Bird flu has been discovered at a Turkey Farm in North Carolina. The bird flu found is a mild, low-pathogenic strain of bird flu (H3N2) and poses no
risk to humans. Bird flu is as common among birds as regular flu is to humans. Its the highly deadly strain (H5N1) which poses a serious health risk
to humans.
news.yahoo.com
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Turkeys at a farm in North Carolina tested positive for a mild, low-pathogenic strain of bird flu which is common in birds and
poses no threat to humans, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Thursday.
Routine tests conducted on poultry in North Carolina found the H3N2 strain of bird flu in turkeys on a farm in Sampson County, in the eastern part of
the state, the USDA said.
A much more serious strain of the disease, known as H5N1, has been found in Asia and Eastern Europe and been blamed for 68 deaths.
The low-pathogenic disease found in North Carolina has appeared elsewhere in the United States this year, according to USDA.
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Whilst I originally opened this story because I expected it to be a gloss-over of an H5N1 outbreak in the United States, I was relieved to find out
that that was not the case. What is interesting, however, is that the occurance of "bird flu" is widespread worldwide, including the United States.
The media therefore should be more specific when reporting outbreaks of "bird flu'.
Panic is easily sparked, as Orson Welles would of attested, so maybe our media should refer to bird flu by its scientific denotions, "H3N2" and "H5N1"
instead. Education will prevent mass panic, not sensational and loaded terms such as "bird flu".
