buy your canned tuna, bird flu coming

lady cop · Post by **lady cop** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 5:28 pm

:yh_chickn :yh_chickn :yh_chickn Bird Flu Is Coming to America...time to panic yet?

Officials Advise Stocking Up on Provisions -- and Warn That Infected Birds Cannot Be Prevented From Flying In

By BRIAN ROSS

March 13, 2006 Ã¢â‚¬ - In a remarkable speech over the weekend, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recommended that Americans start storing canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds as the prospect of a deadly bird flu outbreak approaches the United States.

Ready or not, here it comes.

It is being spread much faster than first predicted from one wild flock of birds to another, an airborne delivery system that no government can stop.

"There's no way you can protect the United States by building a big cage around it and preventing wild birds from flying in and out," U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Michael Johanns said.

U.S. spy satellites are tracking the infected flocks, which started in Asia and are now heading north to Siberia and Alaska, where they will soon mingle with flocks from the North American flyways.

"What we're watching in real time is evolution," said Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. "And it's a biological process, and it is, by definition, unpredictable."

Industry Precautions

America's poultry farms could become ground zero as infected flocks fly over. The industry says it is prepared for quick action.

"All the birds involved in it would be destroyed, and the area would be isolated and quarantined," said Richard Lobb of the National Chicken Council. "It would very much [look] like a sort of military operation if it came to that."

Extraordinary precautions are already being taken at the huge chicken farms in Lancaster County, Pa., the site of the last great outbreak of a similar bird flu 20 years ago.

Other than the farmers, everyone there has to dress as if it were a visit to a hospital operating room.

"Back in 1983-1984, we had to kill 17 million birds at a cost of $60 million," said Dr. Sherrill Davison, a veterinary medicine expert at the University of Pennsylvania.

Can It Be Stopped?

Even on a model farm, ABC News saw a pond just outside the protected barns attracting wild geese.

It is the droppings of infected waterfowl that carry the virus.

The bird flu virus, to date, is still not easily transmitted to humans. There have been lots of dead birds on three continents, but so far fewer than 100 reported human deaths.

But should that change, the spread could be rapid.

ABC News has obtained a mathematical projection prepared by federal scientists based on an initial outbreak on an East Coast chicken farm in which humans are infected. Within three months, with no vaccine, almost half of the country would have the flu.

That, of course, is a worst-case scenario -- one that Lobb says the poultry industry is determined to prevent with an aggressive strategy to contain and destroy infected flocks and deny the virus the opportunity to mutate to a more dangerous form but one that experts say cannot be completely discounted. The current bird flu strain has been around for at least 10 years and has taken surprising twists and turns -- not the least of which is that it's now showing up in cats in Europe, where officials are advising owners to bring their cats inside. It's advice that might soon have to be considered here.

lady cop · Post by **lady cop** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 6:09 pm

i don't discount the seriousness of bird flu, but why am i getting flashbacks to hiding under my school desk to survive an atom bomb? ('duck and cover')

Post by **spot** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 6:19 pm

lady cop wrote: i don't discount the seriousness of bird flu, but why am i getting flashbacks to hiding under my school desk to survive an atom bomb? ('duck and cover')

What's serious about bird flu? It kiils birds. If you pick the bird up and eat some of it raw you can become infected and if you get infected you might die. The trick of staying alive is not to pick up the bird or eat one raw.

lady cop · Post by **lady cop** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 6:19 pm

or kiss them.

Post by **spot** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 6:20 pm

lady cop wrote: or kiss them.

ewwww. The things Floridians get up to...

Sheryl · Post by **Sheryl** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 7:03 pm

Why powdered milk and tuna? That's what I don't understand.

lady cop · Post by **lady cop** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 7:07 pm

Sheryl wrote: Why powdered milk and tuna? That's what I don't understand.i suspect for the nutritional value. protein.

chonsigirl · Post by **chonsigirl** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 7:07 pm

Gosh, I remember powdered milk. Yuchy!

LilacDragon · Post by **LilacDragon** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:41 pm

Add to that the confirmed case of Mad Cow found in Alabama and we are going to be living on canned tuna and powdered milk!

valerie · Post by **valerie** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 9:12 pm

lady cop wrote: i don't discount the seriousness of bird flu, but why am i getting flashbacks to hiding under my school desk to survive an atom bomb? ('duck and cover')

Adults trying to make us feel secure and giving us something to do... even

way back then I knew it wouldn't work...

:(

Joe · Post by **Joe** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:45 am

spot wrote: What's serious about bird flu? It kiils birds. If you pick the bird up and eat some of it raw you can become infected and if you get infected you might die. The trick of staying alive is not to pick up the bird or eat one raw.

The Bird Flu pandemic after World War One killed more people in Britain than the War did.

Bird flu doesn't kill us, it tricks us into killing ourselves. The weapon? Our own immune system. Our immune system doesn't know what to do with the infected cells so it kills all of them.

That makes it a bit serious now.

These facts came from a programme on Chanel 4 last night. For more information see www.channel4.com/science.

theia · Post by **theia** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:58 am

spot wrote: What's serious about bird flu? It kiils birds. If you pick the bird up and eat some of it raw you can become infected and if you get infected you might die. The trick of staying alive is not to pick up the bird or eat one raw.

Thank you for that timely advice, Spot. It is heartening to find calming and wise words amongst the all too familiar panic and scaremongering. I shall now switch to tuna and powdered milk and my cat has just announced that he won't go near another bird but will stick to rats, shrews and glow worms, from today. Thank goodness for common sense.

Post by **spot** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 7:44 am

Joe wrote: The Bird Flu pandemic after World War One killed more people in Britain than the War did.So it now seems, Joe. For the current avian flu, though, there's still no mutation that enables it to easily infect humans. To become dangerous the virus has to change and survive, which is a bit like winning the lottery. The precautions around the world are designed to reduce the number of lottery tickets the flu can buy, as it were. It hasn't won again in ninety years of trying. This year it's buying more tickets than usual.

Post by **spot** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 7:51 am

theia wrote: Thank goodness for common sense.Theia, however tempting it gets, however much you get tired of the tuna, don't end up eating your cat without cooking it a long time first. Try to persuade it to turn vegetarian, if you can. Feed it cucumbers. You've no idea where those rodents and glow-worms have been, but no salad ever hosted influenza.

lady cop · Post by **lady cop** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 7:57 am

SnoozeControl wrote: And remember, if there's a tornado or hurricane in your area, get into the bathtub and pull a mattress over you.

There, I've done my part for public safety.:)yeah. my aunt in miami did exactly that during andrew.... while her roof blew off and she lost everything she ever owned. and all her photos of a lifetime. she's never been the same. :-1

Jives · Post by **Jives** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 8:05 am

I don't want to alarm anyone but it's a common axiom in nature that when a population of a species reaches a critical mass, some disease comes along wipes it back to a viable level.

The Wildebeast (or was it the water buffalo?) once had herds that blackened the veldt when they moved. A herd of a million or more was common, then they were attacked by a new strain of rinderpest. The species almost became extinct. So few remained that they became a curiouslity. In recent years they have begun the long climb back.

The Sumatran rat escaped a sailing ship and overran a small island in the Gallapagos chain. With no natural enemies there, it bred unchecked for a decade. By that time sailors reported that you couldn't walk across any area of the island without steppng on the rats continuously. Then a sudden plague came along and within a year, the rat was extinct.

The human population of this planet is closing on 8 billion. If it's not bird flu that evens nature's balance scales, it'll be something else. Sooner or later.

Post by **spot** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 8:12 am

Jives wrote: I don't want to alarm anyone but it's a common axiom in nature that when a population of a species reaches a critical mass, some disease comes along wipes it back to a viable level.The widebeest and the rats never had a CDC, Jives. I think we're well past that danger now. Survival of the fittest is no longer a pressure on humanity.

Rapunzel · Post by **Rapunzel** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 8:16 am

Jives wrote: The human population of this planet is closing on 8 billion. If it's not bird flu that evens nature's balance scales, it'll be something else. Sooner or later.

Usually its war that balances the scales!

Jives · Post by **Jives** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 8:56 am

spot wrote: The widebeest and the rats never had a CDC, Jives. I think we're well past that danger now. Survival of the fittest is no longer a pressure on humanity.

They also never had biological warfare labs. I personally know of botulins that are 99% lethal to primates in mere minutes, then are air-soluble in 24 hours. Walk into a country, dump a vial upside down, wait a day, then go in and bury the bodies.

Then there are the "Satan Bugs", viral weapons that mutate so fast that no cure can be found before the virus has changed. These weapons are airborne, they ride on dust particles. No human would be immune to them from the Northernmost eskimo, to the southernmost gaucho.

Believe me, if you knew all I know about bio-warfare, you wouldn't sleep at night. Nuclear weapons are small, localized things by comparison.

Rapunzel · Post by **Rapunzel** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 11:29 am

Could this be the cure???

minks · Post by **minks** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:31 pm

LilacDragon wrote: Add to that the confirmed case of Mad Cow found in Alabama and we are going to be living on canned tuna and powdered milk!

WOT??? How come we didn't hear of this case of Mad Cow OMG soon that should be filtering back to the fact it was a Canadian Cow, aren't all your cases blamed on us ahahahahaha

Powdered Milk OMG any of us with a low income upbringing recall that stuff Gosh our mother had to refridgerate that crap for a decade before we would drink it. Heaven forbid it was not cold enough.... even still it was utter shite.

minks · Post by **minks** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:35 pm

Jives wrote: I don't want to alarm anyone but it's a common axiom in nature that when a population of a species reaches a critical mass, some disease comes along wipes it back to a viable level.

The Wildebeast (or was it the water buffalo?) once had herds that blackened the veldt when they moved. A herd of a million or more was common, then they were attacked by a new strain of rinderpest. The species almost became extinct. So few remained that they became a curiouslity. In recent years they have begun the long climb back.

The Sumatran rat escaped a sailing ship and overran a small island in the Gallapagos chain. With no natural enemies there, it bred unchecked for a decade. By that time sailors reported that you couldn't walk across any area of the island without steppng on the rats continuously. Then a sudden plague came along and within a year, the rat was extinct.

The human population of this planet is closing on 8 billion. If it's not bird flu that evens nature's balance scales, it'll be something else. Sooner or later.

I thought AIDS and Ebola were the fix for our human over population hmmm seems we are stronger than we thought.

Rapunzel · Post by **Rapunzel** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 8:30 pm

I was watching Sky news tonight and they think that its probable Bird flu WILL transmute to affect humans and will be an airborne virus. They estimate 50% of the world population will die from it within 5 months of it hitting their shores!

My God, Bubonic Plague only wiped out 33% of the worlds population!

Do you think they are being overly cautious or employing 'worst case scenario' tactics? Do you think it will decimate the population as severely as they say?

Or do you think the odds are in our favour?

Mad Cow was a huge deal as was foot and mouth disease, but overall they didn't affect the population as drastically as had been supposed.

Tonights news was dire! Full of bird flu statistics and war in the Middle East, etc.

Sometimes it feels as though we're on the brink of world breakdown with plague and pestilence trying to kill us all before the Middle East has developed nuclear weapons to bombard us with! What IS the world coming to? Does no one believe in World Peace anymore?

The only good that can come out of it is that with 50% of the world's population decimated, house prices will come down! Shame I won't be one of the one's benefitting from it! (That's a joke btw!

)

lady cop · Post by **lady cop** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 9:26 pm

ABCNEWS: 50% CHANCE BIRD FLU WILL GO HUMAN TO HUMAN...

chrisb84uk · Post by **chrisb84uk** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 5:27 am

:yh_rotfl Oh that is hilarious, I can see stores stocking up on packs on Hensip as we speak hahahaha.

Post by **spot** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 7:33 am

Jives wrote: Believe me, if you knew all I know about bio-warfare, you wouldn't sleep at night. Nuclear weapons are small, localized things by comparison.Purely out of interest, Jives, who's developed these evil things? Is this contribution to world culture something cooked up by Islamic militants?

tedhutchinson · Post by **tedhutchinson** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 9:22 am

Joe wrote: The Bird Flu pandemic after World War One killed more people in Britain than the War did.

Bird flu doesn't kill us, it tricks us into killing ourselves. The weapon? Our own immune system. Our immune system doesn't know what to do with the infected cells so it kills all of them.

That makes it a bit serious now.

These facts came from a programme on Chanel 4 last night. For more information see www.channel4.com/science.
I'm glad to see that someone else is using their common sense. It is of course the autoimmune system going out of control which causes the problem.

So how can we improve our immune system to ensure when attacked the inflammatory process is controlled and those pro-inflammatory cytokines (the bodies SAS unit) are kept in order?

The clue lies in the seasonality of pandemics and epidemics. Winter, rainy season or during industrial pollutions episodes are all instances when epidemics occur. Why, because our endocrine system is controlled by the presence of Vitamin d3 cholecalciferol, that is made by the skin when exposed directly to sunlight. In the winter the sun is too weak for the process to start or the weather is too cold for the body to be exposed. In the rainy season the sun is behind the clouds and in polluted cities the air is so thick with smog the uvb doesn't penetrate. Dietary sources of D3 are too poor to provide sufficient so people are more vulnerable. The more vulnerable available for the virus to infect the quicker it spreads.

The answer is for every white skinned person who reads this to spend some time every day between now and September outside exposing as much skin as they dare for at least 20 minutes. 40 would be better. If you are brown skinned I'm afraid you will have to spend 6 times longer sunbathing and if black up to 10 times longer is necessary. The more skin you can expose the shorter the time you need to spend outside. Those too shy to indulge in nude trampolining (exercising while sunbathing will also improve fitness and fit bodies are less vulnerable than the unfit kind) may like to use VIT D3 CHOLECALCIFEROL tablets. However you do have to realise that the medics have totally understated the amount of D3 necessary The Vitamin D council has details however the sunbathing for 20-40 mins should create 12-20,000iu and this enables us to build up a store for the Winter. To get the body fully primed you would need a fortnights holiday in a sunny place to create and store 100,000iu. This is the kind of figure which stops Seasonal Affective Disorder(SAD) in it's tracks.

In the UK you can only buy 400iu tablets so you can use your calculator to work out how many to take. If you buy 360 and spread these over three weeks that should bring you up to scratch, taking 2000iu daily from then on should keep you going during the spring and summer if you are able to also go outside during the day. If you are a shift worker or housebound then 4000iu daily would be sufficient to keep your levels at the optimum. If you haven't had any D3 before and AVIAN FLU cases in humans are reported in your area and you are panicing then taking the whole 100,000iu 250x400iu tablets in one go will not kill you or damage your health. The preferred route is to ensure you keep topped up with natural sunlight but the research from people entering Boston USA hospitals is that around 50% of the population are D3 deficient so it's reasonable to suppose that further north the percentage of d3 deficiency is worse. As I understand there are some cases of prostrate cancer linked to declining (as opposed to constantly low)levels of D3. I personally think it's best not to go for the occassional high dose followed by slow decline system but to build up gradually and then stick at a regular reasonable amount.

In case anyone hasn't grasped my rant think about it in terms of monthly credit card expenditure. If your daily expenditure is 4000 and your inpayments 400 you will continue to get into debt. If you have been spending 4000daily and are in debt now the best thing to do is to obtain a lump sum to reduce the debt and then try to match income to expenditure.

Your body uses 3000-5000iu of D3 daily so 4000iu is a safe daily amount for those who can't get direct sunlight exposure.

The current official RDA will do nothing to help your current debt problem (assuming you are living north of the Equator and reading this in March, end of Winter)

The current sunlight policy in the UK is not only dangerous in that it is creating more cancer than it prevents but racist in that it fails to acknowledge the greater need for direct skin exposure to sunlight needed to keep brown or black skinned people in perfect mental and physical health.

The above is only one aspect of the role of Vitamin d3 in relation to the immune system. I haven't detailed the way the presence of circulating vitamin d3 enhances the absorbtion of omega 3 EFA's by cells. Omega 3 acts as an anti-inflammatory agent. Cells fully charged with omega are like houses which a built in sprinkler system. Having a control system fully operational by getting and keeping your VITAMIN D3 CHOLECALCIFEROL system fully charged will have the benefit (providing you eat 4 portions of oily fish a week or use a fish oil supplement providing at least 1g omega daily) of enabling your omega3 anti-inflammatory system also fully primed. (knock on benefits for heart circulation brain, eyes etc as well)

By the way TUNA is not counted as a good source of omega 3 so swap the tuna for sardines, herring or wild salmon.

valerie · Post by **valerie** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 9:24 am

:-5 :-5 :-5 :-5