Ready or Not, Bird Flu Is Coming to America-Officials Advise Stocking Up

[AGENDA21]

March 13, 2006 — - In a remarkable speech over the weekend, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recommended that Americans start storing canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds as the prospect of a deadly bird flu outbreak approaches the United States.

Ready or not, here it comes.

It is being spread much faster than first predicted from one wild flock of birds to another, an airborne delivery system that no government can stop.

"There's no way you can protect the United States by building a big cage around it and preventing wild birds from flying in and out," U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Michael Johanns said.

U.S. spy satellites are tracking the infected flocks, which started in Asia and are now heading north to Siberia and Alaska, where they will soon mingle with flocks from the North American flyways.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/print?id=1716820

[mattclearing]

1. Dupe

We're not scared.

[mother earth]

2. Are they better at tracking disasters than they are at coming

to the rescue?

:eyes:

[endarkenment]

3. run run terra terra

Avian Bird Flu! Head for the hills! Terra Terra Terra!

I'd be worried if I were a chicken farmer. I'd be worried that my source of income was going to be destroyed by people in hazmat suits from the CDC.

[flamin lib]

4. This is so stupid. Bird flu, like the common cold is passed by

physical contact. Wash your hands several times a day and you can cut the risk by 80%. If it were an airborne virus the hype might be justified, but it isn't.

Powdered milk and tuna are the new duct tape and plastic sheeting.

[pointblank]

5. "In other news,

Stock prices for the companies "Carnation" and "Chicken of the Sea" mysteriously spiked today....."

[mother earth]

6. And no doubt Michael Leavitt owns stock!

[earth mom]

7. Ah yes, more terra terra terra.

:eyes:

[adriennui]

8. these warnings are full of shit

put a moratorium on the import or processing of chickens.....and yes let's think the unthinkable. stop eating those filthy birds. i don'r remember the last time i ate any kind of fowl.

[babylonsister]

9. And Rumsfeld is rubbing his hands together, can't hardly wait

to get his hands on all the loot he'll be making out of others' misery should this ever come about. :nuke:

[Avalux]

10. They're trying hard to scare us.

Tracking infected flocks with spy satellites.....lol. I predict when a bird in the US is found infected, mass hysteria will ensue. Keep one thing in mind though - the virus HAS TO COMBINE with human influeza to make a strain that's easily transmitted from human to human. Until that happens (if and when it does) no reason to get worked up.

Our government and the media, of course, will not do a good job of making that understood.

[AGENDA21]

12. Good info here..

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/S/science/medicine/bird_flu.html

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/S/science/medicine/bird_flu_more.html

[Peggy Day]

11. Remember SARS?

[TallahasseeGrannie]

13. I know we like to make fun of all this

but personally I'm buying canned goods and getting an extra month of medications just in case.

Then I'll laugh.

You ought to have all that stuff available anyway. From hurricanes to blizzards to an act of war... we are so dependent on our trucks, our stores...we are vulnerable.

We shouldn't be so jaded by Bushco that we no longer have good common sense.

[Solly Mack]

14. Gee, we have bird flu here and no one's going off the deep end

Just saying.

Here would be Mannheim, Germany.

[truth2power]

15. Good grief!! At first I thought this was from the Onion..

until I saw the link was ABC news.

Canned tuna??? I don't get it. This makes absolutely no sense. And "under your bed? What kind of a Freudian slip is that? I thought it was the terra-ists that were under our beds..... Sheesh!

[lindisfarne]

16. "canned tuna and powdered milk"? how is the milk supply going to be

affected if the bird flu comes to the US? and canned tuna - are we trying to expose more americans to mercury poisoning?