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Are you worried about bird flu or avian influenza?
We have started getting a few calls already from worried parents about bird flu, but it wasn't too hard to see that coming.
It is usually pretty easy to predict what has parents worried these days - just see what doomsday topics that popular TV news' shows are covering. Lately, many of them, including the regular nightly news, Primetime, and Nightline have all featured stories about how the bird flu 'could kill a billion people worldwide' and 'make ghost towns out of parts of major cities.'
When it is put that way, why wouldn't you be worried? And I can understand why people call for more information...
Not everyone wants more information though. I have several friends and families I take care of and instead of knowing all of the in's and out's of the bird flu, they simply want to know if I'm worried about this. They figure that I am usually up on this kind of thing and they won't get worried until I do.
So my easy answer on whether or not I am worried about the bird flu, at least in the short term, is no. And here are some reasons why:
- there have never been any cases of bird flu in the United States
- the bird flu, which mainly infects birds, only rarely spreads from one person to another. The bird flu virus is going to have to mutate before it can be able to easily transmit it self from person to person, which is necessary before it can cause a global influenza pandemic.
- health officials are working aggressively to make sure that we don't have an influenza pandemic, including controlling bird flu outbreaks by killing more than 100 million birds in eight countries in Asia (Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam)
- antiviral drugs, including Tamiflu, are available to treat the bird flu and a bird flu vaccine is already being tested. Unfortunately, our regular flu shot doesn't include the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus.
Even the CDC states that 'the current risk to Americans from the H5N1 bird flu outbreak in Asia is low.'
On the other hand, the bird flu is not something to be ignored, especially since about half of the people who have been infected with the bird flu have died. Also, the bird flu virus could easily mutate so that it could more easily spread from person to person, especially if someone was infected with both the bird flu and the regular 'people' flu. And even if a vaccine is quickly developed, getting enough vaccine made to curb a global pandemic, would be a challenge.
Keep in mind that even though the bird flu hasn't reached the United States, it is just a plane ride away, so we can't ignore it just because it is only infecting people in Asia right now. So we should prepare for the bird flu and make sure that our health officials are doing everything possible to avert a bird flu pandemic, including stockpiling flu medicines and quickly developing a safe and effective bird flu vaccine.
Bird Flu Facts
Although the bird flu has been around for over 100 years, it has only received a lot of attention since 1997, when the first human cases occurred. Before that, the bird flu just affected wild birds, domesticated birds, including chickens, ducks, and turkeys, and sometimes pigs.
Although the bird flu viruses do not usually infect humans, there have been several cases of people getting infected by handling or eating infected birds and more rarely, from having contact with another person that is infected with the bird flu.
The big concern is that since people have never been infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu, they have no natural immunity and would get very sick. This is likely what happened during the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic that killed 50 million people around the world.
Medicine is much more sophisticated since 1918 though, and we can now quickly test people for bird flu, which will hopefully mean that exposed people will get antiviral medicines like Tamiflu, a bird flu vaccine, and be quarantined, so that they don't spread the bird flu to others.
Although some people think that an influenza pandemic is inevitable, hopefully the pandemic prevention and preparedness activities of organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization will avert a possible H5N1 flu pandemic.
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