Slashdot Mirror
Deadly Version of Bird Flu Found in Romania
CMan0 writes "The BBC reports that a deadly version of the bird flu has been found in Romania. Several ducks and chickens have died on a farm in Romania this month of the disease, it has been confirmed. It's mentioned that the disease is spreading very rapidly, as the last known location of the disease was Siberia, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan in August and the 1st of October in Turkey." From the article: "People appear dazed by what is happening, but since it was confirmed that this is the strain of the bird flu virus found in Asia, they have begun co-operating closely with officials sent to collect their birds, our correspondent says. Turkey has already reported the discovery of the lethal strain of the virus among birds in the west of the country. The EU has banned imports of live birds and poultry products from Romania and Turkey. EU veterinary experts said on Friday that the bird flu outbreak did not represent a risk to the general public 'at present'."
Having the farmers hiding their birds from the government isn't helping. They're trying to protect their property, but in the end they'll end up causing many more to die.
Also, with migratory ducks and swallows (of the laden variety), we're going to see this all over europe in the coming weeks.
Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/
This response in Europe can be eqated to the little dance that boxers and wrestlers always do before a fight, just circling around, testing each other, somewhat afraid to hit the other.
So, if we don't hit the opponent, to the tune of billions of dollars of fast-track pharmaceutical research, and immediate and strict quarantines, we are going to get hit first, and it will cost us dearly.
These bloody poultry farmers, solely financially motivated, need to be brought down off their high horses, and realize that this isn't Mad Cow.
I am deeply saddened to see this comment coming from someone who has invested himself in higher education. Perhaps before they fill your head with all that troubling knowledge they should encourage skeptical thought?
There are much more devestating agents that would appeal to those that wanted to strike a civilian population. Do not let your paranoia trump your common sense. The evil-brown-people do not want to eat your babies.
Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!!! There's a slight possibilty that this virus could mutate to pass from a bird to a human. And if that happens there's a slight possibilty that the virus could then mutate to pass from human to human. And if that happens there's a slight chance of a pandemic along the lines of the 1918 spanish influenza occuring, which had nothing to do with Spain, and the fact that it achieved such a high death count in the very year WWI ended was entirely coincidental. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN JUST AS DEADLY REGARDLESS!!
I call bull on the bird flu hype. It's likely this disease has been around for a much longer time that it has been fashionable to run frantic news reports on it.
You know the hype is overblown just a wee bit when the government has to tell people to calm down.
Take a Lemsip, chicken soup(no pun intended), some antibiotics, get a lot of rest and you'll be fine. I'm 99.9% certain. Remember SARS? Yeah, it's kind of hard to trust the doomsayers after that paticular fiasco.
Bird Flu. Give me a break. Fatal Traffic Accidentitus. Now THERE'S a killer. 40,000 every year in the US alone. Are you scared to sit into your car every morning? You aren't!?!
May the Maths Be with you!
(a) no surprises yet - you can't stop migrating birds - especially during migration season; /. is the place you're finally hearing about this - we need to talk.
(b) if
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
There have always been famines, tsunamis, floods and earthquakes in any given year. Very convenient for those that think the end is near. They always think the end is near. The end has never been near. The Bible is just an early example of a news outlet that wants eyeballs. And if you want eyeballs, if it bleeds it leads. The bird flu is a big problem, but I think the threat to humans is over-hyped by the media. Remember all those stories last year during the vaccine shortage that had all those geezers in long lines? How did that hype-fest turn out?
Unless you are a poultry worker or otherwise handle wild fowl you are not at risk. This disease is spread bird to man but not man to man.
If a farmer wants to protect his livestock from being destroyed he's being nuaghty but he's not directly endangering that many people in that single act. It's stupid and socially irresponsible. But it's also not something that is that out of line with common practices in other areas.
There are a variety of zoonotic diesaases that can be transmitted to animal handlers and we don't panic over those. Most Flu's in fact come from Bird's via pigs. And many of those, unlike bird flu, can be transmitted from man to man.
There's loads of prarie dog and mouse diseases with high fatality rates in human's like Yserina Pestis or Hanta Virus. Yet we don't all wear bunny suits when we put out mouse traps in your houses. The people who vaccum prarie dog warrens to transplant them are actying just as rashly. Pox viruses can be caught from animals and have killed more humans than all viruses in histroy combined.
Yet we don't panic over these. This is all rubbish except to the poultry industry workers and owners. Not that the farmer's should not be prudent and do the right thing and slaughter their animals. But they have a right to ask not for an over reaction or excess culling.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Unless you are a poultry worker or otherwise handle wild fowl you are not at risk. This disease is spread bird to man but not man to man.
Not yet. But what's keeping the scientists and politicians across Europe awake at night is the possibility that someone already infected with human influenza will contract H5N1 and it will mutate. The message we're getting from the scientific community over here in Europe is that it's not a case of if, but when. Its being taken so seriously that here in the UK plans are already being explored by Government on what to do when the first cases of human to human transmitted H5N1 arrives. Depending on how fast the virus spreads and how fast we do or don't react to it, the death toll could be anywhere between 50,000 to 750,000 people. Here's another BBC Article on the subject, published just today !!
Remember all those stories last year during the vaccine shortage that had all those geezers in long lines? How did that hype-fest turn out?
Or how about SARS...which was a lot of hype over nothing?
Or West Nile..which was hyped up, but barely killed anyone?
Or Dan Rather's documents about Bush that turned out to be fake?
Or the reported rapes and murders that supposedly happened in New Orleans, which turned out to be false?
Or the news reports that said there could be 60,000 people dead after Katrina...and it turned out to be about 1200?
Or the deadly/toxic water in New Orleans that turned out to be not much more harmful than their rain run-off?
And that's just recent stuff that I can think of off the top of my head.
So excuse me if I don't seem too concerned about this whole avian flu thing.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
I'm seeing a lot of people trying to spread calm in this thread by assuring everyone that it isn't so bad. You'll have to excuse me if I listen to groups like the World Health Organization over some random guy on Slashdot. The WHO has quoted death tolls anywhere between 7 million and 100 million worldwide, depending on the lethality of the strain when (not if, but when) it mutates.
The virus HAS spread person to person in a few instances, despite what people on here are saying. However it has not mutated to a form that can be EASILY transmitted from person to person. Most of the experts agree that this will happen, although they also acknowledge that the strain probably won't be as lethal when it mutates, which is good. It currently has around a 50% mortality rate, whereas the great Spanish Flu pandemic that killed so many people earlier this century only had around a 5% mortality rate.
Think I'm being alarmist? Here's what one acknowledged expert in the field says: "In our lifetime, we have not seen a disease sweep through a community and people die so fast that there's no one to take care of them at the hospital and there's no one to bury them," says Dr. Greg Poland, chief of the Mayo Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Minnesota. "That's what will happen in a pandemic. It would be more deaths than all the world's wars in all of human history. All within the space of six to 18 months."
Flu pandemics happen all the time. Around every 30 years or so on average, and we're due for the next one. The current flu virus out there is one we are very vulnerable to, so naturally scientists are concerned (I've been following New Scientist coverage of the bird flu for the past year and a half or so, this isn't something new).
Panicking won't do any good. Neither will assuring yourself that everything will be just fine and that God will protect you. The reality is likely to be somewhere halfway between the best case scenario and the worst case scenario. If the virus mutates (as experts seem fairly certain it will), chances are someone you know and love may die from it.
Are you reading the Japanese edition of "the" bible, where it says "tsunami"? Or are you just falling for the fortuneteller's fallacy, where open-ended descriptions of vaguely specified bad events are credited with "prediction" when they inevitably occur? It's certainly not the part of a bible where god comes back to save us - they always hold off on that one until after we give all our money and power to the priests. Let's not give away the farm to the oldest scam in the book, literally (puns intended).
--
make install -not war
However, given there's almost no evidence, and numbers like 50 thousand to 1 million in the UK alone are being bandied around, I wonder what Ladbrokes would take on spread bets? My prediction: based on the BSE ``scientists talk nonsense to secure research funding'' debacle, the actual deaths will be about 1% of the lowest estimate.
ian
Nah, but hunting birds involves handling bleeding carcasses, taking them home, cleaning the guts in a residential area (perhaps tossing them in the garbage causing further dissemination)... Now, the virus may be destroyed by cooking, but the three steps preceding that clearly put many people in the hunter's proximity at risk of viral contamination.
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Not only can't many of these farmers survive without their livestock, they probably can't be replaced. At best, they'll be replaced with the genetic freaks that are common in commercial agriculture in the industrialized world. At worst, most of the farmers will go out of business and be forced into cities and factories, to be replaced by a large agribusiness concern.
So-called "heirloom" breeds, animals well-suited for small farms because of their survival instincts and ability to reproduce, are quickly becoming a thing of the past. And it's more than just economics that is the cause.
The developed world is waging agricultural warfare on the developing world. One of the first targets in Iraq (accidentally of course) was a seed bank, containing thousands of species of irreplacabale genetic material, the lifeblood of agricultural progress and a threat to the manufactured livestock of agribusiness and rising biotech companies. Sadly, it wouldn't surprise me if the "bird flu" crisis were as manufactured as the reasons for the Iraq war.
Of course, it's not that these unique agricultural products can't be re-discovered, with the help of big genetics corporations of course. But those corporations certainly won't recover a genetic trait or a unique species without a licensing agreement, and yearly fees. Thus, the small farm is destroyed, by hook or by crook, and its operators forced either into urban life or having their profits perpetually taxed away by agribusiness.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
So it's killed 60 people in the last few months. Passive smoking kills 30 a day. Why the big deal over the bird flu?
I think it's good to be prepaired for a worst case senerio, but in all reality, any two flu strains could merge and create a super flu at any given time, and any two flu strains could merge and die at any given time. So I really don't think its worth panicing, nor posting on SlashDot.
This reminds me of that old joke:
"It's alright, I've never had any serious accidents while driving."
"You're only going to have one."
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
Absolutlely right! I'm organizing a flu immunisation program in my local area (South West UK), and we want to jab as many people as possilble. The vaccines wont do anything to protect against bird flu, but what we don't want is for someone to have both at once. If that happens there is the risk of the viruses 'interbreeding' and then you've got a much more lethal flu that goes human to human.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Well, Biblical "end times" are supposed to be rife with anarchy, disease, famine, and natural disasters. Looks like we -might- be on the pinacle of such events, if indeed things start getting worse.
On the other hand, there's a group of people that thinks the book of Revelations in the Bible is merely a very insightful template for the eb and flow of government: a very dramatic example of how a typical government falls appart and a new one comes into its place, including the political/social impressions of the events as well.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Stuff That Matters.