Bird Flu to reach UK

[hails4]

So now the Goverment is bracing its self for the Bird Flu why isn't there any medication on the doctors tables yet? have they got any plans of culling them? I know i could help with the culling of Scorries!!! but seriously what will the goverment do in this case? what will you do to protect your self and your families? I know i might be jumping in the deep end here but its betta to be safe than sorry!!

[Alice in Blunderland]

They will make sure they and there own are well protected then everyone else for themselves is my gut reaction to your question but I am SURE there are plans being laid out already.

[unicorn]

I think you have more chance of dying in many other ways than bird flu so I for one am not particularly worried. I dont keep poultry and am not in close contact with them unless I am eating them of course but I am sure our press will whip it into a mad frenzy and have people scared to go outside without face masks.

[Stargazer]

Bird Flu affects birds!! So far a couple of dozen people out of the entire world population have contracted the bird disease and died as a result. One single infected bird has been found in Europe. (Allegedly!!!)

Bird flu has made the media lots of money and filled acres of newsprint and tv screens. There are loads of tax payer funded scientists whose jobs depend on public hysteria.

[Alice in Blunderland]

It wont take much for this disease to mutate and that is what the worry is, if/when it does mutate there is no vaccine.Yes it sounds as though the media is whipping up a storm but there is evidence that its not if but when ,everyone in the medical proffesion believes this and they have jobs no matter if this disease comes or not so they are not relying on the 'hype'.

[cuddlepop]

Highland council have asked for a report to be carried out ,cant spell conti..... plan.so they must be worried.:eyes

[Stargazer]

A vaccine for Bird Flu is a catch 22 situation. Until it mutates (IF it mutates) a vaccine cannot be developed but we cannot develop a vaccine until it mutates.

Then if it mutates who is to say the human form is going to be as dangerous to humans as the avian version?

[ice box]

I stilll have some turkey left over from xmas if any one wants some lol

[badger]

The government are talking about making everyone keep their poultry in as they are already doing in several continental countries. Going to cause a lot of problems for all the people that keep a few wandering around but I wouldn't to wait for it to catch hold and then have a crazy situation like we did with foot and mouth. Be nice to think they might have learnt something from that but somehow I doubt it. Nothing I've heard so far convinces me they have a serious plan even to deal with it among birds - but forward planning never seems to be their strong point.

[phoenix]

We had a German Goose and a German Duck at Xmas, and weve all been ill since........:roll: I know youll all be wondering how did we know it was German:roll: because it said so on the poly bag that it came in[smirk]

[connieb19]

I stilll have some turkey left over from xmas if any one wants some lolI havn't even cooked mine yet..it's still in the freezer!!

[brandy]

all in all nearly a 100 people have died from the bird flu so far and once it jumps from birds to people they are estimating up in the 4.5 million i think is the estimated death toll.. they are having a very hard time coming up with a vacine as it is such a complex virus.. but here are the facts about it.. its not something to laugh at though.. as with each human case the virrus is that much closer to human contagion..
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/01/21/birdflu.facts/

[unicorn]

But there were a far lower percentage in the death rate in Turkey from people who had it so the treatment is working provided people get help early enough. I think it was 21 confirmed cases and 4 deaths 3 were all 1 family and the reason for the deaths of 2 siblings and their cousin was that the family didn't put them in hospital until they were critical because they couldn't afford medical care. 1 child from the family was caught early enough because the family backed down when convinced the treatment would be free.

[Foxy]

A few weeks back in the local paper a caithness poultry breeder suggested that all poultry shows and any movements of birds throughout the country should be stopped until the bird flu situation was sorted out but the government didn't think this was required, so here we go again it will end up in the same farse that foot and mouth did had they done the sensible thing sooner it could have be contained but on no it ended costing the country a bundle of money. Fancy that???????????

[JAWS]

It's the usual case of a few "Experts" using the exact science of Guess-work.
Exactly the same thing was done over salmonella and BSE. There were predictions of countless numbers if deaths from those as well.
With both of them and with other predictions of "Doom and Gloom" a "Bidding War" broke out. "Who can make the worst prediction and get people to believe it?" seemed to be the name of the game. Have any of the predictions come about?

Yes there is the possibility of N5H1 mutating to affect Human's. Until it actually does and somebody can say with some degree of certainty that it has done so and can make some serious suggestions about what precautions and methods of prevention I can take I will treat it as I have treated other such scare-mongering.

Once I realised that staring skywards searching for the Asteroid which was going to destroy all life on Earth simply meant I had to climb out of ditches or untangle myself from barbed-wire fences I stopped doing it.

I have stopped listening to the "Attention Seekers" who stand on rooftops shouting, "We're all going to die!" and am waiting to hear from those who are quietly working away trying to find some sensible and useful facts.

The media loves nothing more than being able to sell "Alarm and Despondency", it means they attract the paying public who wish to swallow ever word of it.

[_Ju_]

Bird Flu affects birds!! So far a couple of dozen people out of the entire world population have contracted the bird disease and died as a result. One single infected bird has been found in Europe. (Allegedly!!!)

Bird flu has made the media lots of money and filled acres of newsprint and tv screens. There are loads of tax payer funded scientists whose jobs depend on public hysteria.
Thank goodness tax funded scientists discovered things like herceptin or that smoking increased exposure to carcinogenes. Lucky for us, huh?

[_Ju_]

It's the usual case of a few "Experts" using the exact science of Guess-work.
Exactly the same thing was done over salmonella and BSE. There were predictions of countless numbers if deaths from those as well.
With both of them and with other predictions of "Doom and Gloom" a "Bidding War" broke out. "Who can make the worst prediction and get people to believe it?" seemed to be the name of the game. Have any of the predictions come about?

Yes there is the possibility of N5H1 mutating to affect Human's. Until it actually does and somebody can say with some degree of certainty that it has done so and can make some serious suggestions about what precautions and methods of prevention I can take I will treat it as I have treated other such scare-mongering.

Once I realised that staring skywards searching for the Asteroid which was going to destroy all life on Earth simply meant I had to climb out of ditches or untangle myself from barbed-wire fences I stopped doing it.

I have stopped listening to the "Attention Seekers" who stand on rooftops shouting, "We're all going to die!" and am waiting to hear from those who are quietly working away trying to find some sensible and useful facts.

The media loves nothing more than being able to sell "Alarm and Despondency", it means they attract the paying public who wish to swallow ever word of it.


Do you actually know what the regulations are behind bovine slaughter are to actually control exposure to the virion that causes BSE? As a country you have taken drakonian measures to eliminate infected cattle from the food chain for a huge time period. Anyone exposed to infection would die of varient CJD. In other words, though the numbers of exposed were extemely low, the "exposees" were invariably contaminated and ill. So that is maybe why the predicted statistics did not live up to the expectation of the general population. In any case, infection with BSE equals a death sentence. Even though the likelihood of infection was low, the consequences were deadly. And everything should have (and was) done to prevent it, even to the detriment of the economy.

As for Salmonella, it's an ancient disease, with high prevalence and incidence and, relatively, low consequences. In other words, catching it PROBABLY won't kill you, but will make you unwell and a carrier. Still a disease to control!

You cannot lump the two together..... they have nothing to do with one another in any sense at all. And even less to do with bird flu.

[ice box]

I havn't even cooked mine yet..it's still in the freezer!!
At least its bird flu free

[connieb19]

At least its bird flu freeShhhh, I might get robbed for it when the town is dry of turkeys..lol:roll:

[krieve]

Shhhh, I might get robbed for it when the town is dry of turkeys..lol:roll:
good one connie i have 10 stored in my freezer its locked lol

[ice box]

mine is in with my socks wont go there if i were you lol

[Alice in Blunderland]

Highland council have asked for a report to be carried out ,cant spell conti..... plan.so they must be worried.:eyes

The NHS also have a contingency plan I believe..

[kas]

One single infected bird has been found in Europe. (Allegedly!!!)



More than 1, today France became the 7th European country to confirm H5N1, with Germany confirming 28 cases so far. Who knows how many undetected cases there are?

I know human safety comes first, but I just wonder how many wild birds will be killed due to birdflu. Unfortunatley rather alot I suspect.

[theone]

Highland council have asked for a report to be carried out ,cant spell conti..... plan.so they must be worried.:eyes

Any plan the Highland council have will make sure everyone in Inverness is safe and everyone outside Inverness pays for it!!!

[JAWS]

Do you actually know what the regulations are behind bovine slaughter are to actually control exposure to the virion that causes BSE? As a country you have taken drakonian measures to eliminate infected cattle from the food chain for a huge time period. Anyone exposed to infection would die of varient CJD. In other words, though the numbers of exposed were extemely low, the "exposees" were invariably contaminated and ill. So that is maybe why the predicted statistics did not live up to the expectation of the general population. In any case, infection with BSE equals a death sentence. Even though the likelihood of infection was low, the consequences were deadly. And everything should have (and was) done to prevent it, even to the detriment of the economy.

As for Salmonella, it's an ancient disease, with high prevalence and incidence and, relatively, low consequences. In other words, catching it PROBABLY won't kill you, but will make you unwell and a carrier. Still a disease to control!

You cannot lump the two together..... they have nothing to do with one another in any sense at all. And even less to do with bird flu.
Sorry Ju, I should have mentioned that the various scares were from different occasions over a very long period.

With salmonella the advice was that you should only eat eggs if they were hard boiled or fried to death, you shouldn't eat soft cheeses, I think mayonnaise was included, in fact, going anywhere near an egg was to invite a death sentence. The implication was that almost all eggs carried salmonella and eating them was a sure way to contract it.

CJD was going to be a massive killer running into hundreds of thousands and some even predicted, if I remember correctly, millions of deaths.
Since 1990 in Great Britain there have been a total of 154 deaths from New Variant CJD.
If all forms of CJD are included the total deaths in the period 1990 to 3rd Feb2006 amount to 1,112.
For a long time the onset of the “Epidemic” was put further and further back to explain why it was not occurring, but there were eventually going to happen in the future.
The latest “reason” is that because we in Britain had eaten a great deal of infected meat over a long period that we had acquired a form of immunity against it.
I don’t know if the 30 month rule still applies but New Scientist were reporting in 2003 that the rule was no longer necessary.

The World Health Organisation puts totals for the Pandemic of Avian Flu at 200 infected with a total of 91 Deaths.
For the time being I am more fearful of being struck by lightening.

What surprises me, is that for all the warnings about the danger, nobody has told me how to recognise and infected bird if I see one other than to say, if it’s dead then report it and don’t touch it.

I know the situations are all different but all have been described at various times as the source of immediate infection and imminent death on a massive scale.

[brandy]

i think the big thing about the bird flu is because we have seen the horrendous damage from it in the past.. and know that it has a very high mortaility rate.. so it is a virus to be feared.. i agree lets not get carried away and lock ourselves away.. but at the same time be prepared for the possible eventuality..

[DrSzin]

The birthday girl is spot on.

Risk analysis is extremely difficult when unlikely events can lead to catastrophic effects: the uncertainties in the predictions are enormous. Indeed, the uncertainty is often as big as, or bigger than, the predicted effect. Let's take a simple example...

An estimate of (say) one million deaths from bird flu in the UK could have an uncertainty of one million deaths. This means that the number of deaths will most likely lie in the range zero to two million. To most people this appears to be a useless prediction, and they assume that scientists are not doing their jobs properly. This conclusion is simply wrong. The correct conclusion is that there are unlikely to be more than two million deaths, but that we have no useful lower bound on the number of deaths -- apart from zero and we knew that already! To put it bluntly, the hypothetical prediction is that between zero and two million people will die in the UK from bird flu. The "upper bound" of two million is useful information for planners; the lower bound of zero is not. The uncertainty in the prediction is also due to a lot of unknowns, and we must strive to understand these better.

The predictions for the number of CJD deaths suffered from similar uncertainties. There is no point in nit-picking numbers of order one hundred or one thousand because the uncertainties were of order hundreds of thousands or even millions. The scientists who did the analysis will have been well-aware of this; most of the journalists who wrote the articles probably didn't understand the predictions, and those that did will have been more interested in a good story than a correct analysis, and I can understand that. I've worked with science journalists and they always have to have the last word -- this usually meant that they "improved" my pedestrian prose in such a way that it became wrong. :rolleyes:

One of the biggest problems with media reporting is that journalists simply don't understand probability, statistics and risk analysis, so they use their "common sense" and get it all wrong. The same goes for most members of the public. It's easy for those of us who use probability and statistics every day in our working lives, but it's taken most of us a long time to become comfortable with these subjects.

Economic journalists are just as bad when they talk about unemployment, inflation, house prices, etc. I once read an article by one of the country's most well-respected economic journalists. In one sentence he used a function, its first derivative and its second derivative interchangeably. The function in this case was the price of some commodity as a function of time. (These comments probably won't make any sense unless you are familiar with calculus at (say) Advanced Higher or A level -- sorry.) Statistical analyses are much harder to understand -- unfortunately.

[DrSzin]

The predictions for the number of CJD deaths suffered from similar uncertainties. There is no point in nit-picking numbers of order one hundred or one thousand because the uncertainties were of order hundreds of thousands or even millions.Hmm, that was a horrible thing to say. A single death is a terrible tragedy. I was talking glibly in purely statistical terms, and I apologise to anyone whose life may have been afflicted by this dreadful disease.

[porshiepoo]

The birthday girl is spot on.

Risk analysis is extremely difficult when unlikely events can lead to catastrophic effects: the uncertainties in the predictions are enormous. Indeed, the uncertainty is often as big as, or bigger than, the predicted effect. Let's take a simple example...

An estimate of (say) one million deaths from bird flu in the UK could have an uncertainty of one million deaths. This means that the number of deaths will most likely lie in the range zero to two million. To most people this appears to be a useless prediction, and they assume that scientists are not doing their jobs properly. This conclusion is simply wrong. The correct conclusion is that there are unlikely to be more than two million deaths, but that we have no useful lower bound on the number of deaths -- apart from zero and we knew that already! To put it bluntly, the hypothetical prediction is that between zero and two million people will die in the UK from bird flu. The "upper bound" of two million is useful information for planners; the lower bound of zero is not. The uncertainty in the prediction is also due to a lot of unknowns, and we must strive to understand these better.

The predictions for the number of CJD deaths suffered from similar uncertainties. There is no point in nit-picking numbers of order one hundred or one thousand because the uncertainties were of order hundreds of thousands or even millions. The scientists who did the analysis will have been well-aware of this; most of the journalists who wrote the articles probably didn't understand the predictions, and those that did will have been more interested in a good story than a correct analysis, and I can understand that. I've worked with science journalists and they always have to have the last word -- this usually meant that they "improved" my pedestrian prose in such a way that it became wrong. :rolleyes:

One of the biggest problems with media reporting is that journalists simply don't understand probability, statistics and risk analysis, so they use their "common sense" and get it all wrong. The same goes for most members of the public. It's easy for those of us who use probability and statistics every day in our working lives, but it's taken most of us a long time to become comfortable with these subjects.

Economic journalists are just as bad when they talk about unemployment, inflation, house prices, etc. I once read an article by one of the country's most well-respected economic journalists. In one sentence he used a function, its first derivative and its second derivative interchangeably. The function in this case was the price of some commodity as a function of time. (These comments probably won't make any sense unless you are familiar with calculus at (say) Advanced Higher or A level -- sorry.) Statistical analyses are much harder to understand -- unfortunately.



One could not put it better DrSzin! Of course, I would have put it like that myself had I had the time! :confused: :confused:

[wickerinca]

Glad that we have all that cleared up then!;)

By the way.........my lovely little male canary was found dead this morning......head first in his little bath. Clementine is calling for her Freddy..poor little thing:cry:

[JAWS]

Hmm, that was a horrible thing to say. A single death is a terrible tragedy. I was talking glibly in purely statistical terms, and I apologise to anyone whose life may have been afflicted by this dreadful disease.
Dr.S, I do hope you are not starting to think in terms like nice old Uncle Joe who said, "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths are merely a statistic!"

I know very little about probabilities or statistics, in fact, about enough to fill the back of a postage stamp using very large writing.
I certainly got the impression with most of the "scare stories" that the media were quite happy to present what they knew full well was a "Worst Case" scenario as the most likely to occur because it got people's attention.
I also suspect that the one or two academics they constantly produced to confirm what they were saying either didn't deem it necessary to correct the misleading statements or had their comments edited so as to fit the picture being presented by the media.
I will admit that I might be misrepresenting their intentions altogether due to my inbred cynical nature.

At the moment I understand the facts about Avian Flu and humans to be that it is capable of being transmitted from infected birds to humans having close contact with them.
Apart from that, my understanding is, that human to human transmission depends on if, how, and when a mutation occurs and then on how virulent that mutation is.

At that point, all those possibilities having occurred it could then be as dangerous and deadly as the Spanish Flu after the First World War or alternatively nothing more than little more than an inconvenience which just makes you feel terrible for a few days.

I am quite willing to state that this is just an impression I get and I could well be wrong.
I am more than willing to have those impressions corrected so I have a better idea of what is the most likely outcome.
Not only am I cynical but I suffer from terrible impatience, an insatiable curiosity and an intense distrust of the media.

[Stargazer]

Spot on Jaws.

Human form of bird flu does not exist.
Avian Flu has to mutate into a form that can transmit between humans before it is a problem.
If it does mutate it may not be as pootent as the doom mongers suggest.
There is no vaccine because the disease does not yet exist.
How many brids do you massacre becauyse one bird has the viruas in France.

[canuck]

Jaws, I highlight your comment about virulencey.

I think that the real concern with this variation of Avian Flu is that in the observed cases of bird to human transmission the human mortality rate has been at least 50%. If it mutates so as to be able to transmit human to human, as so often these avian flus do, it may also mutate to be something less virulent. Let's hope so. But right now the concern is that if it becomes a human to human virus that it will continue to be extremely deadly.

[canuck]

Spot on Jaws.

Human form of bird flu does not exist.
Avian Flu has to mutate into a form that can transmit between humans before it is a problem.
If it does mutate it may not be as pootent as the doom mongers suggest.
There is no vaccine because the disease does not yet exist.
How many brids do you massacre becauyse one bird has the viruas in France.

Stargazer - we must have posted at the same time. I wasn't trying to trump you.

[Stargazer]

Does bird flu symptoms include a total loss of spelling ability?

[wickerinca]

Gosh! I hop nut!:lol: