How concerned are you about the bird flu?
102892
at this point, I am very concerned since only insects outnumber the birds in the world and they are airborn. The mutation could occur at any moment and infect humans. This is how the flu of 1917 or so occured and spread rapidly
461321
Yes...\n\nMy job requires looking at hundreds of avian influenza articles per week. It influences me as a form of torture.\n\nEventually, however, avian influenza will influence all of us. There is the possibility it will mutate into a form that infects upper respiratory tract cells, and thus spreads from person to person. The probability of that happening is undetermined. \n\nEven if that doesn't happen, avian influenza has had a profound affect upon the poultry industry of every country in which it has been found. The U.S. pountry industry (if you are in the U.S.) will be less affected than many other countries, because so many of our chicken's are raised indoors. Nevertheless, the U.S. pountry industry will have to undergo many regional culls. This will actually drive the price of poultry down, as we have seen in other countries, because people will be scared to buy chickens. The economic ripple effect will be felt by everyone, in one form or another.\n\nBut, we will survive. All chickens will be raised indoors, in time.\n\nThe U.S. might experience less regional outbreaks of avian influenza than other countries, because West Nile Virus has devastated local wild bird populations - meaning there is less of a vector for avian influenza to use. However, migratory bird populations, such as ducks, will still spread it to farms where chicken's and other poultry are exposed to the outdoors.
178306
The symptoms of bird flu (Avian influenza) are\nSore throat\nCough\nFever\nPneumonia\nRespiratory distress\nRespiratory failure\nLife threatening complications\nThe symptoms of bird flu can depend on which virus caused the infection. If you have flu like symptoms the chances of you having Bird flu are very very very very small. Bird flu is a virus that primarily affects birds. Humans have caught the disease but only in a few very rare cases in the Far East and in Turkey. All people who have caught bird flu had close contact with infected birds.
658904
H5N1 is not currently a threat, but the possibility of becoming a threat is very real.  If bird flu were to mutate to a form transmissable from human to human, this could be a potential disaster--similar to the influenza pandemic of 1918 that killed more people than WWI.  The 1918 flu traveled around the world and 20-40 million people died.  It was so bad, it shortened the average life expectancy by 10 years.\n\nRecent DNA studies have shown that this 1918 flu was a bird flu that mutated to infect humans.  It began in people who were in contact with poultry.  This is the reason for all the concern about H5N1--there is the potential for it to happen all over again.  It hasn't happened yet, but if we don't come up with some kind of vaccine, it may be only a matter of time.
718190
After consulation with members of the health protection agency (UK), i disagree with the last guy to answer. The general consensus of opinion is that bird flu will mutate, and it is obly a matter of time. However, it may mutate and lose its virility; it may end up no more annoying than a cold. It may have even already mutated, but we just havent noticed it in the population...\n\nHow do i plan to prepare? the best advice is to take any flu jabs OFFERED, and have a few extra tin goods in the house, so you can stay inside longer than normal, but there is no need to panic buy.\n\nBird flu has currently got a death rate of 56%, which is very high for any disease, and avain flu's have a habit of mutating into a mammalian form, so we should be on our guard.
552349
It has been fatal in 56% of cases (up to 1st may)\n\nCheck out www.bbc.co.uk and search for bird flu. They have a detailed explanation of it that is easy to understand. Whats more, the information on it is correct!
206453
Actually, the bird flu is a pandemic, and it sort of could be a plague if it spreads more
1040019
Curing this flu is no easy matter, avian influenza is so deadly that it is right behind anthrax on the bio-defense list, as a possible terrorist weapon. There are two ways to try to dodge the flu. One is to kill all infected birds. The other is to develop a vaccine before the disease shifts. Because this strain requires four times the usual vaccine dosage it is impossible to produce the 600 million doses our population needs. Current supplies could provide vaccine for 15 million people; that’s only 5% of our population. Accumulated data paints such a frightening pathogenic picture that WHO issued an urgent warning that a flu pandemic could affect billions of people worldwide. Billions because, unlike our annual flu outbreaks, everyone is vulnerable, regardless of age or health. To make matters worse,in Germany, on February 26, 2006, the virus demonstrated its adaptability when a domestic cat  was found dead from  avian influenza. A few days later, an infected stone marten was discovered. This shows us that the virus is changing. Last week it was believed that 6 members of an Indonesian family had all died of avian flu, which could indicate that the virus can now spread through human to human contagion. If a pandemic does strike we will immediately lose 40% of the country's work force. President Bush got less than half of the $7.1 billion he asked for to fight this flu. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist warned Americans that state and federal authorities are "woefully underprepared" to enforce quarantine provisions and distribute medicine, food, and other vital supplies in response to an avian flu pandemic. There isn’t medical equipment or staff enough to handle this outbreak. There are pitifully few ventilators and not enough coffins or cemeteries to bury the dead.  Perhaps as many as 1.7 million Amjericans  will die as the flu cycles through our country.Bush has said he will deploy the U.S. military to enforce a quarantine on areas where infection is found. Well, that’s just ridiculous. Where will the manpower come from? \nThere really isn’t a good solution to the problem. There isn’t enough vaccine; people are going to die. Remember birds distribute the virus through their fluids and feces so watch where you step and stay clear of ducks, they are carriers of the virus but are unaffected by it.  So the best bet is to stock up on water, canned foods and Tamiflu, stay in your own home, limit visitors severely, watch over your old folks and the infants and keep them as washed up as possible, wash your own hands often and pray. But be careful what you pray for … this flu might never be a problem ... it could be some other strain of man-killer flu entirely.
1020451
Actually bird flu is affecting people. Well over 200 people world wide have been infected with the virus. The fatality rate is over 50%, and it has been spreading across Asia, Europe and Africa.\n\nMany of these infections have resulted from close contact with poultry, but there are several clusters of infection where the virus has been spread from person to person. \n\nOne recent cluster was on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. A woman contracted the disease and it spread from her to seven members of her family. Seven of the eight family members died.\n\nRight now we are seeing only limited person to person transmission. The fear is that the virus will mutate so that person to person transmission will happen easily and we will have a pandemic.\n\nEverytime a person gets avian flu (bird flu) there is a chance of it mutating so that it can be early spread.\n\nWe do not have a vaccine for this particular virus. They can't start working on a vaccine until it does mutate and it will take about 6-8 months to begin to produce vaccine.\n\nThe antiviral medicine Tamiflu may reduce the symptoms and reduce the chance of death, but there isn't enough Taniflu. At this point it looks as though medical personnel may get the first doses so that they can continue to take care of patients who have the flu.\n\nThe government has asked people to prepare for the flu by stocking supplies for our families in case we are asked to  practice "social distancing." That would be a quarantine where people are told to stay home to reduce the spread of the disease. Schools would close, there would be no church services, concerts, meetings, etc.\n\nWe are asked to have food, water, medicine, medical supplies, etc.\n\nIf you are interested in knowing more about bird flu, a good source of information is http://www.avianflutalk.com/  You will find current news, discussion, information about bird flu, and people who will be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
636068
The bird flu is nothing to panic about right now if you are a smart consumer. The bird flu is still in asia and has not been rapidly spreading in the USA. You will not catch the bird flu is you properly handle and cook all poultry. The only way you can get it is if you go over to asia and handle an infected bird. Other wise you are pretty safe safe! Scientists are working on a vaccine right now so hopfully the bird flu epedimic panic will soon fade away!
1134808
Bird flu?\n\nAre you just a bad speller or is this a joke?  Not that I mind either way; but if you're just a bad speller then ignore my answer!
371427
just go to a search engine and search for "bird flu". You'll find a ton of information
723646
most viral experts are full of sh it.\n\nwhere is the aids epidemic?  oh yeah, it is in a continent that Europeans and Americans never go to except in National geographic specials, where the people have been dying for centuries of civil war, unrest, famine,dirty water, and parasites.\n\n144 people have died of bird flu since 2003, they were mostly chicken handlers?\n\nWhere is SARS.\n\nCan you say, if I dont create a panic I am out of a job.
590006
Doesn't much matter what I think, or what you think. There will, or won't be a mutation in the current avian flu which will make it contagious in humans. But learing something about it will probably help with worrying. If you eat poultry, make certain it is fully cooked, both to prevent salmonella infection and to lessen any chance of passing on the avian flu. \n\n=======\nflu viruses\n\nFirst some background on flu viruses. It's a large family.  There are flus which infect birds (we're looking at a really strong one now -- it's killing essentially all of some species, eg chickens), which infect pigs (there was a swine flu panic during Gerald Ford's Presidency), which infect humans, and ... Usually, bird flus infect only birds, as in this case. There are only about two hundred people, and a few cats, known to have been infected with this avian flu. it's ot very good at infecting us -- so far. The really scary thing is that about 1/2 of them have died. Very few diseases have a mortality rate that high.\n\nFlu viruses sometimes swap bits with each other and acquire the ability to do new things, like infect another species. A pig flu infects a bird and the two flus 'mix and match' and produce a new flu capable of infecting a human, perhaps. Or some other combination. Most of this seems to go on in SE Asia, where duck ponds, a few pigs, and the humans family live in very close quarters. This cross species stuff doesn't seem to be all that common. Human flus have undergone major changes only every few years (2 or 3 since WWII) for instance, and if those changes are the result of this shuffling business, there's an indication of the chances of thsi one branching out to people. Perhaps.\n\n=======\nprior bird flus in humans\n\nIn fact, we know of only one large pandemic caused by a bird flu, or at least by a flu which had bird characteristics. That's the one in 1918, which has only recently been pinned down as a bird flu. Some researchers went looking for bodies which had been buried in the Arctic and remained frozen since 1918. After a decade's work digging in the permafrost, samples from them finally yielded enough information to reconstruct the 1918 virus, and it was a characteristically bird sort. It's still not clear what made it so deadly, but at least we're pretty sure what it was now. It popped up, killed something like 50 million folks around the world in 18 months or 2 years, and vanished.\n\n===========\nfuture possibilities\n\nIf the present bird flu changes enough to infect humans, and stays very contagious as it is now in birds and as nearly all flu viruses are, it may be a rerun of 1918 for humans. And if it retains its current lethality in humans (50+% so far, in a very small sample), it will probably be a good deal worse than the 1918 experience. We have more people, packed more closely, and with little margin (extra food capacity, medical capacity, sewerage and water capacity, ...), so things should be worse, all things being equal -- as they obviously are not.\n\nThere are a few things this bird flu does which appear to be new. When infecting humans, it seems to be able to spread by food. Most flus, human flus anyway, don't. This is new. And, it attacks nearly all tissues, while most human flus have largely been respiratory diseases. This is also new. Finally, it is essentially 100% lethal for chickens, also new behavior. Whether a changed avian flu which readily infects humans will contiue to behave these ways, or whether there is something specially vulnerable about the 200 some folks known to have been infected with it, is not known. It may be that lots of people have been infected, shock it off as a cold or something, and never saw a doctor. We don't know.\n\n==========\ndefenses\n\nUnlike 1918, we understand what we can do to beat any new flu variant. Vaccines work pretty well on all the flus we've encountered so far. The problem with deve
619059
As of yesterday,Oprah did a special interview with a man from the CDC. \n\nHe readily admitted that we can only be prepared. There is only so much of Tamaflu to go around right now. He stated that it would first be given to healthcare workers so they would not be bringing it home to their families and also because we need heathcare workers in a crisis such as this could present.\n\nHe stated also that even if it isn't the bird flu...that something like the 1918 pandemic will happen sooner or later. It was interesting that he said that bodies were exhumed in Alaska from people who died from the flu of 1918. From the bodies remains they were able to (can't think of the word)  basically create the 1918 virus in a test tube. From this they were able to determine how it spread,and came to the conclusion that it passed from birds directly to people without any type of warning.\n\nPersonally I don't think we are prepared enough should a pandemic occur. But that is what having faith is for. You can't live each day of your life in fear. Life goes on. All we can do is be well informed and do our best to prevent the spread of the illness should something like this ever happen.
688311
i think we should take this bird flu stuff very seriously... that's my answer!! :)
90014
Yes, of cos! I would gratefully say Hello, God, Hows everything? What can I do for you? And I will also ask him to bring peace to the world and stop the bird flu from escallating into a pandemic! Amen.