Making money
Who said that there's no money to be made with your scare of bird flu?
Have a glance at this site, its full of offers and special offers, and you may order online! What a beautiful world!

But, mainly, I just wanted to wish you a happy, (bird)flu-less New Year!

FP: Tamiflu is worse than Bird Flu

I love this piece from Foreign Policy. Their clever editors are saying good bye to 2006 with a collection of "The Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2006". One of them concerns our topic. It says:


In 2006, bird flu didn’t become the killer pandemic everyone feared. In fact, there were no confirmed deaths in developed countries from bird flu. But the alarm, stoked by Western media reports, led to an unexpected—and unfortunate—outcome: A rash of abnormal behavior, hallucinations, and even deaths attributed to Tamiflu, the medicine marketed as a key drug capable of fighting the disease. In November, the Canadian health ministry issued a warning on Tamiflu after 10 Canadians taking the drug had died suspiciously. And the U.S. Food and Drug Administration received more than 100 reports of injury and delirium among Tamiflu takers for a 10-month period in 2005 and 2006. That’s nearly as many cases as were logged over the drug’s five-year trial period. For now, the cure seems worse than the disease.

Thank you FP!

Here is my present

Learn from the survivors

I'm nearing my sixth X and forget almost everything instantly. No wonder that I envy those who have a fine memory. One of them is William H. Sardo Jr., 94, who is one of the few survivors of the world's worst disaster, which killed 50 to 100 million people, and still remembers how it happened. He spoke to the reporters of The Washington Post.

Here are some excerpts:

At the height of the flu pandemic in 1918, William H. Sardo Jr. remembers the pine caskets stacked in the living room of his family's house, a funeral home in Washington, D.C.

The city had slowed to a near halt. Schools were closed. Church services were banned. The federal government limited its hours of operation. People were dying -- some who took ill in the morning were dead by night.

''That's how quickly it happened,'' said Sardo, 94, who lives in an assisted living facility just outside the nation's capital. ''They disappeared from the face of the earth.''

Sardo is among the last survivors of the 1918 flu pandemic. Their stories offer a glimpse at the forgotten history of one of the world's worst plagues, when the virus killed at least 50 million people and perhaps as many as 100 million.

More than 600,000 people in the United States died of what was then called ''Spanish Influenza.'' The flu seemed to be particularly lethal for otherwise healthy young adults, many of whom suffocated from the buildup of liquids in their lungs.

In the United States, the first reported cases surfaced at an Army camp in Kansas as World War I began winding down. The virus quickly spread among soldiers at U.S. camps and in the trenches of Europe. It paralyzed many communities as it circled the world.

******************

''They kept me well separated from everybody,'' said Sardo, who lived with his parents, two brothers and three other family members. His family quarantined him in the bedroom he had shared with his brother. Everyone in the family wore masks.
The city began shutting down. The federal government staggered its hours to limit crowding on the streets and on streetcars. Commissioners overseeing the district closed schools in early October, along with playgrounds, theaters, vaudeville houses and ''all places of amusement.'' Dances and other social gatherings were banned.

''There was a feeling that they couldn't turn to God, other than in prayer,'' Sardo said. ''They liked the feeling of going to church, and they were forbidden.''

The flu's spread and the ensuing restrictions ''made everybody afraid to go see anybody,'' he said.

''It changed a lot of society,'' Sardo said. ''We became more individualistic.''

In a list of 12 rules to prevent the disease's spread, the Army's surgeon general wrote that people should ''avoid needless crowding,'' open windows and ''breathe deeply'' when the air is ''pure'' and ''wash your hands before eating.''

At the time, rumors swirled that the Germans had spread the disease -- which Sardo did not believe.

************************


As the death toll started to mount, there was a shortage of coffins. Funeral homes could not keep up. Sardo's father, who owned William H. Sardo & Co., and other funeral-home directors turned to soldiers for help embalming and digging thousands of graves.

Talk of the threat of another pandemic brings back memories for Sardo, who says he has gotten a flu shot every year they are available.

''It scares the hell out of me. It does,'' Sardo said.

....................................................................................

Poor Sardo. I wish he saw this video.
These girls do not seem to be scared too much, which is good news.

Apocalypse Prologue
Well, having found the video I posted earlier today (see below) I made a little search on Youtube for more posts on the topics. And see what I found.
This is an intro to a - probably Chinese - videogame on the Apocalypse to be brought on us be the Avian Flu.
Not too many have downloaded it up to now, and there was only one comment: "love the idea ... nice music too."
Sure.

I'm back

I wonder if you noticed my absence for roughly six months. And I'm still alive :) though the Flu is still there, and as I read on BBC online the scare-production is till on and going. This flu, I learn, could kill 62 million people, experts have warned.
Will this scaremongering never stop?
They cite The Lancet, which says that the 1918 pandemic claimed 50 million lives, and experts predict the toll today would be higher than this, despite hstrain
Lethal global flu epidemics tend to occur three or four times a century.
Some scientists believe a new one may be imminent and could be triggered by bird flu.
So far there have been only 258 cases of the latest strain of avian flu, H5N1, recorded in humans.
Nothing new. And, again, they - the experts, suggest, that the well to do, affluent minority of the global population are on the safer side, whereas the poor majority, living in the so called developing countries have a good chance to be wiped out - and with them a good portion of the planet's problems.
As you know, I'm not suggesting that there is no such thing as the birds flu and that one should not be alerted and take all possible measures to avoid the malady. What I suggest, is that certain business interests are behind the drive to scare us more than necessary, so that we will buy their products - their latest drugs and gadgets that would protect us from ---- from turning into what someone captured on this video:


Imagine what would happen if the experts were right: the population would die, not of the direct effects of the virus, but because of the cacophony the 62 million human beings turned cocks would create!

I wonder why nobody is a safe means against this: small earplugs for all of us.
But the fear is that this strain could mutate and spread quickly and easily between people, triggering a deadly pandemic.
I wish you a happy new year!