BF2S Forums What happened to the imaginary avian BIRD flu?

..teddy..jimmy wrote:

yeah..but they are trying to develop a new one

Yeah, but they can't make one that will be 100% effective unless they know what the form the new virus will take. You need a sample of a virus to be able to make effective vacines. They don't have a sample of human to human transmitted bird flu, because it doesn't exist. It may never exist.

The thing about bird flu is that while it DOES have the potential to kill MILLIONS or even BILLIONS of birds, including birds we use for dinner (!), it is as the poster says, not very contagious to humans, and a human who's got it, has a very little (in fact no recorded incidents so far) chance of infecting another human.

The reason people are scared ? Well, the spanish flu that killed millions of people in a couple of das WAS probably (according to genetic researchers, but what do THEY know) a variation fo a bird flu.

The reason why it's no longer newsworthy ? Because as people said.. it's over now, there are more intresting things to talk about, and all street has amade a quick buck on the fluctuating price on chicken futures ! Noone is dying of this disease anymore. Not because of the vaccines (which as has been stated earlier in the thread are more or less useless), but because of the lack of infection. With noone dying, it's not news, it's just not dangerous enough to make the news anymore.

So why isn't it dangerous to humans ? Well, because of it's low level of virulence in humans, and the difficulty it has with infecting othe species. In point of fact, less than 2 dozen people WORLDWIDE has died from the bird flu over the last dozen years. Most of the people who have died, are not even 100% diagnosed as having died from the "flu".
Compare that to the fact that ORDINARY HUMAN FLU kills 100.000's EVERY YEAR. I'd consider taking a flu shot from my doctor if it was HUMAN flu that was around, but avian flu... pffsss... Who cares ?