This thread *WILL* scare the hell out of you (no pics) ABC

[underpants]

and I don't mean the kind of scared that Bush/Rove like.


Chilling


Last night on ABC WNT

http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1123285&page=1

In addition, many officials believe the federal government has been slow to recognize a new and potentially greater threat, a rare and deadly strain of flu. Currently found in Asia, it is threatening to become a global epidemic and hit the United States.

"We could be dealing with a situation where 1,500 people a day could be dying of influenza, with a large number of those people being children," says Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disease Preparedness.



There is no vaccine for the avian bird flu. The United States has been well behind most industrialized countries in obtaining supplies of the one medicine that works against the rare flu. No deliveries of the medicine are expected until after this winter's flu season.

According to Redlener, "We are not even close to being prepared for this country."

[shoelace414]

1. why aren't the mayors of USA taking care of this?!

[underpants]

2. They don't have to until it is inside their city limits

then they are expected to work miracles

:eyes:

[Horse with no Name]

3. without help from the federal government

until they dot the i's, cross the t's, and say pretty please.:sarcasm:

[melody]

4. to "decrease the surplus population" a la Ebenezer n/t

[lectrobyte]

7. Ebenezer? What's that referring to? Thanks.

[melody]

9. it's a line from Dickens - "Ebenezer Scrooge", the first neocon n/t

[Sal Minella]

16. I think it's up to high school principals first, then mayors step in

as back-up later when needed, if and when asked on the proper paper forms.

[ret5hd]

24. wrong again...it's up to the Homeroom Teachers. (nt)

[nonconformist]

55. But only if they submit their requests in triplicate. nt

[librechik]

68. You forgot the Student Council. It's really up to them

since they are children, and most likely to die.

Why aren't they taking care of this???

[ret5hd]

73. or DEN MOTHERS!!!! (nt)

[benburch]

5. The medicine is from Rumsfeld's company, BTW

It is Tamiflu, and the Rich in the USA have bought all of it for their person wellbeing. You cannot now get it anywhere.

[gkhouston]

25. I'm not sure that's going to matter

at least one of the strains required a higher than usual dose of Tamiflu for a longer period of time than expected to reduce (not eliminate) the mortality rate. By the time H5N1 morphs into a strain that's highly contagious among humans, it could be that even Tamiflu won't help.

And there is a vaccine in the works. Anybody's guess as to how close that will be to the dominant strain in the now-apparently-inevitably pandemic.

Our best defense in an outbreak? A rapid, coordinated response that includes indentifying and quarantining those who have been exposed to H5N1. Given the events of the past two weeks, do you see that happening?

[benburch]

27. Nope. I can't

The government will survive in its bunkers. The rest of us will fend for ourselves, and a quarter of us will die.

[gkhouston]

31. probably more than a quarter

the currently fatality rate in Asia is 70%, I believe. If we're lucky, H5N1 will become less lethal as it becomes more contagious. If the mortality rate stays that high, I hope I'm one of the first to go. :scared:

[Marlie]

36. What's really chilling is

Bush took the book about the great flu epidemic to read (sure)
on his vacation. That spooked me out when I heard that.

[FreedomAngel82]

42. Remember that

Because when people are dying from this you can say that he did know about it. Just like he knew about New Orleans.

[NYC]

70. Bush mentioned the avian flu in his U.N. speech this morning.

I heard him. Can't remember what he said about it though.

[klebean]

54. behind the times I guess. Do you have ref/link for this? n/t

[benburch]

57. here

http://elandslide.org/preview.cfm?term=Donald%20Rumsfeld

http://oldamericancentury.org/bb/lofiversion/index.php/t949.html

Google will find you more.

[cfield]

6. the first line of the article

is a complete lie! He didn't accept 'full responsibility' of anything! Fuck ABC!

Oh yeah, the rest is pretty scary too.

[melody]

8. anyone remember the Swine Flu back in the 70s?

How it was going to decimate the population?

Sometimes I think they spin this shit just to scare us more, but forewarned is forearmed.

[shoelace414]

11. rememebr the flu pandemic of 1918?

http://www.ninthday.com/spanish_flu.htm

During the 1918-1919 fall period the number of Americans who died from influenza is estimated at 675,000. Of those, almost 200,000 deaths were recorded in the month of October 1918 alone. Worldwide, the mortality figure for the full pandemic is believed to stand somewhere between 30 to 40 million. So, with the world population today having more than tripled in the intervening years, what is to stop a modern flu pandemic from claiming upwards of 100 million lives? The answer, it seems, is nothing at all.

[melody]

22. nothing except a greater understanding of sanitation, etc, etc.

Sorry, but I think this is just more medical mental terrorism. The Spanish flu was another factor altogether and had much to do with medical help availability.

36,000 people in the US die from the flu in a given year. The worst years, it spikes up to 45,000. Even with state of the art medical care, people die of flu all the time. Sad but true.

Still, it's better to have the information that it's a potential threat.

[smoogatz]

33. How will a greater understanding of sanitation help?

What are we supposed to do--wear biohazard suits to the grocery store?

[melody]

71. look, I'm just trying to bring a little optimism in - not sneering

Influenza is a virus, it replicates in living creatures. We were an agrarian world back then. We know not to go around animals that are highly pathogenic, etc.

It's us in terms of society, not in terms of biohazard. :eyes:

[dalaigh lllama]

84. The flu epidemic of 1918 killed more people than WWI

And was even more devastating because it seemed to attack healthy adults, leaving orphans galore. It's true that influenza strains kill thousands each year, but some particular strains are extremely deadly. I read a book about the 1918 pandemic several years ago, and it explained that the strains that are most deadly are the ones that mutate from pigs and/or birds. The reason they seem to start in places like China is that so many of the poor there live with their livestock -- makes it easier for viral mutation to occur. Once that happens, it doesn't matter if you've personally got a chicken in the living room or not, you can catch the new strain. Viruses can go right thru those little white face masks.

[halobeam]

14. forearmed with what exactly? Nada. Nothing. Zip.

If this isn't cause for 80,000 members to media blast and email and call all their reps. nothing is.

[melody]

23. well, that was kinda the point - forewarn them so...

[Desertrose]

15. definitely scare tactics....

How many different ways can they stir up people?


Yeah...this is good...we cam scare em right into buying more pharma...and make a profit on everyones fear.

Nice bunch.

[IndyOp]

47. No not just scare tactics --

A condemnation of * policy -- check out the Harper's Magazine article in post #44 below.

[tavalon]

65. Nope, not in this case

I've been following this strain for 6 years. It only recently crossed to our species with any regularity and there have only been a couple of cases of human to human transmission. Hopefully, something magical (and it will have to utilize magic) will happen and it won't get a foothold in the human to human transmission mode. When it does, and it will likely eventually - this year, next year, ten years from now, we will see something we have never seen before except maybe during the black plague. And as we have seen in the last few weeks, the infrastructure of America and probably most everywhere else will crumble.

The reason I've been watching is kind of self serving. Sometimes, it's because I would like to survive and having asthma, I have a much less liklihood of that so I would need to have respirator masks and become a hermit. Sometimes I just watch so I won't be broadsided by it but have a pretty fatalistic view about it.

Heck, I almost died two years ago when I got pneumonia after the regular old flu. Avian flu is not anything like the regular flu.

[shanti]

10. well, we've been hearing about this at DU

for quite some time now, so it shouldn't be a shock to us. i have a very bad feeling about this winter flu season! :scared:

[Poiuyt]

12. This could be a pandemic

[jsamuel]

13. "decrease the surplus population" - GW Scrooge

[Qibing Zero]

17. The only good thing about dying from the flu

..is that the bad flus are so damn bad that you WANT to die.


Sorry, it's true. :(

[GreenPartyVoter]

20. True. I had influenza when I was preggers and couldn't take much for it.

Misery city.

[kaygore]

18. We have known about this for a couple of years now

But as Katrina showed us, our federal agencies that are in charge of our safety are now headed by hacks!

[preciousdove]

19. CDC/NIH is DOD. This is a diversion at this time. Respond accordingly.n/t

[gkhouston]

29. no they aren't.

CDC and NIH are distinct entities, both of them in the Department of Health and Human Services. This has nothing to do with DOD.

[preciousdove]

81. You have to have a military commission to work at CDC/NIH

Came up with the Lyme Disease fiasco and highlighted by Dr Lynn Shepherd who is an MD, a lawyer and who was an officer and had a military commission. She works in CA for the Lyme Advocacy groups. I had to check it out myself. Funding may be separate but personnel have to go through DOD.

Not something they advertise.

[Maple]

21. More fear. More panic spread. More nonsense

Based on 'we could be' and 'maybes'

What if the sky should fall?

We get this every year.

These people need a cuff upside the head.

ORDINARY flu kills thousands every year.

So do traffic accidents in fact.

But now they're off and running on something that's killed about a hundred people. This is just the 'terra terra terra' tactic on a different subject.

We've always been at risk from earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, wars, random bombings, diseases, asteroids....nothing has changed.

Except the fear factor being spread so that people will end up hiding under their beds, afraid to do anything with their lives.

No country is prepared for any of these things, and in fact, can't be. Not even if the entire country goes into hiding.

Life is risky. Always has been. You could get hit by a bus today. Get over it.

[madrchsod]

26. actually very few people really die from the flu.

they die because "the flu" attacks their weak immune system. healthy people rarely die of the flu. the bird flu strain has yet to be shown that it has potential to jump to healthy populations.
more people die from bad health care in the usa than all the years of "flu" deaths.

yup it`s terror-terror 24 hours a day 7 days a week

[Jacobin]

28. Some years the virus evolves into something that is

extremely deadly for millions of people.

The pandemic of 1918 is an example. Millions were killed worldwide.

The fact that the government is doing nothing about getting vaccine should be of concern.

It's another one of those examples where BushCo has derided, ignored and de-funded public health protections and if the flu happens to be a particularly virulent strain this year, a lot of people will die needlessly.

I don't think the original poster suggested that anyone should hide under their bed.

[Maple]

30. This is NOT 1918

Thousands of men lived in horrendous conditions in the trenches of WWI.

Water, sometimes waist deep, full of excrement, blood and vomit and dead bodies.

And the men were often injured...anything from a small hand cut to a serious wound.

Then they were sent home in bunches, the ill and the healthy as they were rotated...as well as the giant demob at the end of the war.

To countries, and it was all of them at that time, that had no running water, and no indoor toilets, and no antibiotics. Or anything else in the way of medical assistance for that matter.

[txindy]

34. Absolutely

It's nothing like that along the Gulf Coast today and it isn't any easier to move around the country quickly, spreading germs acquired, say, in the conditions along that coast. Plus, there aren't volunteers and workers from around the country, rotating in and out, helping people and trying to set that region on the road to recovery under horrendous sanitary conditions with no (or limited) running water, indoor toilets and medical supplies. :sarcasm:

[Maple]

35. Sarcasm aside

yes, the conditions exist in your country for a major health problem.

Except that so far, there isn't one.

It wouldn't be avian flu in any case.

And medicine has evolved since 1918

[txindy]

38. Medicine may have evolved

But there's no cure for the flu or any other virus and the strains continue to change, growing more deadly and resistant. They are so much easier to spread, too, via widespread travel on airplanes. It only takes one person to bring it to a country to start the dominoes falling and an epidemic begin.

There will be terrible illnesses coming out of the Gulf Coast this fall/winter. The conditions virtually guarantee it. That's not pessimism, that's angry acceptance. I wish it wasn't true, but I fear that it is. Don't even get me started on the long-term damage to the environment.

[Maple]

43. Yes, and they always have

and then they mutate into something milder, because viruses don't want to die either. Which they do if the host croaks.

We've also always had world travel...even in earliest times, and it always only takes one person.

You may or may not have illnesses coming out of this...it's been complicated by the initial poor response...but so far there's been nothing. Same with the tsunami in Asia.

But adding fear, especially unrealistic fear, to the mix isn't either useful or necessary.

[txindy]

46. Not in this case

I don't think it's unnecessary or unrealistic. There are already reports of cholera and other diseases among evacuees in the Astrodome in Houston. It is far better to be cautious and prepare for what may come than to shrug it off. Surely we've learned at least that much from this debacle.

As for the tsunami, I had thought the waters receded quickly. The standing water in New Orleans is STILL standing, two weeks later. The bodies are still decomposing in that very water. I'm not even going to get into the other chemicals and substances in that water. This isn't like the tsunami. The industrial waste alone makes it different and far more toxic. Now it's going to be pumped into the lakes and the Gulf?! Brilliant planning. :eyes:

The damage to the public health and environment from this disaster and failed response is far more devastating than anything this country has ever faced. The national response of volunteers to Katrina makes the potential spread of any illnesses far greater than may be easily contained.

[Maple]

49. Yes in this case too

All reports of illnesses have been jumped on promptly.

No one said anything about shrugging it off.

I said look after it...just don't panic over unlikely pandemics of things like avian flu when it isn't even close to a problem.

Whether the water stays or goes, there will be problems with mould and stray chemicals and so on, yes.

But unless you know anywhere else to put all that water, it has to go in the lake or the gulf.

The gulf already has radioactive materials in it, and a lack of life.

I agree we need to do a massive clean-up of all our air and water...but first solve the gulf problem, and then move on.

[txindy]

50. Okay, I see the point about moving on

Yet I'm not prepared to call any fears about illnesses this fall/winter either unrealistic or unnecessary. And, yes, I know the water has to go somewhere. That's the problem.

We can't solve anything here, ourselves. We'll have to wait and see. However, for what it's worth, I DO hope you're right about a deadly flu being unlikely. My concern lies more with whatever comes out of the Gulf Coast, viral or bacterial.

So, let's both hope for the best. :hi:

[Maple]

52. Agreed

You do what you can, and hope for the best.

My original annoyance stemmed from the constant stream of threads on here about avian flu going to 'kill us all'....they show up about once a month and then evolve into reminders of 1918, and spread fear. Unnecessary fear.

I'd rather see practical actions to solve known and immediate problems, and then a getting together of countries to solve the bigger ones. Eliminating some of the causes of illnesses.

[txindy]

56. An odd fact

I lived in Canada (Montreal) for a time and those were the only years of my adult life that I never had either the flu or a flu shot. Weird, but true. Accumulated snow up to my waist or higher for months out of every year, but I was healthier there than here in the American Southwest. :shrug:

Now, if I am unable to get a flu shot again this year due to shortages and I end up getting the flu as I (and my family) did last year, you and I are going to revisit this topic. Fair warning! ;) However, no I don't expect to drop from the avian flu any time soon. Living in Texas, my concern lies more with the health of the Gulf.

[Maple]

58. LOL deal !

There is an old folk belief here that cold weather kills off all the germs, but of course that doesn't explain why people still get colds and flu in the wintertime. :D

Public health is maybe a better explanation of less illness.

Let me know how you do with flu this year.

[belle]

80. A bad flu outbreak along the Gulf Coast now would be devastating,

that's for sure, even if (knock on wood) the avian flu scare won't be the "Stand" situation people are painting for the entire planet.

[willing dwarf]

74. Uhm, err...

well actually as I recall, the war had ended by the time the pandemic hit. It was spread across the east coast cities at least in a series o public celebrations and parades to celebrate the homecoming soldiers. -- My father and grandmother both survived dreadul cases o the Spanish flu in Philadelphia. My grandather helped bury the dead. That took some courage I imagine. I think it could become the next Bush diaster.

[Maple]

85. I believe I just said that

There were pockets of it everywhere...everywhere soldiers had been rotated to...and then in demob it really hit.

There were other countries involved you know.

[fishnfla]

90. You need to get out from under thew bed more

the 1918 pandemic had nothing to do with trench warfare or poor sanitation or lack of antibitiocs( whats an antibiotic going to do against a virus?)

I suggest you read "The Great Influnenza" by John Barry.

Not to be scared, to be educated.

[FreedomAngel82]

48. Although sometimes

that's exactly what I feel like doing most days.

[txaslftist]

32. Well, I heard there was a job opening with FEMA...

...but I don't know anything about horses.

[underpants]

39. Funny

:thumbsup:

[BootinUp]

37. Shit, what is this country prepared for anymore? n/t

[Pacifist Patriot]

61. I understand the preparation for electronic voting is coming along nicely.

[NYC]

72. Pillaging.

At home and abroad.

[FreedomAngel82]

40. And with Bush running the country

we're screwed. *sigh* Look at New Orleans for the proof.

[BrightKnight]

60. Has the CDC become like FEMA and the FDA?

Given the inability of this administration to assure the availability of flu vaccine, I am concerned.

[tavalon]

75. There's one I can answer

Yes, the CDC is completely political. I'm not sure exactly when it happened but it's a done deal. NIH too.

[Generator]

41. Sometimes DU is as bad as the regular news

Because, folks WE ALL DIE of something. Yes, I know the goverrnment isn't prepared for shit. But YOU could die of a zillion things-and sometimes this place is like fear central. Which reminds me: BUSH WILL KILL US ALL. Fate,people. Life is a mystery.

And on the pro-earth front, we need less people. (Does anybody ever think if there was no weather, war or illness what this planet would be like-four square foot a person and no wildlife) Sorry, but yes I've always been like that. Really-I like the trees better on most days.

[IndyOp]

44. MUST READ Harper's Article:

We Are Not Immune
Influenza, SARS, and the collapse of public health

Harper's Magazine, July 2004. By Ronald J. Glasser

<http://www.harpers.org/WeAreNotImmune.html>

<snip>

Long forgotten are the days when the loss of a child to diphtheria or whooping cough or yellow fever was a commonplace event, the days before widespread vaccination and government safety and health regulations; we no longer remember life before publicly funded sewage-treatment plants and the passage of the clean-air and -water acts. Public health is often invisible and unremarked when it works well; when it fails, our neighbors sicken and die.

A public-health system is only as strong as its weakest link; an epidemic enforces, in the most rigorous fashion, the American credo that all men are created equal. If we allow one segment of our society to suffer and perish from preventable disease, little stands in the way of collective doom. Yet today, 44 million people in the United States are without health insurance; those who can afford to pay for it generally receive inferior treatment, despite the fact that Americans spend $1.4 trillion annually for their health care. Public-health departments across the country have never recovered from decades of cutbacks, despite injections of funding in response to specific emergencies such as AIDS or the threat of bioterrorism. Purchases of newer and more reliable diagnostic-testing equipment have been deferred; technical staff and other employees needed to support epidemiologic and testing programs have been downsized; vital on-site bacteriological and viral laboratories have been closed and the testing outsourced to the lowest bidder or simply abandoned.<1> State and local early-childhood services, prenatal care, immunization campaigns for the poor, alcohol-abuse and smoking-awareness campaigns, monitoring programs for lead and arsenic levels, as well as HIV/AIDS treatment programs, have been curtailed as health departments shift around available monies and reassign what few permanent staff members they have left in an attempt to keep the most critical programs in operation. Prevention becomes secondary to simply keeping people alive. Nor must we concern ourselves simply with the state of American public health; as distances collapse and human populations grow ever more mobile, so also new and deadly diseases (among them Ebola and the Marburg virus) find their way across deserts and oceans. AIDS took decades to escape its origins in central Africa; we should not expect the next simian retrovirus to take so long. SARS made its way from Asia to Toronto in a matter of weeks.

<snip>

Today, we are no better prepared for a SARS epidemic than we were last year. “Homeland security,” curiously interpreted to exclude the most plausible and deadly threats facing our population, has remained the priority. The massive smallpox immunization program in 2002 was little more than a distraction and waste of precious funds. Meanwhile, we are afflicted with a government that has waged war all across the world to avenge the deaths of 3,000 terror victims, far fewer than die of influenza in a mild year; a government that insists on spending $50 billion to build a missile-defense system that does not work, a military-industrial make-work project designed to meet a threat that does not exist. The war in Iraq consumes almost $4 billion a month, twice the amount we have largely squandered on bioterrorism since 2001. We have grown so foolish and so incompetent that perhaps we do not deserve to survive. Perhaps it is simply time to die.

[Maple]

51. Harper's is extrapolating

an American problem into a world one.

I doubt the rest of the world will appreciate the 'throwing of the hands in the air' approach.

Global health problems must be approached globally...and every country has to do it's part.

That's where to begin.

[belle]

82. Geez, that's cheerful. As far as "deserving to die:" speak for yourself,

buddy...

[Stand and Fight]

88. Read the article rather than attacking the poster...

That bit about deserving to die is NOT from the poster, but from the article itself. Get a hold of yourself.

However, I do think that this is nothing more than orchestrated fear to control the masses. Fear is a VERY powerful tool in the hands of those who want to control the people.

[Dora]

83. I remember reading that. It is chilling and a must read.

[IndyOp]

45. Self-delete (nt)

[Joe Chi Minh]

53. Needless to say, Blair

has bought minimal, woefully inadequate stocks compared to say, France.

[MarsThe Cat]

59. BirdFluPreventionChecklist- Duct Tape..CHECK..Plastic Sheeting..CHECK..

why else do you think that they would put DuctTapeMan in charge of FEMA???

[Infomaniac]

62. Egad! And today I was thinking...

Shit! We got three more hurricane seasons to suffer through with the republiCANT administration. The public health system in this country could not handle a pandemic flu outbreak. Things could get ugly very fast.

[philly_bob]

63. About Avian Flu

A good source of information on Avian Flu is a Effect Measure, a blog for discussion of public health matter by progressives.

Scroll down the left column to the entries on bird flu.

According to a scientist in the latest issue of Science News, (Sept. 10), the U.S. has only 450,000 doses of vaccine. The article is not online, but here are the article's references.

Scary stuff, indeed!

[earth mom]

64. *s Summer Reading List included a book about the Flu Epidemic:

John Barry's "The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History"

:tinfoilhat:

[lynettebro440]

66. Didn't you hear

Halliburton got the non-competing contract to make that antibiotic. They'll get around to it after they build Iraq, rebuild New Orleans then they can worry about that.

[tavalon]

76. That would be just like this government

To stock up on an antibiotic when an antiviral is needed.

[knitter4democracy]

67. Duh.

My hubby's been scared of that for over a year. He knows just how unprepared we are here and how his patients are at risk.

[Barad Simith]

69. Seems to be some missing info + outright misinformation here

The following paragraph, quoted from the article, does not actually appear in the article:

"We could be dealing with a situation where 1,500 people a day could be dying of influenza, with a large number of those people being children," says Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disease Preparedness.

I can't find any source which quotes Dr. Redlener as making that claim. It certainly is not part of the ABC article.

Also, the following statement by the original poster has no reference, and, as far as I can tell by researching the subject, is completely untrue:

There is no vaccine for the avian bird flu. The United States has been well behind most industrialized countries in obtaining supplies of the one medicine that works against the rare flu. No deliveries of the medicine are expected until after this winter's flu season.

[renate]

86. there's a second page to the article:

http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1123285&page=2

[Barad Simith]

87. My apologies to all

Didn't see the link to the second page.

:blush:

Kicking and nominating.

[troubleinwinter]

77. what r ya gonna do?

[B Calm]

78. Bush can't even protect us against the flu! Two years straight

without any protection!

[sakabatou]

79. We are SOOO screwed...

[Stand and Fight]

89. Doom and gloom... Doom and gloom...

Aren't we progressives? Then let's get off our asses and start making progress. This doom and gloom shit is getting so old. Get the sons of bitches in office in their asses already, and make them do something. Get involved in your local political process. Do something! Enough with the "woe is me" and "we're screwed" mantra shit.