Bird flu

[Ron Avery]

Shock news, they cannot even tell a finch from a parrot

It has now been reported that

"More than 50 finches imported from Taiwan died from the deadly strain of avian flu in a UK quarantine facility, a government probe has found.

 Reports that a South American parrot in the same Essex centre had the disease seemed to be mistaken  Still sold a few papers didnt it.  And to quote that hilarious news comedy Broken News " So what is it exactly that we do not know?

 

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote]Shock news, they cannot even tell a finch from a parrot It has now been reported that "More than 50 finches imported from Taiwan died from the deadly strain of avian flu in a UK quarantine facilit...[/quote]

Part of the problem is that there are many, many strains of avian 'flu doing the rounds at any one time. Most are harmless to the birds that they infect. Some are less than harmless and kill the birds. But some of THESE may have alreay done the rounds, made the jump to humans in the past and hence present little threat.

The one that everyone is getting sweaty about is a strain called H5N1 (the letters refer to proteins on the virus' coat that allow it to bind to cells and infect them). Other H5N1 strains have appeared before, but this one has undergone what is called "antigenic shift" - its genetic structure is now so different from what has been seen before that very few people's immune system will be able to deal with it - hence a possibility of pandemic.

If the species jump is made, and this will almost certainly occur by virus mixing in pigs since they can catch both human and avian forms, vaccine manufacture will take about four months. Maybe a bit less, given the attention being focussed on the problem. The mix is most likely to occur in South China as this is a region where humans, pigs and waterfowl co-habit in concentrations found nowhere else.

Anyone interested in taking some of the mystery out of this business might find a book by Dorothy Crawford called "The Invisible Enemy" useful. This is a nicely written, non-technical introdution to virology. Mind you, I cannot guarantee that that the chapters on haenorrhagic fevers (ebola, et al) won't scare you witless.

[Owens88]

Population 7000, masks 14000

2 faced ?