Study: U.S. Couldn’t Slow Flu Pandemic
A mostly unprepared United States could do little to slow pandemic flu if it hits anytime soon, according to a new computer model.
And Britain is only a bit better off, the same study suggests.
If the U.S. government does nothing, a deadly global flu outbreak is likely to strike a third of the population, according to the results of a computer simulation published in Thursday’s journal Nature.
If government acts fast enough and has enough antiviral medicine to use as a preventive — and the United States doesn’t right now — the number could drop to about 28 percent of the population, the study found.
Well, damn!
We have never had an aerosol, very contagious infection with high mortality since modern air travel. I don’t know if it’s even possible to stop it. How are you going to quarantine a modern major city for the weeks it will take an outbreak to burn out? It would take thousands of troops with orders to shoot to kill. This thing would probably mutate so fast with large numbers of infected that a vaccine may be worthless anyway. Sometimes things are going to crap and a lot of people are going to die regardless of what’s done. The Universe has no compassion.
Stephen King’s novel, “The Stand” comes to mind.
There’s one high note among all the sturm und drang.
So far, this bird flu hasn’t mutated into a virus that transmits easily (aerosol) between humans. All transmissions so far have been between domestic fowl and humans, mostly contact with bird blood. That fact is really important in the scheme of things, and is the reason other bird flu outbreaks (other than the Spanish Flu outbreak during WW I) have not massively infected the human population.
That said, if the flu mutated, it would be nearly impossible to contain it to the bounds of one region, just because of air travel.
If you consider this issue with one of the other news stories of the day, the recommendation (by experts, cough) that FEMA be abolished and rebuilt from scratch (that shouldn’t take long), it becomes even more terrifying than the previously most terrifying thought of possibly needing help from FEMA.
I think the twisted logic here is, the shit may hit the fan. FEMA is the fan. So remove the fan and just hit with the shit? Wow, this is too complicated for anyone who isn’t an elected official in DC to comprehend.
To borrow a line from a movie, “these people do for stupid what Stonehenge did for rocks”.
In the new, almost passed bill before congress there is 2.4 billion for bird flu preperations.
Of course that won’t be enough as soon as the makers of the virus see the goverment coming and jack up the price by 1000%.
It will start in New York City with the Jamacian and Purto Rican populations, many of follow voodoo and another island religion that uses raw chicken blood(drinking and splashing it) in their services?….
surprize, surprize. somethings going to kill us. Damn I was hoping to avoid that.
What nobody ever mentions are the positive aspects of a global pandemic:
* Stock markets would crash, housing and gas prices would plummet, but the playing field would be leveled a bit.
* Under-developed areas with starvation and sanitation issues would be decimated, freeing up resources to use elsewhere.
* Darwinism says the strong shall survive. Survivors would bear stronger offspring, and hopefully lead to a better gene pool.
* Eventually, maybe the world’s nations would finally learn to get along. A global pandemic might lead to world peace, and that wouldn’t be a bad thing for anybody except Haliburton.
It’s a horrible thought, but it will happen eventually, inevitably. It might not be avian flu, it might be mad cow, or swine flu, or AIDs, or fleas. Whatever the pandemic will be, it’s inevitable. Any survivors would lose family members and friends, the funerals would go on for months. I guess we better stock up on canned food, bottled water, and duct tape. 😉
P.S. … and thanks for being there FEMA, good job (or not)!!