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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'."
First famine.
Then Tsunami.
Then Flood and earthquake.
Now a plauge.
Which part of the bible is this again?
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/
It should be noted that the dead birds are from an area next to the Danube's Delta, which is the biggest delta of Europe, and where millions of wild birds from many species live or pass through on their migration route. It is therefore little surprise that such a busy nexus was touched by the virus. As far as I know, this particular virus was not thought to be dangerous to humans as such, but the possibility if it combining with the human version was the concern.
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Ladies and gentlemen, we are awaiting the appearance of Chicken Little for her weekly news statement...... hold on..... word has just been released..... Chicken Little has been destroyed to prevent the spread of the avian flu after her recent visit to Romania. Perhaps this time the sky really is falling.
As much as I hate to hear about these things, I cant help but think "Oh no I just had a BIRD FLU over my house..." ah.. ahaha.. hehe... argh.. OK! I'll shut up! But it was funny last night when I was at the bar.
I guess that will heavily affect RFC2549 services - IP over avian carrier.
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.
Turkey has the bird flu?
/thats all I have. Not very good after all.
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!
There's a Flu Wiki that's a good starting point for information about avian influenza. For people who want to follow the news more closely, they can wander over to this discussion board.
(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?
So forgive me if I am underwhelmed by a web site that quotes ten year old research papers and where the emerging deseases pages don't list (any strain) of influenza and hasn't been updated since April.
Think global, act loco
um, how about "you're an idiot"?
The most doom-laden worst-case scenarios I've seen are 50,000 deaths in the UK (i.e. about one in a thousand people), with the death-rate disproportionately borne by the very young, the very old, and those with impaired immune systems. An appalling tragedy should it happen, but a long way off the end of the world as we know it.
Not mentioned in the article is how the flu is actually turning birds into vampires. Seriously.
adventure-today.com
McDonalds is introducing a 2 for 1 Chicken McNugget promotion
What i want to know is are there any migrations of birds from overseas such as africa and such?
I forget where I read it but I came across something that said the US was concerned about migratory paths through Alaska. Since parts of the Aleutian Islands, the Bering Strait, etc. provide land masses only tens of miles apart between the Russian and American mainlands it would provide easy stepping stones between the two continents. I'm not sure if there are any migratory paths along those routes or not, but it's definitely within the realm of possibilities. So while you may not see migratory routes directly between Africa and the US there's the possiblity of a path for the virus to north America through Alaska.
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.
Although we have advanced technologically since the last serious epidemic and are able to communicate effectively allowing people to take precautions, there exists one serious difference between modern Western society and previous. Our ultra clean lifestyles of the last 50 years or so mean our imune systems have not faced the daily bacteria count of previous generations. While we may appear healthier and wealthier, are we really as robust?
VIRUS IS NOT BACTERIA. Viruses are always, constantly, wildly mutating, always have, always will be. The viruses out there today are not the same that roamed the land 50 years ago. As a result, our immune systems are not adapted to what our grandpa's was.
It makes NO difference how "tough" you are. We're talking about an unexpected random mutation producing a particularly deadly virus. It can happen anytime. Sometimes, quite seldom, thank God, other factors appear which make it even more dangerous, such as ability to spread using wildlife.
The interesting thing, for me, is not this fact. This has been known for decades. No, the truly interesting fact is that despite all our knowledge, the solution is still hampered by our economic models and by good old greed.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
The Plague of Justinian was possibly the most devastating pestilence of the ancient world. Lasting fifty years, it arrived in the Imperial capital, Constantinople, in 542 A.D. Mortality in the city reached as high as 10,000 per day. Ships were loaded with the dead, towed out to sea, and abandoned. Fortification towers were unroofed, filled with corpses, then re-roofed.
The most famous pandemic was the Black Death, which, like a lot of the perturbations that perennially rattled the cage of Western Civilization (Aryans, Mongols, Huns, Turks, gunpowder, etc) originated in Asia. From 1346 to 1361, the epidemic killed up to one-third of the population of Europe.
The last pandemic ravaged Europe in the seventeenth century and is best known to us as the Plague of London, 1665-66. This is the one chronicled by Samuel Pepys in his diary (which most of us didn't mind reading in high school because of all the sexual content). Since the printing press was now available, this was the first epidemic in which the populace was kept thoroughly informed of the latest in cutting-edge medical knowledge. One pamphlet informed its readers that the plague was caused by "eating radishes, a cat catter wouling, immoderate eating of caviare and anchovies, tame pigeons that flew up and down an alley, and drinking strong heady beer." Rumors that syphilis prevented the disease caused the gentlemen of London to storm local houses of ill-repute. English physicians apparently knew better; many just left the country.
Ed Uthman, MD
Pathologist, Houston/Richmond, TX, USA
Avian flu is dangerous because people get if from eating livestock and then spread it to other people.
From the BBC Health website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3422839.stm
There is nothing more practical than a good abstract theory.
"No human cases of bird flu have been linked to eating poultry"
http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/library/DS/00566.html
In regards to madcow though I would like to state that my whole family stopped eating beef since the first suspicions regarding the illness in cattle in this country. My grandmother's sister Caberia Hind died at St. John's hospital in Santa Monica, California and was never counted in the official statistics regarding variant-cjd despite that being the diagnosis that came back after they shipped her head to the CDC for analysis. I am not making this up. This occurred in the mid 90s.
They claimed she had acquired it from her europe trips where she traveled frequently. If i recall correctly they CLAIM the only person to die in the united states acquired it overseas and died in florida. To this day we're still seeking an answer as to why she was never counted in the official record.
My family after seeing the horrible death Caberia went through decided they were better off without the risk of eating beef.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
People should be concerned and governments should be taking actions. And people in US should be concerned their government is lagging in preparation. Let me give some facts. The flu from 1918 (the Spanish Influenza) had a mortality rate b/w 2.5% and 5%. It killed over 20 mil people and virtually all people on earth had had it at one point. It circled the globe in less than 6 months. Thats in 1918. It is determined that it was an avian flu strain as well. All the flu viruses that we get each year are thought to be a variant of the spanish Influenza virus, to which we have some immunity and therefore the body's immune system reacts faster. The H5N1 (avian flu) has a mortality rate of over 50% so far! I dont know if you realize what that means. 50% combined with the way flu viruses spread. In a matter of 3-4 weeks we could have a third of the US population getting sick with half of that third dying! You do the math. And the hospitals and the medicine stockpiles will last you for about nothing. The vaccine being developed for it is promissing but there is no guarantee it will work on the strain that will cause the pandemic. Here is a twist. To mass-produce a flu vaccine, companies use chicken eggs. But its an avian flu and kills chickens. So that doesnt go smoothly. Other methods of producing vacines are years away and still in research. There are 2 drugs that can help you fight it - Tamiflu and Relenza. Latest reports are that H1N5 is showing resitence to Tamiflu. In Japan, where Tamiflu is wildly used for fighting regular flu, reistence rate is also high and raising. Government estimates we have enough stockpiles of Tamiflu to threat only 2 million people with another 800k on the way and 2.5 on order. You want more bad news? They all work fine and dandy if you are already taking them as preventive measure *before* you get sick. If you get sick and start taking them, their effectiveness drops becuase the multiplication rate of the virus is so high (Tamiflu works by blocking a key protein of the virus (neuraminidase) which is involved in the spreading of the virus).
The poultry farmers aren't just motivated by money. Poultry to them, especially in some of these poorer nations, is what provides them their ability to live.
I don't think you would like it much if your nation's government came along, proceeding to confiscate and destroy your computers, even those running Linux or OS X, to prevent the spread of a computer worm. Now remember, you most likely could get by without your computers, unlike many of the poultry farmers.
Perhaps the richer countries should purchase these birds at market prices, and then proceed to destroy them. It gives the farmers incentive to get rid of the birds, and helps ensure a greater number are destroyed. It costs a bit of money, but probably far less than if the flu were to spread.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
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 !!
From the obviously-ancient-topnews section;
Bush gets reelected as President for his second term!
Giant-Tsunami hits the Pacific Ocean!
Time Warner aquires AOL Online!
okay...well i live in romania (the north-eastern part, so nowhere near the infected areas)
this is in now way news...it's been on the local news for the past days (weeks even)...i've also seen a few reports about it on cnn...
the locals aren't trying to protect their birds...they don't want to risk it. the gouverment has promised to pay for the birds which are being killed.
Your body attacks it, your lungs fill with liquid and you die. Those who are very young, old, or with unhealthy immune systems will survive it. The 55% mortality rate is acros those who've gotten it so far. The mortality rate of a healthy person is around 80%.
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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
This exchange of genetic material between viruses is known as the "antigenic shift" and is believed to be the cause of influenza pandemics such as the 1918 Spanish Flu:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigenic_shift
"Antigenic shift is the process by which two different strains of influenza combine to form a new subtype having a mixture of the surface antigens of the two original strains. The term antigenic shift is specific to the influenza literature; in other viral systems, the same process is called reassortment or viral shift.
Antigenic shift is contrasted with antigenic drift, which is the natural mutation over time of known strains of influenza (or other things, in a more general sense) to evade the immune system. Antigenic drift occurs in all types of influenza including influenza A, B and C. Antigenic shift, however, occurs only in influenza A because it infects more than just humans. Affected species include other mammals and birds, giving influenza A the opportunity for a major reorganization of surface antigens. Influenza B and C only infect humans, minimizing the chance to mutate drastically.
Flu strains are named after their types of hemagglutinin and neuraminidase surface proteins, so they will be called, for example, H3N2 for type-3 hemagglutinin and type-2 neuraminidase. If two different strains of influenza infect the same cell simultaneously, their protein capsids and lipid envelopes are removed, exposing their RNA, which is then transcribed to DNA. The host cell then forms new viruses that combine antigens; for example, H3N2 and H5N1 can form H5N2 this way. Because the human immune system has difficulty recognizing the new influenza strain, it may be highly dangerous. Such combinations caused, for instance, the infamous Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918 which killed 40 million people worldwide. Influenza virus which have undergone antigenic shift have also gone on to cause the Asian Flu pandemic of 1957, the Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968, and the Swine Flu scare of 1976."
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
Here is a very comprehensive FAQ that the WHO has published. To all those who posters who are questioning the severity of the threat: the FAQ indicates that 2 of the 3 necessary prerequisites for the flu becoming a pandemic have been met.
e nza/avian_faqs/en/index.html
http://www.who.int/entity/csr/disease/avian_influ
It led me to this page as well as to a rather unfortunate article from the KKK.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
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"
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Human community when CDC confirmed that the Human population has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of its all time high, since the avian influenza pandemic. Coming on the heels of a recent UN survey which plainly states that Humanity has lost more population, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Humanity is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent United Nations comprehensive population count.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Humanity's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Humanity faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Humanity because Humanity is dying. Things are looking very bad for Humanity. As many of us are already aware, Humanity continues to lose. Blood flows like a river of red ink.
First world populations are the most endangered of them all, having lost 98% of their population. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time World leaders Toni Blair and Vladimir Putin only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Humanity is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
United States leader George Bush states that were about 6.5 billion humans on Earth. How many Humans are there? Let's see. Before the Pandemic the number of Humans versus Troll posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 6.5 billion/5 = 1.3 billion Trolls. Troll posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Slashdots posts. Therefore there are about 2.6 billion Trolls on Slashdot. A recent count revealed 2 Troll posts for every Human post. Therefore there must now be (2.6 billion/5 = .5 billion) Humans left
Due to the troubles of Washington, abysmal reproduction and so on, Humanity went out of business and was taken over by other primates who produce another troubled organism. Now Humanity is almost dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Humanity has steadily declined in population share. Humanity is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Humanity is to survive at all it will be among organism dilettante dabblers. Humanity continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Humanity is dead.
Fact: Humanity is dying
You got it seriously wrong on that one - it's not the heads of state that dislike/hate Eastern Europe at all - it's the populace! People don't like the idea of cheap "Eastern" European labour undercutting their wages. The governments on the other hand love the idea of the economic turbulence they imagine is "development". Even worse the governments accept US/UK influence on the Turkish issue.
The Central and Eastern European countries that joined the EU have always been central to European culture - it's only the last 50 years behind the Iron Curtain that stopped them. Personally I welcome them back into the fold as valued Europeans - unlike the Turkish hordes once again attempting to invade and conquer Europe. When, oh when, will they get it into their heads that they're Asians Most Europeans would take Romania/Bulgaria [into the EU] over Turkey any time! The EU is not only a trading block - we're a cultural union as well. That's why we cannot accept the "bridge between the Muslim and Western world"-argument. We're not in the business of developing Asia/the Middle-East/North Africa under the EU umbrella. Turkey should look to it's neighbours for economic success, I'm sure they'll do well (seriously).
So excuse me if I don't seem too concerned about this whole avian flu thing.
I'll tell you why this concerns me. For the last couple of weeks we have been hearing bird flu everywhere, then Bush announces that if the flu hit the US he will use the military to keep order. They see their power slipping, this could just be the ace in the hole to retain power and finally transform us into the facist state they have been laying the groundwork for for years.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
In Europe, dot is used to separate 10^3's and comma to indicate decimal. so 40,000 is 40 to this guy. 40.000 is 40 000 to at least 300 000 000 of us :).
So stop being a smart ass about the wrong thing. Focus on his english instead, which really sucks.
However I bet this guy is smarter than you because unlike you, he is partly bilingual. Turkish is not Greek or Chinese but is definetely a much more complicated language than English and you should show respect to ppl who can speak it.
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?
So is this evolution taking place, or is the Intelligent Designer designing a virus that could potentialy wipe out a whole bunch of us?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
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.
Trolls post off topic and/or with no interest in the forum other than disrupting it into flames.
My post was not off topic. The thread was about the avian flu and the avian flu is being spread through livestock. Given that I don't think bringing up eliminating livestock is off topic, it is just an unpopular idea.
Pulling apart that "troll" label a little further I also have a significant posting history which anyone can see. It is obvious I am not on slashdot for the sole purpose of jerking people's chains.
My post may be modded down as low as it can go, but karma was and will remain "excellent".
The only thing the mods have accomplished in modding my post down is proving is that they have a low tolerance for views other than their own.
A sure sign of a provincial and narrow mind.
No offense.
Mate. Can we PLEASE stop with the conspiracy theories??? If you can bring yourself to even suspect that the avian flu might have been manufactured by big pharma, what's next? We never went to the moon? Aliens built the pyramids?
As for the Iraq seed bank - get real for a second. It's WAR. The Yanks don't give two flying fucks what they are bombing as long as it looks good on Fox News. Stop seeing a conspiracy in everything - it's war (and worse, a war based on a monumental set of lies which they can no longer cover up, so it's bound to get even more senseless).
Not that this matters, but I am from Romania and would rather people talk about scientific facts and give sensible ideas on how to deal with the flu, rather than go on about evil conglomerates.
Come ON.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- G.B. Shaw