SCI/TECH: Bird Flu Reaches UK, Bird Dies In Quarantine

It seems like only a couple years ago, SARS was going to kill us all. Now, the bird flu, give me a break. I think some people crave imminent doom, it's a great opportunity to gossip, but with the sense that the gossip is of the gravest urgency. IF it were to mutate to spread efficiently among humans, there is already a vaccine found to be effective.

An experimental vaccine appears to be effective against a strain of flu virus that experts fear could spark a devastating pandemic, offering the first evidence that any inoculation could provide a powerful weapon against the deadly microbe, a federal health official said yesterday.

Two doses of the vaccine produced an immune system response potent enough to neutralize the virus in tests on 113 volunteers who were injected as part of a federally sponsored study being conducted at three U.S. universities.

www.washingtonpost.com...

I don't think it's the end of mankind.....yet. But don't worry, I'm sure nature is working on other diseases to wipe us out, or maybe an asteroid will smash into the earth. But this current scare is "for the birds".


[edit on 21-10-2005 by 27jd]

I had not realized before this article that the Avian Flu was already in South America. Did the source say whether or not the South American parrots contracted the flu from the other birds--who were from an area already known to have the disease?

Yeah I dont think this quarantined bird caught it from the next cage of bird from Thailand. The original story said the "138 Parrots in a Bio Secure cage" right? Thats to stop any infections spreading in or out of the cage, right? I'd say that the bird caught the bird flu else where.

If birds from Canada had antibodies, that means the birds have beatten the virus, maybe the birds that live should be studied to see why they had beaten it. Having antibodies to this virus could mean the birds had contact with the virus or they were born with it and could be studied to develop a cure and not just a treatment.

I don't understand. If 'they' are open about the ramifications of a possible pandemic like Bird Flu killing off a good deal of the population, then they are fearmongering capitalists trying to scare you with their hype, but if they stay quiet as not to cause over concern or unnecessary fear, then it is a conspiracy and a failure to warn us ahead of time.

Could I also point out that if it does mutate it is only a possibility it will be a deadly strain, it's mortality rate and communnicability may be much less pronounced. It's prudent to be prepared for the worst but as of now we are not in the 'we're all doomed' bracket yet. Plus we have a much better armoury of drugs to alleviate even a deadly mutation than they had in 1918.

I read somewhere that the disease needs to be heated to be killed. So cold-climate countries are screwed....

I'm still new to ATS, so I don't know how to use the quote feature very well (sorry,) but I wanted to post a link to a news story that contains facts Valhall alluded to in a previous post in this thread about the parrot being next to other inftected birds in quarantine:

Dead parrot did have killer strain of bird flu
The first case of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which has already killed 61 people in the Far East, has been identified in Britain.

Scientists confirmed last night that a parrot, imported from Surinam in South America, contracted and died from the disease while in a quarantine unit in southern England. The parrot, which died on 16 October, was part of a consignment of 148 birds imported from Surinam that had been housed in a quarantine unit along with 216 exotic birds from Taiwan, where the virus has been found...

A second parrot that died in quarantine was also tested at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Weybridge, Surrey. Tissue from the two birds was pooled into one sample, so it is not known if only one or both was carrying the virus.

Many aspects of the bird flu scenario discussion frighten me. This snippet from the above-mentioned article quoting the UK Health Secretary is a good example of this:

Ms Hewitt said it was incredibly important to be as prepared as possible. When asked if the country would "grind to a halt" if a pandemic occurred, she told ITV1's Jonathan Dimbleby programme: "I think you're pointing very clearly there to the scale of the problems that could arise depending on just how bad a pandemic turned out to be. If you've got a pandemic flu ... anyone who's got any flu-like symptoms would be well advised to stay home and not spread it and people I think would be well advised to stay away from large crowds where, of course, there is the risk of the flu being spread. But these are things which we will make decisions on and give very detailed guidance if or when pandemic flu actually broke out."