Avian bird flu H5N1??

Phnom_Penh said:
Problem is its all speculation, nobody really knows.
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Actually, it's pretty much inevitable. These pandemics come round from time to time, as per the examples given in the post a couple above yours. There's not a lot we can do about it.

Long story short... if, or more likely when, the virus mutates so that it can transfer from one human to another, rather than just from bird to bird and bird to human, then a lot of people will die. The reason being that the flu will be pretty much unlike anything that we have any immunity to. Our bodies will have a harder time than usual fighting it and weaker people (the elderly, children, those with weak immune systems, etc) will die. It might be possible to produce some kind of vaccine, but it's really too early to be sure how it will turn out.

Yes, there is some measure of scaremongering. On the other hand, there is also some measure of certainty that it will hit and it will hit hard. Denial of this only belies a lack of understanding of how these things happen.
 
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vonhelmet said:
Actually, it's pretty much inevitable. These pandemics come round from time to time, as per the examples given in the post a couple above yours. There's not a lot we can do about it.
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That wasn't my point, my point is that we don't know how many people are going to be killed, not whether it will happen or not.
 
Phnom_Penh said:
That wasn't my point, my point is that we don't know how many people are going to be killed, not whether it will happen or not.
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Ah, fair enough.

Still, it's fair to say that given the numbers in the past, it doesn't look good. We might stand a chance with a decent vaccine but that depends on developing one quick enough, cheap enough and just making enough of it.
 
vonhelmet said:
Ah, fair enough.

Still, it's fair to say that given the numbers in the past, it doesn't look good. We might stand a chance with a decent vaccine but that depends on developing one quick enough, cheap enough and just making enough of it.
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All is not doom and gloom:
Source New Scientist

Common cold may save us from bird flu

Adenovirus, one cause of the common cold, may help protect against pandemic flu. Two separate groups of US scientists have successfully vaccinated mice and chickens with an adenovirus-based DNA vaccine against different strains of H5N1 bird flu. And they now want to test it in humans.

The teams used a crippled adenovirus, which cannot replicate, as a carrier for the gene for the main surface protein of H5N1, haemagglutinin (HA), to stimulate a powerful immune response in the animals.

Andrea Gambotto at the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues, and a separate team led by Suresh Mittal at Purdue University, Indiana, each made vaccines using the HA from the H5N1 flu that killed people in Vietnam in 2005, and with the HA from the H5N1 that first jumped to humans in Hong Kong in 1997.

In both studies, both vaccines completely protected mice from the virus from which the HA was sourced – and Gambotto’s group found it worked in chickens as well. But each vaccine also protected against the other strain. Such cross-protection is very limited with standard vaccines made of killed flu viruses.
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IMO this is all scare mongering less than 200 people have died so far in the whole world. And these people all lived in nations of lower standards of living.

I doubt it will mutate and if it does the our general health is probably high enough to fight off the desease, if not the NHS/Private hopitals will have enough to deal with the worst cases. Only worry about this if you are old,infrim, young, low imunity, or some other high risk group.

It is nutoriously difficult to get the Flu we only ever get propper flu once every several years at worst. (TBH I think I may have only had it once or twice in my life)
 
Thats only if it mutates, problem is, it's more than likely it will. As for general health being able to fight off the disease, well it's all good to say that, but the human race has no immunity at all to this virus.
 
fatiain said:
OMG WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE..................................
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Yep you got that right, just not from bird flu, global warming, a meteor , lack of oil,rising sea levels or anything else the papers seem to drasticaly over emphizise...

But we are all going to die, its part of nature..
 
William said:
William leaps into his tinfoil bedsheets wearing a biosuit and a sieve
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Here's a picture William just emailed me:-
typec4gy.jpg

:D
 
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