10.19.2005
The birds! The birds!
I got a question over email: "oh we are or are not going to all die from bird flu?".
I didn't have a good answer until just now, when I saw this article on the NYTimes website. Basically, the article says that the Middle East and East Africa are at risk of having bird flu enter the region, carried by wild migratory birds, and that they are not prepared to respond due to the difficulty of culling birds if chickens do start passing flu around. The article doesn't mention, but other important factors include, the limited capacity of the public health systems to purchase vaccines or vaccinate widely if the epidemic starts and widespread immune deficiency due to HIV and other diseases.
So the answer to my friend's question is that "we", wealthy citizens of Europe and North America who have been the real focus of the speculation and scare-mongering so far, are not all going to die from bird flu. The people who will die from it, if anyone, are the people who are poor and sick already, and for them it will be just one more pound on their already intolerable burden.
I didn't have a good answer until just now, when I saw this article on the NYTimes website. Basically, the article says that the Middle East and East Africa are at risk of having bird flu enter the region, carried by wild migratory birds, and that they are not prepared to respond due to the difficulty of culling birds if chickens do start passing flu around. The article doesn't mention, but other important factors include, the limited capacity of the public health systems to purchase vaccines or vaccinate widely if the epidemic starts and widespread immune deficiency due to HIV and other diseases.
So the answer to my friend's question is that "we", wealthy citizens of Europe and North America who have been the real focus of the speculation and scare-mongering so far, are not all going to die from bird flu. The people who will die from it, if anyone, are the people who are poor and sick already, and for them it will be just one more pound on their already intolerable burden.
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