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the irony of conservatives suddenly becoming supportive of public health when they're personally threatened, I have to say tommy46's point is one with which I also agree whole-heartedly. Bird flu epidemics happen frequently; nearly annually. There was a major bird flu epidemic on the northeast, especially Pennsylvania, in the, ummmm, early 80s I believe, that did a lot of damage to poultry farmers but very little else. These are common events. There're a couple of differences from the past. One is the speed with which we hear about problems - and the problems we tend to play up. There're major problems in India with cholera and Japanese B encephalitis right now, and they keep having bubonic plague bubbling along. Those a scary diseases with very high fatality rates, and Japanese B nearly always leaves the victims with residual neurologic deficits. However in the normal course of things flu spreads so much more easily and quickly that the sheer numbers of ill are overwhelming and can mean large numbers of hospitalized or dead people. So for a world-wide outbreak, flu is the big scary. So why now? Well, perhaps the flu types are indeed shifting to something scary - after all, look at the high death rate from people who do catch what the chickenc have. However, that's usually the case with a virus whose usual host is not human - the disease has a much higher mortality rate than normal human illnesses. Second, I'm going into tinfoil hat mode here and hypothesize that some people are making hay out of warning us about scary disease outbreaks. Some of these people are epidemiologists who have a name in infectious diseases, and should really know better. But I smell at least a hint of career self-promotion with some of these folks, and the media are always happy to find a scientist or two willing to help them out. Maybe they're actually believing what they're saying, but some of the noisier parties in this circus I've had personal experience with, and I harbor serious doubts. I think there's a heavy aroma of an agenda about all this.
