Scientists Criticize U.S. Bird Flu Search
Birds from Latin America - not from the north - are most likely to bring deadly bird flu to the main U.S., researchers said Monday, suggesting the government might miss the H5N1 virus because biologists have been looking in the wrong direction. ...The United States' $29 million bird flu surveillance program has focused heavily on migratory birds flying from Asia to Alaska, where researchers this year collected tens of thousands of samples from wild birds nesting on frozen tundra before making their way south. ...Those birds present a much lower risk than migratory birds that make their way north from South America through Central America and Mexico, where controls on imported poultry are not as tough as in the U.S. and Canada, according to findings in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"The risk is actually higher from the poultry trade to the Americas than from migratory birds," said Kilpatrick, of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine in New York. Other researchers on the study came from the Smithsonian Institution. ...If bird flu arrives in Mexico or somewhere farther south, it could be a matter of time before a migratory bird carries the virus to the United States, Kilpatrick said. ..."It's not just a matter of worrying about who you trade with, but it's a matter of thinking about who do your neighbors trade with, and who do your trading partners trade with," Kilpatrick said. "We need to be looking both south and north." ...The study concluded that "current American surveillance plans that focus primarily on the Alaskan migratory bird pathway may fail to detect the introduction of H5N1 into the United States in time to prevent its spread into domestic poultry."
The report is the first to combine the DNA fingerprint of the H5N1 virus in different countries with data on the movement of migratory birds and commercial poultry in those countries. ...The study found that:
* Bird flu was spread through Asia by the poultry trade.
* Most of the spread throughout Europe was from migratory birds.
* Bird flu spread into Africa from migratory birds as well as poultry trade.
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U.S. Bird Flu Detection Plan Is Wild Goose Chase
Officials are looking in the wrong place to stop the spread of bird flu to the U.S., a new study suggests. ...The report predicts that bird flu will likely spread to the Americas through infected poultry. This poultry may then infect local wild birds...
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Poultry trade likely route for bird flu to Americas, experts say
The H5N1 strain of bird flu is most likely to enter North America through infected poultry trade, researchers say. ...British and American researchers studied how H5N1 moved out of China, across Asia and Europe and into the Middle East and Africa. The poultry trade was often the source, with migrating fowl then spreading it, they concluded.
"We conclude that the most effective strategy to prevent H5N1 from being introduced into the Western Hemisphere would be strict controls or a ban on the importation of poultry and wild birds into the Americas and stronger enforcement to curb illegal trade," they wrote in this week's online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
About three-quarters of new diseases originate in animals, the researchers noted. ...Genetic testing allowed most of the H5N1 outbreaks to be traced to the poultry trade, migratory birds or wild birds, but some outbreaks remained, such as those in South Korea, Russia, India, Pakistan and Cameroon, the researchers said. ...Illegal trade in chicken feces for fertilizer and fish food could be a culprit.
All of the news coverage focuses on the as-yet-unrealized pandemic potential of a highly virulent flu with a high fatality rate.
However, I support the underground "bird flu hypothesis," which is NOT discussed publicly:
Bird flu already is widespread, and has been bouncing back and forth between birds, animals and people for some time - the greatest danger is NOT its potential for a high fatality rate. Rather, the real danger from a bird flu pandemic is the disease's ability to exacerbate the already-existent chronic disease pandemic.
The microbiology: It appears that an infectious prion is hitchhiking on the bird flu virus, and causing myofibroblast proliferation in the body's connective tissues. This proliferation results in pathological "tissue remodeling," which in turn destroys vital organs and systems, usually quite slowly.
Occasionally, the tissue remodeling occurs rapidly in vital organs and is quickly fatal. Referred to as a "cytokine storm," such rapid myofibroblast proliferation and tissue remodeling tends to occur in younger patients with healthy, efficient immune systems - because the prion uses the immune system to spread through the body.
More often however, the prions spread through the body very slowly. The disease may take decades to destroy enough tissue to create symptoms, and even longer to cause death.
The potential economic and social impacts are beyond frightening. Most of the world's nations already are reeling from the impacts of the chronic disease pandemic, including the costs of supporting people who are becoming disabled at younger and younger ages, as well as the disease's ability to cause genetic mutations and thus, to create 'genetic disease.'
IMO - The only way to deal with this pandemic threat is to openly share information and data for the common good, not profit.
And oh yeah, stop killing off all the microbiologists who actually know what's happening.
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It's really the medications that I worry of running out of, food wise we could have lasted weeks, but
the cough syrups, vapor rubs, tylenol, sudafed, that sort of thing was quickly diminished. I definitely need to plan and learn more about storing otc
medications and home remedies and concoctions that I could perhaps make.
