With the "possibility" of a bird flu pandemic, wouldn't it make sense to tightly control the USA-Mexican
601835
You Americans amaze me, what you are suggesting is totally racially predjudiced. \n\nYou should be more concerned with your rediculous passion for firearms and the possibility that an infected bird could be shot by one of your own.\n\nHow would you feel if all the hispanic workers ( and others) decided to take the same action with you, even include the rest of the world for that matter, how would you like it?
118375
We need to control who enters our country. Illegal immigration results in a lack of control. Though some would like to help as many people out as possible there are limits to the help we can provide. We need to reasonable and sensible with our resources. Via illegal immigration, criminals or terrorists can access our country without our knowledge. In addition, we must insure that people who enter our country are inocculated and have not contracted any infectious diseases. We want to mantain our infrastucture of economics, medical and education needs. With a lack of knowledge of how many people are here and who they are, how can we plan and budget for our needs?\nThink of it like a rescue boat, only so many people can fit before we begin to sink. Plus who would you want in your boat, the murderer or a child?
274567
It's an AVIAN flu virus. We already have it here (~10-15 BIRDS with it and maybe 1-2 people) and it's no big deal right now. IF it manages to acquire the ability for human to human transmission THEN we are all in big trouble. \n\nRight now I would only worry for people that go hunting or people that keep lots of birds. You can only get it from birds...
71551
Basicly, we don't have to worry about bird flu until it passes from person to person.  So far that hasn't happened, so far its only from bird to human.  Thats easy to quarantine, simple really, especially in a nation that doesn't really live with their livestock up close and personal.  Now, if the virus mutates into something that can pass from person to person is when we've got something to worry about.  A cough, germs fly around on the air until someone else inhales them.  \nIn the world of jet travel its easy to think of millions of people being infected.  People interchange planes to everywhere in the world and mingle with each other every second of every day in airports.  Now, what the scientist mean when they say "its only a matter of when rather than if", they mean that germs as tiny as they may be aren't going to go away any time soon.  The bird flu virus is something us humans don't much have a immunity against, because its never been in our system, and thus it could be deadly if it ever passed from human to human.  Till then, I suggest everybody go about their lives and focus on the now of things.\nGerms are here to stay, we learned that after trying to repeat what we did with Smallpox.  Smallpox, the only disease we've ever completely killed without doubt and that was only because it only existed in humans.  Of course there is HIV, a slower killing plague that has crossed over to everyone through slow action and thus leads to AIDS, which basicly makes your body open for business for every other germ.  TB, etc, etc, its a small world and the germs know it better than anyone.
252186
No way to tell how bad it would be if the virus changes enough to become readily contagious in humans, as most of the  'regular' flu viruses are. \n\nAvian flu viruses have some common characteristics  which allow them to infect birds, and the 1981 "Spanish flu" (which killed maybe 40 or more million worldwide. Enough has now been recovered frmm improperly prepared human bodies buried in the Arctic permafrost in 1918, to be certain the samples found must have a bird flu virus oringinally. 1918 was our species' (ie, humans) only known encounter with a human contagious avian flu. \n\nIf this one changes (no one knows quite how it would need to so) to become human infectious, then it'spossible we'll have a 1918 type epidemic. If we do, the death toll will be high as there are far more people on the planet, they are packed tightly together in many places, and there's a goodly bit of malnutrition, existing diseases, stres, warfare, etc that the death toll is likley to higher on a percentage basis than last time. \n\nNote VERY carefully: we do not know what will have to happen to the virus for it to become contagious in humans. Nor, if it does, whether it will retain the high mortality rate in such folks it currently has. And so most anything said about it is speculation. No matter who says it -- doctor, politician, civil service staff, vendors of stuff to help and some of which will be stuff that's illegal to bring into the country, etc. Avoid going along with anyone who's pushing some agenda (including sales and profit). \n\nNo final nor easy answer.
125215
thats a good and probably the best question so far ,well, to my istimation it will strike cuba from there florida all this from euorope within two months and if it strike australia then honololu it will strike california by the same time margain .but the bird flu so far is carried by birds otherwise it will be an international disaster.
38619
The bird flu is of the type H5N1.  This refers to the protein structure of the virus.  The virus can currently pass from bird to bird and from bird to human.  Bird to human spread is difficult.  Close contact with infected birds is needed, which is why it has been mainly poultry workers who have been infected.\n\nThere is a very high mortality rate in humans who contract H5N1.  However once the virus has infected a human it is unable to spread human to human and is therefore contained.  The worry is that the virus is able to mutate to allow human to human spread.  Humans have no natural immunity to H5N1 so if the virus does mutate there would be a Pandemic.\n\nAuthorities are  now trying to contain the virus to prevent the spread in bird  populations.  If they are successful the virus will be unable  to mutate and unnable to jump  the species barrier.\n\nGood web resources are the WHO and CDC websites and also the UK's Health Protection Agency.
269756
As of now, several answers to your questions are unknown. While this disease has been in the news for quite a while, it is still a new disease, and we don't know much about it yet. Only time will tell what is going to happen, and what the effects of this disease are.\n\nHere is what is known about it:\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_flu
47746
very concerned, think about chain reactions. lets say i have a infected chicken, and i skin it. i give the feathers to a pillow company and the rest to a processing company. lets say that a woman with three children buys the chicken, and she works at a school. think of all those people the workers and children pass by at work/school, and the people they love. that is serious.\n\nYes we should, unfortunately, we dont have antibodies for the avian flu. Yet.
639471
Look!  First thing is first the only people who have gotten the bird flu live with birds lots of birds I would not worry about it. It wastes time and energy and why dwell on it when it is not here yet?
509603
I believe that the Bird Flu will be the next scare here in the U.S.  Remember the West Nile Virus?  The virus carried infected mosquitoes from Africa and infected millions.  Now only one percent of the people infected needed serious medical attention just here in the United States.  And only one percent of that one percent lived.  The outcome of the illness was severe brain damage, long and short term memory loss, stroke(s), blindness, speech, and other major normal day use of your body.  Their lives were basically destroyed.  The government have not been very helpful on getting these people help either.  \nBut, I feel the government is preparing for the pandemic properly.  Better be safe than sorry.  As for the people out there saying it is all propaganda, I'd like to smack them right here and now.\nI...ME...MYSELF was infected with that damn mosquito that nobody believed was ever going to happen and the government was just talking...propaganda.  \nMy life is hell to say the least.  I fight everyday to regain my strength, my day to day life living.  I have lost so many people near and dear to me because I got sick.  \nSo all of you out there that thinks this is all propaganda, write on here after you become infected with the pandemic so you can tell all of us how you were wrong.  Don't ever think it can never happen to you, because it can. Do not be ignorant and listen to warnings.  I guess the mistake I made was not using insect repellant.  One mistake I will never make again.\nWhy would our government want to mislead us in such a tragic way?  Don't you think the war we are in now is tragic enough?\nQuit being fools and listen to all health bulletins when and if the pandemic comes close to the States.
269690
As their lungs filled … the patients became short of breath and increasingly cyanotic. After gasping for several hours they became delirious and incontinent, and many died struggling to clear their airways of a blood-tinged froth that sometimes gushed from their nose and mouth. It was a dreadful business.\n\n--Isaac Starr, 3rd year medical student, University of Pennsylvania, 1918.\n\nAll the genes of all influenza viruses in the world are being maintained in aquatic birds, and periodically they transmit to other species... The 1918 viruses are still being maintained in the bird reservoir. So even though these viruses are very ancient, they still have the capacity to evolve, to acquire new genes, new hosts. The potential is still there for the catastrophe of 1918 to happen again.\n\n--Dr. Robert Webster, Influenza Expert, Present Day.\n\nThe pair of quotes presented above were used to begin and end a short essay I wrote many years ago on The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic. Isaac Starr's words offer powerful testimonial to the harsh lethality of a killer stain of influenza, and Dr. Robert Websters observation reminds us that it would be dangerous to regard the events of 1918 as an isolated slice of history that we can safely file away and forget. \n\nIn the early part of 1995, as I cast around in search of the disease that would ultimately prove to be the true villian of the science thriller I was planning to write, influenza was scarcely on the radar scope of anyone but virologists specializing in the field of emerging diseases. Because influenza exists in the human population in an ever-present but relatively benign form, changing just a little from year to year, we tend, quite mistakenly, to think we understand the nature of the threat that it presents. \nBird Flu cannot be eradicated, we must learn to live with it\nDespite the apparent "novelty" of a strain of bird flu that can sweep across the globe and kill not only the domesticated foul that carries the virus causing the pandemic, but also those humans unfortunate enough to get too close to the sick birds they tend, finding influenza in domesticated birds is not the least bit uncommon. \n\nThe natural reservoir for influenza virus is in fact the intestines of water fowl. In particular, ducks habor the virus, and suffer no ill effects from doing so. Because these migratory birds are always on the move, and because they shed virus in the waterways that they inhabit, influenza virus travels widely and is easily transmitted from bird to bird. Because of this, domesticated birds, like the turkey and the chicken, which cross paths with the virus, become infected and habor the potential to transmit the virus to humans (for example, virus secreted onto the surface of eggs could end up infecting egg handlers-- for this reason, if bird handlers notice any of the following symptons in their birds they should immediately notify Federal or State animal health officials: sudden death; lack of energy and appetite; decreased egg production; soft-shelled or misshapen eggs; swelling; purple discoloration; nasal discharge; coughing, sneezing; lack of coordination and diarrhea). \n\nOften an intermediate host, the pig, is involved in the cross-species transmission of influenza. When this happens, the result is referred to as Swine Flu. Even so, the source of the virus is generally aquatic birds. \n\nMost strains of bird flu do not cross species and end up infecting humans. However the H5N1 strain that has in the last decade been known to infect humans, and kill them in 5 out of every 10 cases, clearly has surmounted the first of two barriers that must be cleared before a bird flu pandemic can take hold in the human population. The second barrier will be surmounted when this strain acquires the ability to jump from one human to another. This may never happen, and hopefully will not. But based on the history of pandemic flu, it seems more likely that this is just a matter of time.
664638
a pandemic happens on a much larger scale
1155282
I have just loved your last few questions. They actually make me chuckle. I think you have a legitimate concern. The potential for contagious diseases spreading throughout America increases proportionately with the number of illegals.
1109735
Bush said--'why try (close borders) its no use to try to isolate the Bird Flu' '               his words not mine.\n\nI assume that is his opinion on all diseases.
198504
there's a chance that a highly infectious disease with a long enough period of incubation could travel enough via its hosts to kill a lot of people. I don't know if it would be able to kill everyone though, it seems unlikely.
1154187
People are worrying about it too much. The bird flu is genetically designed for birds. Only a couple hundred people have died from bird flu out of the millions who have had it.