Avian Flu: How Panning Academics=Pandemic

(l. to r.: roosting, uploaded by Guerito; Maybe it's a virus?, uploaded by Pandarine; three little pigs..., uploaded by Indigo Goat.)

Viruses are amazing things. I say things because most scientists put viruses in the non-living category. This is the kind of thing that scientists argue over and sometimes even fight over. That's why you see so many nerds with tape on the nosebridge of their eyeglasses. Viruses are in-and-of-themselves inert and can't exist outside of their hosts for very long (though some can be re-activated long after.) They have various ways of transmitting themselves. Some viruses get "airborne," hitching a ride on moisture or droplets in the air. Viruses aren't much, just loose strands of genetic code wrapped in a "candy coating" of proetein, sometimes with an extra gooey layer of lipid (fat.) They're teeny tiny. By contrast bacteria are living things and are big enough to become infected by viruses. Like viruses, toxic chemicals can kill, cause degenerative diseases, and even in the case of radioactive toxins "infect"others, but viruses do something that lifeless toxins don't do... they reproduce and require lifeforms to do so. Once they find a host they "live" inside the host.

Tactically speaking, what viruses do and how they do it is nothing short of brilliant, although viruses don't really think now do they. Then again neither do many humans really. Scientists have been doing a lot of warning lately-global warming, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc. The warning that this post is dedicated to is of course the one where they have this really good guess that we are on the verge of a global pandemic stemming from the Influenza A H5N1 virus that causes Avian Flu. The rate of lethality of this virus at its current strength is around 57%, somewhere between the Ebola and Marburg viruses, two of the deadliest viruses known. When (not if) it mutates and becomes a full-fledged human (to human) virus it will not be anywhere near as strong or posess this rate of lethality. By then however it will have traded in quality for quantity! With a lethality of around 10% (still very high the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic was 2%!), it would have already won the viral jackpot going from being a disease that kills a few rural farmers in a remote, third-world village to a global pandemic that kills millions. What gives it the ability to be a pandemic is its ability to do the hitchhicking thing in the air that I mentioned above. If Ebola or HIV had that ability there would be no word(s) to describe how bad it would be.

If you were Keanu Reeves, at this point in the story you'd say Whoa!!! And then, you'd start asking tough questions like, why are we (U.S.) spending so much time dissing scientists and science? We like need these people to help us avoid a catastrophic catastrophy of epic proportions! Instead we're like keeping them from doing lifesaving research 'n stuff and we're forcing them to spend all this time and effort defending evolution. It's totally bogus dude!

Bogus indeed. It's like our "leaders" are only interested in porn and monkeys! Now I can see how porn and monkeys would be important if this was a sexually transmitted virus or if you were...eating monkeys (the other bushmeat,) but it's transmitted in the air and we all know how little our leaders think of air these days. In fact this may all be a diabolical plan to privatize air! I get it now! They want to promote something that they themselves have failed to engage in...intelligent breathing!

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