Bird Flu: And The Band Played On

Have you been following the bird flu? Whether it is something to be alarmed about it up to each of us to decide on our own. However, something interesting has happend over the last several days. Possible human to human contact has occured.

In Indonesia there was a family of 7 who have contracted bird flu. What is important in this cluster is that only one member of the family had contact with pouoltry. All the family members were in close proximity to the first infected family member as they were caring for that individual. It appears that this possible human to human jump was not made by casual contact. What is important to keep in mind that each time the virus infects a human is another opportunity for the virus to mutate into a form that is more easily transfered from human to human. One can go the next step and summize that with each individual human to human transfer of the virus the risks of a transfer friendly human to human mutation rise considerably.

In Romania there has been 56 new outbreaks of bird flu within the past 12 days alone with 400 people being placed under quarantine in the capital alone.

Why is this significant? Hopefully it is the Romanian authorities are being overzealous in the control. To my knowlege this is the first concentration of potential human cases in a western metropolitan city. This instance is preliminary and nothing to worry about at this time. When the flu does finally adapt to humans we won't really see it until it hit a western city.

We may hear about human to human transfer in remote villages in Indonesia, China or Vietnam or even small or medium sized cities in those areas. It wont really effect our metality until we get those reports in a western industrialized city. If you read about the spanish flu, especially the reports out of Ft Riley, Kansas towards the end of WWI you can see how fast the devestation spread. One day there were a handful of people sick and within 24-48 hrs there were hundreds. If you want something to reference in modern terms you can see the title of this post. It is an HBO documentation of the early days of the spread of AIDS....the clusters and how quickly the virus spread.

and the band played on.....