We don't have an LTS forum here (yet).

OK, first a little "outing" of myself. I may be the only person who's been looking at this bird flu stuff as kind of a background issue - I think it's because we have no practical means of watching broadcast television media in this house (as in No Cable, Sattelite or installed broadcast antenna) so I probobly have missed a long parade of hysterical news reporters on this subject.

That said, of course, I've seen the news reports online and heard on the radio about this...but since the 1918 and even the 1960s, we've seen a pretty darn vast improvement in medical technology. Is this a "pandemic" or will it be just a purge of the very poor?



http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/conditions/11/07/bird.flu.who.ap/index.html

GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) -- A deadly new global pandemic of human influenza is inevitable and suffering will be "incalculable" unless the world is ready, the chief of the U.N. health agency said Monday. The World Bank put the possible economic cost at a minimum of $800 billion.

"We have been experiencing a relentless spread of avian flu" among migratory birds and domestic poultry, Lee Jong-wook, director-general of the World Health Organization told a meeting of 600 health experts and planners, the first attempt to devise a global strategy in case the bird flu virus changes to transmit easily among humans.

Lee stressed that a human flu pandemic has yet to begin anywhere in the world.

"However, the signs are clear that is coming," he said, noting that a changed avian flu virus caused the deadly "Spanish" flu pandemic that killed tens of millions of people in 1918-1919.

Already the virulent H5N1 strain of avian flu, which appeared in Hong Kong in 1997, is killing birds in 15 countries of Europe and Asia, he said."

Whole article at CNN.