Solution to Avian flu problem

Wow Happeh, that's possibly the worst conspiracy theory I've ever heard.

It is the very fact that the immense number of poor, useless people living with their livestock creates emergent diseases.

Think of it as a study in statistics. Viruses replicate tons inside their hosts, each replication with possible mutants. Eventually a virulent, contagious strain will emerge that will also be able to jump hosts. In China there are enough farm animals in squalid conditions to lead to an animal disease becoming a people disease, and enough people wallowing in the animal's filth to pick up the disease, and enough people nearby to catch the disease.

Did you know the bubonic plagues of the middle ages came from China? Could it have been CIA operatives traveling back in time?
 
That's a good point. China and Southeast Asia, where both SARS and the Avan Flu erupted, are very unhygienic countries in terms of how the they take care of farm animals (there are very few health restriction and seldom enforced), what they feed them, how they slaughter them, and how they prepare and deliver them for distribution in the local outside markets (all they do is through a pile of the dead birds in a cart and haul them into town, handling them with there bare unwashed hands all along the way). Then in the markets they hang them out in the open air where they're covered with flies till they are sold to restauranteers and the local people. Very little is ever wasted, even when it goes bad. What is not used gets refed to the farm animals, thrown to the dogs (which, in some parts of Asia are also eaten as a delicacy), or lies around and sits rotting for the dogs to eat.
 
Further to my earlier point about "acidification" from Carbon Dioxide affecting Virus behaviour. If you enter virus pH sensitive into Google you will come up with websites dealing with this, especially the Meridian Institute who have done work on the SARS virus.
 
I'm afraid that I don't have time to do a search, but from your reading have you found any evidence that acidification (pH sensitivity) would affect the rate of transmission between migratory birds from different continental areas - not just in the chicken coop.
 
Happeh said:
Did Bird flu really just pop up out of nowhere?
Click to expand...
Biologists have been tracking this particular virus for many years. It's been mutating slowly. It finally hit a configuration that really works well so it has begun spreading more successfully.
 
Spreading successfully only among birds, not yet among people. It has not yet mutated enough to spread from person to person. This is why it is still able to be contained. The consensus is that it will eventualy mutate into a strain that can be spread from human to human: not just bird to human. This is the great fear.
 
Further evidence that Tamiflu is becoming more and more resistant in Avian Flu. Two more teenagers in Vietnam died even though they were immediately treated with Tamiflu, and here we are in the U.S. dumping $100 million into production of Tamiflu as the main defense.

"Since 2003, avian flu has killed about 70 people, mostly in Vietnam and Thailand....Out of "eight Vietnamese bird flu patients given Tamiflu upon being hospitalized in 2004 or 2005. Half of the patients died. Lab tests showed two of those who died - girls ages 13 and 18 - had developed resistance."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/12/21/birdflu.tamiflu.ap/index.html

Furthermore, the anti-viral drug amantadine, that is widely used throughout Asia to kill the virus in poultry birds, is showing signs of becoming resistant to it, and the virus is now infecting pigs (pork).

"Bird flu becomes resistant to the low-cost amantadine family of antiviral drugs. Chinese farmers' use of the compound in chickens is blamed, a claim formally denied by Chinese authorities who pledge to investigate the situation. Rumours of human deaths in China from H5N1 remain unconfirmed, while the virus has killed more than 1,000 migratory birds. Indonesia's government confirms reports of H5N1 infection in pigs."

Source: "Bird flu: the ongoing story," BioEd Online, September 12, 2005.
http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=2018
 
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