Bird Flu Pandemic - Y2K Again?

Remember Y2K? The hysteria reminds me of the congressman screaming about the Bird Flu Pandemic. One article already makes the call that such a pandemic is imminent.

Be watching for articles about children and elderly contracting the flu. One such article tells about the an eight year old girl who kissed a sick chicken. Go figure that she contracted the ‘deadly’ H5N1 strain of bird flu.

The next morning, her face and eyes were swollen and she had a high fever. Her father took her to a hospital, and five days later she was confirmed to have the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu…. In parts of the world where the virus has been deadly _ until now only in East Asia _ children like Summeya have been the worst hit.

What gets a brief mention in the article is that she is doing well.

As for Sumeyya, she is expected to be released from the hospital and join her family and her other pets _ dogs, cats and cows _ in the next few days.

Makes you wonder about this pandemic. Apparently there are no reports of human to human transmission. In-spite of questions Global Bank is preparing for the possibility of half its workforce being out when it strikes.

A refreshingly non-panic article out of Scotland has health experts saying it may never happen in Scotland.

But so far the human deaths from H5N1 have all been due to contracting the virus directly from close contact with diseased poultry. There is no evidence that bird flu can be transmitted between humans… It is a theoretical possibility, it may never happen it might happen next week we can’t say.

Though it will be a concern among farmers and a health risk for those in close contact it appears that a pandemic is so far only ‘theoretical’.