World Pandemic ?

The Bird Flu that has gripped Asia has has now spread to former russian nations and is making its way to Europe.

The influenza pandemic is likely to happen due to the bird flu mutating into a virus that could be transmitted between humans. This month, the deadly bird flu has been spreading from Asia to Russia and has reached the Ural mountains which separate Asia from Europe.

As yet, there is no vaccine against the virus which would lead to the pandemic, because the virus has not yet been identified. Once the pandemic starts, the World Health Organisation will create the seed virus, which would then be given to pharmaceutical companies for mass production.

Viruses are unstable, they mix and match, and their behaviour is unpredictable. Professor Peiris, chief of virology at the Queen Mary hospital, Hong Kong, said: "We have a virus that is inefficiently crossing to humans. But, as with Sars, if you leave this situation to continue for long enough, it is possible that virus may adapt to efficient human to human transmission."

There was another possibility. Pigs are already a mixing vessel for such viruses. Were these to combine and mutate in them before spreading to humans, they could become "reassorted" and either become more or less virulent and more or less likely to transmit between people.

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Any Thoughts ?

Yes. Not very uplifting ones.

its already made its way across russia and into Europe...the first case was reported the other day

the weak link and the only hope for stopping a pandemic is that its expected to come from migratory wild birds who dont have much contact with either native birds or agricultural birds

The world end.....

damn and i hoped the end would be from zombies...but no it just had to be those damned birds...oh well 🙂

but to be serious i wouldnt worry about it. its probably just another SARS wannabe.

Every so often we are going to get a vicious strain of flu come our way. It sucks, and as much as practical should be done to mitigate it, but you can't stop it; we are a long way from conquering disease and this kind of thing will happen.

But the chances of these things ever being anything close to global catastrophes really are very small. SARS paranoia is worth pointing at.