Mysterious Bird Deaths Nationwide

Could these events be Avian Flu Related?


This Bird Flu Pandemic has been shown the world over to hit the populations of birds first.

www.billingsgazette.com.../2005/09/18/build/sports/60-mt-outdoors.inc

www.sptimes.com...

www.thebrunswicknews.com...

www.kxmc.com...

www.charlottesvillenewsplex.tv...

Ok, I don't know it the cattle deaths are related to this phenomenon,
but there are LOTS of birds droping dead lately.

I saw one drop out of a tree dead at my feet at the library the other day!

Think they might not be telling us something? HUM?

As far as I understand and don't take my word on the details, it doesn't make sense for birds throuhgout the US to be dying from avian flu, becuase it doesn't affect all birds, and its limited to fowl (chickens, geese, etc etc), and because its simply not in the US yet. The disease is spread to domestic fowl via wild fowl, which migrate, and the group of concern is supposed to be hitting the urals and europe this month, not the US. Its by infecting the domestic fowl that a zoonoses is created, a pool of animals by which human epi/en-demics can pop out of. Also, they can determine when an animal dies from avian flu, I beleive, so if this is some mystery disease, then that means its not avian flu.

I would be more inclined to believing the deaths are related to West Nile Virus.
One of your links even mentioned the possibility and that the vets were looking into it.
A couple of the links you provided seemed to be of a possible poisoning than enything else. The one on the golf course for example as well as the last one on the dead cattle.

I am surprised though that some of the articles were months old and yet seemed not to have been updated (at least from web searchs).

Well the first link says it may be due to wind shear and considering they were found in water I am inclinded to agree, we know how deadly they can be for powerfull planes. Wrong place wrong time maybe.

The second one could be fowl play Something like this happened near me once but that was against dogs(some sicko hid poison in pieces of meat and buried it in the snow where children played as well as dogs...)

The Third link sounds like it could be West nile but I've never heard of them dropping dead in such numbers before.. Maybe a new mutation in the Virus' DNA? Worrying. Could be something else alltogether like Climate Change though, can't rule that out.

The fourth is a mystery to me. The article says it could be an "accounting error" but I find that hard to believe.

The last about the cows sounds like Chemical contamination because of the number of miscarriages.

If this were bird flu related someone would have picked up on it as there are lab tests that can be done to detect it.

[edit on 21-9-2005 by sardion2000]

[edit on 21-9-2005 by sardion2000]

Bird Flu is not just confined to poultry. It has been found in many mammals including tigers. It has been found in pigs and bats.

because it is an RNA virus it has the ability to adapt and mutate. So that means we do not yet know the limit of species it can infect.

www.voanews.com...
The authorities began testing workers at the Jakarta zoo after dozens of birds there, including peacocks and eagles, tested positive for the often-fatal H5N1 form of the virus.

"What we have known since late 2003 there have been outbreaks in poultry and ducks across Indonesia... and we know it has come and gone in many places, so basically the H5N1 is established and circulated in domestic birds, and also probably wild birds in Indonesia," he said.

So it seems that while it may have originated in poultry only, it has the ability now to infect many different species of birds and many other species of animals.

Agreed.

Since 1996-97 H5N1 has shown a rather rare ability to jump the species barrier. So far though, it has been direct contact for the index cases, which then, as in the case of the tigers, infected others within the zoo.

This particular negative strand RNA has been spreading through out S.E. Asia for years now and is endemic in many areas. This is distrubing since it now has a greater host range, which gives it more chances of encountering a mammal that is harboring another strain, which just might contain other human genes and allowing recombination into a H2H variant.

So far H5N1 (the northern Vietnam variant) has aquired the P627K sequence which is a wholelly human gene.

PS...Watch out for more info out of Jarkarta.