PsiKik
12 Oct 2005, 11:24 AM
Is the 'bird flu' scare just another scare?
Could the bad handling of the Katrina disaster be fueling the panic?
There are so many media articles now about it now, mostly essentialy the same - dire warnings about the millions that are sure to die.
There are a few like this one that offer a different perspective - http://www.americandaily.com/article/9657
- that point out conditions are very different to the 1918 pandemic.
Whereas today government would simply call upon certain drug companies to produce more of a certain vaccine or drug (GlaxoSmithKline produces an in-demand vaccine for bird flu), antiviral drugs didn’t exist in 1918. Public health officials were left to rely upon what were then modern standards. Stanford University maintains some brief, fine writings on the subject online; one notes that “[while] most of the measures were solidly grounded in the current scientific concepts, they could also be traced back to Medieval and even Classical times of plague and pestilence. The public health authorities in both the United States and Europe took up fundamental measures to control epidemics that dated back to Medieval times of the Bubonic Plague.” In other words, their modern concepts were rooted in the 1350s.
The point is that medical science in 2005 is decidedly rooted in 2005 (and beyond, it seems sometimes). More North Koreans will die from regime-fueled starvation on Tuesday than have died, worldwide, from bird flu in the last 2˝ years, or that will ever die from it in the United States.
Could the bad handling of the Katrina disaster be fueling the panic?
There are so many media articles now about it now, mostly essentialy the same - dire warnings about the millions that are sure to die.
There are a few like this one that offer a different perspective - http://www.americandaily.com/article/9657
- that point out conditions are very different to the 1918 pandemic.
Whereas today government would simply call upon certain drug companies to produce more of a certain vaccine or drug (GlaxoSmithKline produces an in-demand vaccine for bird flu), antiviral drugs didn’t exist in 1918. Public health officials were left to rely upon what were then modern standards. Stanford University maintains some brief, fine writings on the subject online; one notes that “[while] most of the measures were solidly grounded in the current scientific concepts, they could also be traced back to Medieval and even Classical times of plague and pestilence. The public health authorities in both the United States and Europe took up fundamental measures to control epidemics that dated back to Medieval times of the Bubonic Plague.” In other words, their modern concepts were rooted in the 1350s.
The point is that medical science in 2005 is decidedly rooted in 2005 (and beyond, it seems sometimes). More North Koreans will die from regime-fueled starvation on Tuesday than have died, worldwide, from bird flu in the last 2˝ years, or that will ever die from it in the United States.