The FACTS about H5N1, bird flu (avian influenza)

Fact 1 This is a disease which affects BIRDS.

Fact 2 This does not mean that female humans are more susceptible to the disease.

Fact 3 The only humans who have contracted the disease are people who have their chickens sleeping in their beds.

Fact 4 No human has yet caught the disease from another person.

Fact 5 Many bird diseases from psittacosis to salmonella to influenza can be caught from birds, but do not pass from human to human.

Fact 6 Scientists believe the H5N1 COULD one day mutate into a human – human disease.

Fact 7 The chances of this happening are unknown, but are extremely remote.

Fact 8 You are 5833 times more likely to die in a car crash than from coming down with bird flu.

Fact 9 You are 25 times more likely to be struck by lightning than contract H5N1.

Fact 10 You are 88535 times more likely to die from food poisoning than bird flu.

Fact 11 There is NO cure for H5N1, or any other viral disease.

Fact 12 Tamiflu is considered to be the most likely antiviral drug to help you IF a pandemic strikes, according to some health authorities – and the makers of it.

Fact 13 50% of people with H5N1 treated in 2005 with Tamiflu died, including one case where it appears that Tamiflu caused the victim’s virus to mutate into an even worse form of the disease.

Fact 14 Vira 38 does NOT work, despite its makers claiming it will protect and even cure you. It is made of water and raspberry flavouring only and has sold millions of doses to date.

Fact 15 Coca-Cola will provide you with as much protection as Vira 38.

Fact 16 The Y2K bug was non-existent and cost the world 3% of one year’s GDP. Bird flu hysteria is likely to be even costlier and every bit as non-existent.

Fact 17 A face mask to stop viral contamination is about as likely to stop you catching a virus as Vira 38.

Those are the bland facts.

Recent banner headlines describing the entry of bird flu into France and other parts of Europe have missed one extremely important point – the disease which has arrived in those countries has been the BIRD disease, not its potential human counterpart.

Add to this that in the unlikely event that the disease become a human – human virus and a pandemic starts, there is NOTHING you can do to adequately avoid the disease. Modern travel will mean that the disease has spread to all areas of the globe long before any attempts to isolate it will be of any use.

Unless all commerce, schooling and travel are immediately suspended worldwide if an outbreak occurs, it will race around the globe as influenza does every year.

What, therefore, should one do about the bird flu?

Nothing at all.

Forget the hype, the bullshit and the banner headlines, this disease isn’t going to be the one which annihilates mankind.

Yet again, something has arisen which is taking a huge focus and people are scared of something which is extremely unlikely to ever happen.

Meanwhile, children continue to die in their hundreds of thousands from preventable disease, hunger and dirty water.

Get over it.

 

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