scare us with the Commies back then...

[babylonsister]

1. I'm not even going to listen to that. Perhaps the

'commie' threat was real, but is this new threat honest? Or is the man forwarding it a fraud?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

2. Please... Listen to it...

If we can't laugh at times, our heads will explode and make messes others will have to clean up. :hi:

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. The difference is that the bird flu IS a real threat

those of us who have been following the science not from DC but the World Health Organization know it is REAL.

The other real danger is... see New Orleans? This is exactly how YOUR GOVERNMENT is treating this... just as seriously... and this time it is not a three day warning, but up wards of two years from current estimates

By the way, the Bird Flu, as a possibility entered my radar screen when we got the first WHO warnings when I was still working in EMS over seven years ago. Back then the US government started preparing... but once George took over all preparations all of a sudden stopped, and all of a sudden they are taking it "seriously" so they can scare the living daylights out of people

By the way WHO estimates range year to year from 20 to 100 million dead world wide... I have heard a wost case scenario as high as 200 million... but it assumes absolutely everything that can go wrong world wide going wrong... and at one point the person who issued this one said, it could conceivably be worst. That said, the BULK of casualties will NOT be in developed countries, but in Third World Countries that lack the infrastructure to deal with day to day health operations, let alone a sweeping epidemic disease. Yes I was a front line EMS worker in a developing world country where we KNEW chances were we were going to be among the first casualties ok. I might add... the worst case even considered a one in 20 killed world wide... which is a number most peoople cannot even conceive, but equivalent to the black death... yet our gov'ment is taking this far less seriously than oh China.. whichi should give you pause... or Canada, or France... again not surprising.

So you dismiss all of this at your own peril... I know we start hearing reports... methinks I will treat it as a disaster and stay home.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

4. Swine flu was supposed to be bad as well.... I'm still waiting for Mad

Cow disease to usurp the meat eaters of America.

Pandemics are interesting fodder for fear and dread, and I sincerely hope I am right and you are wrong.

But until it (bird flu) makes a serious appearance here in the States, I'll keep my eyes open and not worry excessively about it.

[babylonsister]

5. I agree, I'm not about to worry about the bird flu, especially

now when hurricanes are in my sights this year. Now we have to pick our poison. Sigh.

[MercutioATC]

7. Swine flu was an H1 virus. We've been exposed to them before.

H5N1 is an H5 virus. We've never been exposed to an H5 virus, so we have absolutely zero immunity.

That's one of the things that makes H5N1 particularly troubling...that and the fact that its rate of mutation seems to have increased over the last couple of years.

[REP]

6. Reminds Me of "Hun Atrocities" and the Excesses of the Wilson Admin

I just read a rather large book about the 1918 flu, the Wilson administration (and suppression of civil rights, etc) and how we had to fight the "Huns" there so we didn't have to fight them here. Deja vu all over again.