Bird Flu Quotes

With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, "Are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?

There are boys you look at and want to touch with your mouth, and there are boys you look at and want to wear one of those surgical masks everyone in China had during bird flu. There are a lot more bird-flu boys at large.

I am, and always have been - first, last, and always - a child of America. You raised me. I grew up in the pastures and hills of Texas, but I had been to thirty-four states before I learned how to drive. When I caught the stomach flu in the fifth grade, my mother sent a note to school written on the back of a holiday memo from Vice President Biden. Sorry, sir—we were in a rush, and it was the only paper she had on hand. I spoke to you for the first time when I was eighteen, on the stage of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, when I introduced my mother as the nominee for president. You cheered for me. I was young and full of hope, and you let me embody the American dream: that a boy who grew up speaking two languages, whose family was blended and beautiful and enduring, could make a home for himself in the White House. You pinned the flag to my lapel and said, “We’re rooting for you.” As I stand before you today, my hope is that I have not let you down. Years ago, I met a prince. And though I didn’t realize it at the time, his country had raised him too. The truth is, Henry and I have been together since the beginning of this year. The truth is, as many of you have read, we have both struggled every day with what this means for our families, our countries, and our futures. The truth is, we have both had to make compromises that cost us sleep at night in order to afford us enough time to share our relationship with the world on our own terms. We were not afforded that liberty. But the truth is, also, simply this: love is indomitable. America has always believed this. And so, I am not ashamed to stand here today where presidents have stood and say that I love him, the same as Jack loved Jackie, the same as Lyndon loved Lady Bird. Every person who bears a legacy makes the choice of a partner with whom they will share it, whom the American people will “hold beside them in hearts and memories and history books. America: He is my choice. Like countless other Americans, I was afraid to say this out loud because of what the consequences might be. To you, specifically, I say: I see you. I am one of you. As long as I have a place in this White House, so will you. I am the First Son of the United States, and I’m bisexual. History will remember us. If I can ask only one thing of the American people, it’s this: Please, do not let my actions influence your decision in November. The decision you will make this year is so much bigger than anything I could ever say or do, and it will determine the fate of this country for years to come. My mother, your president, is the warrior and the champion that each and every American deserves for four more years of growth, progress, and prosperity. Please, don’t let my actions send us backward. I ask the media not to focus on me or on Henry, but on the campaign, on policy, on the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans at stake in this election. And finally, I hope America will remember that I am still the son you raised. My blood still runs from Lometa, Texas, and San Diego, California, and Mexico City. I still remember the sound of your voices from that stage in Philadelphia. I wake up every morning thinking of your hometowns, of the families I’ve met at rallies in Idaho and Oregon and South Carolina. I have never hoped to be anything other than what I was to you then, and what I am to you now—the First Son, yours in actions and words. And I hope when Inauguration Day comes again in January, I will continue to be.

Facebook has been spreading across the continents faster than a highly contagious Asian bird flu!

Shreave flicked away the dead mosquito. "Don't these things carry the bird flu too?" "No Boyd, that would be a bird.

Highly pathogenic bird flu viruses are primarily the products of factory farming.

The world needed changing - that I knew. Global warming threatened to give us all a lethal tan; war and poverty decimated whole nations; crops worldwide were shriveling; even our brethren beasts menaced us with their monkey pox and bird flu and mad cow disease.

I hope she can’t tell that I’m appraising her and that I’m completely worried by what I see. She’s excitable and strange. She’s ten. What do people do during the day when they’re ten? She runs her fingers along the window and mumbles, “This could give me bird flu,” and then she forms a circle around her mouth with her hand and makes trumpet noises. She’s nuts. Who knows what’s going on in that head of hers, and speaking of her head, she most definitely could use a haircut or a brushing. There are small tumbleweeds of hair resting on the top of her head. Where does she get haircuts? I wonder. Has she ever had one before? She scratches her scalp, then looks at her nails. She wears a shirt that says I’M NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL. BUT I CAN BE! I’m grateful that she isn’t too pretty, but I realize this could change.

At least etymologically speaking, when we talk about influenza we are talking about the influences that shape the world everywhere at once. Today’s bird flu or swine flu viruses or the 1918 Spanish flu virus are not the real influenza — not the underlying influence — but only its symptom.

He had lived in an apartment with books touching the ceilings, and rugs thick enough to hide dice; then in a room and a half with dirt floors; on forest floors, under unconcerned stars; under the floorboards of a Christian who, half a world and three-quarters of a century away, would have a tree planted to commemorate his righteousness; in a hole for so many days his knees would never wholly unbend; among Gypsies and partisans and half-decent Poles; in transit, refugee, and displaced persons camps; on a boat with a bottle with a boat that an insomniac agnostic had miraculously constructed inside it; on the other side of an ocean he would never wholly cross; above half a dozen grocery stores he killed himself fixing up and selling for small profits; beside a woman who rechecked the locks until she broke them, and died of old age at forty-two without a syllable of praise in her throat but the cells of her murdered mother still dividing in her brain; and finally, for the last quarter century, in a snow-globe-quiet Silver Spring split-level: ten pounds of Roman Vishniac bleaching on the coffee table; Enemies, A Love Story demagnetizing in the world’s last functional VCR; egg salad becoming bird flu in a refrigerator mummified with photographs of gorgeous, genius, tumorless great-grandchildren.

The executive editor of Poultry magazine put the trade-off this way in an editorial: “The prospect of a virulent flu to which we have absolutely no resistance is frightening. However, to me, the threat is much greater to the poultry industry. I’m not as worried about the U.S. human population dying from bird flu as I am that there will be no chicken to eat.

USDA’s chief flu researcher David Swayne recommended producers try to recoup the costs of culling by selling sick birds for human consumption.

A Contagion Abroad by Stewart Stafford Overblown epidemic, Inferno pandemic, Death takes a vacation. Bird flu, Bat stew, Churning, gagging virus brew, Man the panic stations. Contaminate, capitulate, Sickly state, funeral date, A lost generation. Depopulate, inoculate, Virologists thwart fate, The world's rehabilitation. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

The Fall of Rome (for Cyril Connolly) The piers are pummelled by the waves; In a lonely field the rain Lashes an abandoned train; Outlaws fill the mountain caves. Fantastic grow the evening gowns; Agents of the Fisc pursue Absconding tax-defaulters through The sewers of provincial towns. Private rites of magic send The temple prostitutes to sleep; All the literati keep An imaginary friend. Cerebrotonic Cato may Extol the Ancient Disciplines, But the muscle-bound Marines Mutiny for food and pay. Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK On a pink official form. Unendowed with wealth or pity, Little birds with scarlet legs, Sitting on their speckled eggs, Eye each flu-infected city. Altogether elsewhere, vast Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss, Silently and very fast.

Life is just a series of dumb decisions and indecisions and coincidences that we choose to ascribe meaning to. School cafeteria out of your favorite pastry today? It must be because the universe is trying to keep you on your diet.. Thanks, Universe! You missed your train? Maybe the train’s going to explode in the tunnel, or Patient Zero for some horrible bird flu (waterfowl, goose, pterodactyl) is on that train, and thanks goodness you weren’t on it after all. Thanks, Universe! No one bothers to follow up with destiny, though. The cafeteria just forgot there was another bow in the back, and you got a slice of cake from your friend anyway. You fumed while waiting for another train, but one came along eventually. No one died on the train you missed. No one so much as sneezed. We tell ourselves there are reasons for the things that happen, but we’re just telling ourselves stories. We make them up. They don’t mean anything.

The relatively conservative WHO suggests “a relatively conservative estimate — from 2 million to 7.4 million deaths” if bird flu jumps to humans and becomes airborne (as swine flu — H1N1 — did). “This estimate,” they go on to explain, “is based on the comparatively mild 1957 pandemic. Estimates based on a more virulent virus, closer to the one seen in 1918, have been made and are much higher.” Mercifully, the WHO does not include these higher estimates on its “things you need to know” list.

scientists now argue that the primordial source of all flu strains is migrating aquatic birds such as ducks and geese that have roamed the earth for more than a hundred million years. The flu, it turns out, is all about our relationship with birds.

Human Disease Animal with Most Closely Related Pathogen Measles cattle (rinderpest) Tuberculosis cattle Smallpox cattle (cowpox) or other livestock with related pox viruses Flu pigs and ducks Pertussis pigs, dogs Falciparum malaria birds (chickens and ducks?)

Other evidence suggests that the 1918 virus might have mutated within pigs (which are uniquely susceptible to both human and bird viruses) or even in human populations for a time before reaching the deadly virtuosity of its final version. We cannot be sure. What we can be sure of is that there is scientific consensus that new viruses, which move between farmed animals and humans, will be a major global health threat into the foreseeable future. The concern is not only bird flu or swine flu or whatever-comes-next, but the entire class of “zoonotic” (animal-to-human or vice versa) pathogens — especially viruses that move between humans, chickens, turkeys, and pigs.

Another common argument is about nutrition from non-veg food. People say that non-veg food has more nutritious and keeps people healthy and strong. But if we go into more details with science and statistics, everybody can understand a simple theory that nobody can grow more than the protein/nutrition it takes in its diet.   So if I consider this, then even a chicken, goat or a bull grows this big only by taking the same nutrition from nature; mostly from grass, beans, leaves pulses and grain. With the demand of non-veg if human can grow this much of food for feeding these animals, it can directly grow the same amount of food for himself. And deficiencies are the reason of imbalance diet, which are found in both vegetarians as well as non-vegetarians, and a balance diet can keep anyone healthy without non-veg too.   One last thing you must have seen around is, human started dyeing of diseases like Bird Flu. Will you still say you keep balance in nature by eating non-veg? And if your answer is yes, then I must say: YOU ARE FUNNY!!!

We are not talking just about dollars and cents. We are talking about lives. Consider one chilling example: drug-resistant infections. As America’s breakthroughs in antibiotics recede into the past, bacteria are evolving to defeat current antibiotics. For more and more infections, we are plunging back into the pre-antibiotic era. In the United States alone, two million people are sickened and tens of thousands die each year from drug-resistant infections—mostly because private companies see little incentive to invest in the necessary research, and the federal government has failed to step in.87 Though federal funding for the National Institutes of Health ramped up in the mid-1990s, it has fallen precipitously since, cutting the share of young scientists with NIH grants in half in roughly six years.88 As one medical professor lamented recently: “In my daily work in both a university medical school and a public hospital, it’s a rare month that some bright young person doesn’t tell me they are quitting science because it’s too hard to get funded. . . . A decade or two from now, when an antibiotic-resistant bacteria or new strain of bird flu is ravaging humanity, that generation will no longer be around to lead the scientific charge on humanity’s behalf.”89

The Fall of Rome - 1907-1973 The piers are pummelled by the waves; In a lonely field the rain Lashes an abandoned train; Outlaws fill the mountain caves. Fantastic grow the evening gowns; Agents of the Fisc pursue Absconding tax-defaulters through The sewers of provincial towns. Private rites of magic send The temple prostitutes to sleep; All the literati keep An imaginary friend. Cerebrotonic Cato may Extol the Ancient Disciplines, But the muscle-bound Marines Mutiny for food and pay. Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK On a pink official form. Unendowed with wealth or pity, Little birds with scarlet legs, Sitting on their speckled eggs, Eye each flu-infected city. Altogether elsewhere, vast Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss, Silently and very fast.

this bird flu currently lacks the protein key to unlock certain cells in the human upper respiratory tract, preventing it from spreading via a sneeze or a cough.

Swine influenza is not even a reportable disease, a classification saved for diseases deemed a threat to the entire industry, such as foot-and-mouth disease. On the other hand, pig flu viruses can be a big problem for the general population. That is because pigs are a genetic crucible for new flu viruses. They can be infected with flu viruses from birds, other pigs and people, creating opportunities for a melding of genes in new combinations known as reassortants. The fear is these new hybrids will prove capable of infecting people readily, while being sufficiently foreign to cause serious illness once they do.

For many years, the proposed influenza epicenter has been thought to be Southeast Asia. Farming practices there bring pigs, fowl, and people into close contact, allowing swine, avian, and human flu viruses to mix. The cycle is thought to be birds to pigs to humans.

I had a little bird, Its name was Enza. I opened the window, And in-flu-enza.

A few isolated cases of bird flu in Hong Kong and people were acting like sha gua, or silly melons.

A brand-new, highly effective anti-flu drug that had potential for massive sales. With the new bird flu scare, Merwyn stood to make a bundle off of the ensuing panic. With a 98 percent profit margin and skyrocketing demand, Merwyn couldn’t lose. Andrew alone stood to make millions in stock options and bonus incentives for brokering the deal. It was like a dream come true: the global spread of the avian flu virus, millions infected, a few hundred thousand dead and millions more taking Preva-Flu by the $80 packet.

Zanamivir.

A prime example of these rogue-events, which are both farcical and terrifying, is the recent bird flu scare (where the terrorists were wild ducks!). There is no greater masquerade than this global panic, than the sacred union in panic. The international community becomes hectic and epileptic from the virus of terror and the terror of viruses. Terror is multiplied by the grotesque profusion of security measures that end up causing perverse autoimmune effects: the antibodies turn against the body and cause more damage than the virus. Without real solidarity between nations, the specter of Absolute Evil must be raised up as an ersatz Universal, an emergency solution to symbolic misery. When traditional contracts and symbolic pacts, the universal and the particular no longer function, a form like a conspiracy takes brutal shape, a plot in which everyone is involuntarily involved. Partaking in the conspiracy is not based on anything, on any value, other than delirious self-defense, in response to the total loss of the imaginary's immunity... In fact, the virus is a "cosa mentale" and contamination happens so quickly because the mental immunity, the symbolic defenses are long lost. A panic space can take hold in this liquidation, one to which the entire global information system also belongs for another reason, the system of networks and instant diffusion - a non-Euclidean space where all rational, preventive, prophylactic countermeasures are almost automatically turned against themselves through their own excesses. Security is the best medium for terror.

I had a little bird, her name was Enza. I opened up the window, and in-flu-Enza.

Zoonotics seem to be in the hews for one or another reason of late. From coronavirus (covid-19), bird flu (H5N1) and now monkeypox. Scientists say that there are no connections between them, yet bird flu turned up in coronavirus hotspots around the globe. Monkeypox attacks the same areas as covid. Coincidence? I don't think so. It's time that we looked more closely at how these zoonotics work and why they share a penchant for the same human body areas. There may be no connection, but what if there is. It's like yesterday and tomorrow. They are both separate, but they are connected by a thing called, today. We should look at what is their food source. That is, the proteins in our bodies that they feed off. We should also map out the areas to see where they overlap. With monkeypox we should also look at what vaccines were administered just in case there is a connection there as well. I know that there is a connection there somewhere. All we have to do is look at what may be possible.

Zoonotics seem to be in the news for one reason or another of late. From coronavirus (covid-19), bird flu (H5N1) and now monkeypox. So called scientists say there is no connection. Yet, the bird flu followed covid 19 hotspots. Monkpox shows snd attacks some of the same human areas as covid-19 does. Coincidence? I don't think so. It's time that we looked more closely at how these zoonotics may interact and why yet share a passion for the same areas of human sickness. Sure. there may be no connection, but what if there is? Yesterday and tomorrow have a connection to today. It's the same thing. We need to look at the areas that these zoonotics attack. What they protein source (food) is. Where they have been predominately found and how would the map overlay plot their outbreaks. The connection is there. We just need to look.

Carole’s amazing roast chicken. Because how better to deal with fears of bird flu than by eating a bird, am I right? Here’s how you can make it yourself. You’ll need a chicken, first of all. Carole cuts it up herself but I’m lazy, so I buy a cut-up chicken at the store. You’ll need at least two pounds of potatoes. You’ll need a lemon and a garlic bulb. You’ll need a big wide roasting pan. I use a Cuisinart heavy-duty lasagna pan, but you can get by with a 13x9 cake pan. Cut up the potatoes into little cubes. (Use good potatoes! The yellow ones or maybe the red ones. In the summer I buy them at the farmer’s market.) Spray your pan with some cooking spray and toss in the potatoes. Peel all the garlic (really, all of it!) and scatter the whole cloves all through with the potatoes. If you’re thinking, “All that garlic?” just trust me on this. Roasted garlic gets all mild and melty and you can eat it like the potato chunks. Really. You’ll thank me later. Finally, lay out the chicken on top, skin-down. You’ll turn it halfway through cooking. Shake some oregano over all the meat and also some sea salt and a few twists of pepper. Squeeze the lemon, or maybe even two lemons if you really like lemon, and mix it in with a quarter cup of olive oil. Pour that over everything and use your hands to mix it in, make sure it’s all over the chicken and the potatoes. Then pour just a tiny bit of water down the side of the pan—you don’t want to get it on the chicken—so the potatoes don’t burn and stick. Pop it into a 425-degree oven and roast for an hour. Flip your chicken a half hour in so the skin gets nice and crispy.

Avian Flu is on the rise both in Asia and Europe. Coincidence? I don't think so. I sent a message to the CDC in the US asking if there was any correlation between Covid-19 (Coronavirus) . This was back in August 2020. I never received a reply back. Now it is coming to fruition again. Some animals are more likely to get Covid-19 than others. So, we have to ask ourselves once more, "Is there any correlation between Covid-19 (coronavirus) and the reemergence of bird flu in so called, Covid hot spots?" I believe that there is.

Death can be as common as the common cold. We have taken everything for granted, but we forget that we are only travelers here for a short time. So don't play the bus driver when you don't know how to drive.

On a very real level, germs concern us because the world has become a significantly more perilous place of late. In recent years, many normal activities, such as eating beef and chicken, travelling on public transit and being treated in a hospital, have turned out to be extremely dangerous in certain places. Arrogantly and ignorantly, we assumed that epidemics such as the Spanish flu of 1918 could not happen again. SARS proved us wrong, and now we dread bird flu or a yet unnamed pandemic.

Coronavirus affects not only humans, but also animals as well. That is a fact as seen from around the world both in the wild and in enclosed habitats like zoos. Cats, dogs, minks, tigers, hyenas, hippos, leopards, just to name a few. There also seems to be direct correlation to outbreaks of avian flu, but the so called experts seem to think there is no coincidence between the two. I beg to differ. The avian outbreaks seem to occur within so called coronavirus hot spots. That is a coincidence to big to rule out. Captive birds like chickens have close contact with man, so there may be something there, but wild birds usually shun man. That means there must be another cause. Sewerage outflows can carry the corona virus to low water areas where wild birds drink, bathe and eat. As I have said, it is a too big a coincidence to rule out. Let's hope I'm wrong, but I just have that feeling...

Tony Fauci spent the next half-century crafting public responses to a series of real and concocted viral outbreaks40,41—HIV/AIDS42 in 1983; SARS43 in 2003; MERS44,45,46 in 2014; bird flu47,48 in 2005; swine flu (“novel H1N1”)49 in 2009; dengue50,51 in 2012; Ebola52 in 2014–2016; Zika53 in 2015–2016; and COVID-1954 in 2020. When authentic epidemics failed to materialize, Dr. Fauci became skilled at exaggerating the severity of contagions to scare the public and further his career.

I'm fascinated by how things would fall apart in a real scenario like this - for instance if bird flu or swine flu were to take a grip of the world.

The executive editor of Poultry magazine put the trade-off this way in an editorial: “The prospect of a virulent flu to which we have absolutely no resistance is frightening. However, to me, the threat is much greater to the poultry industry. I’m not as worried about the U.S. human population dying from bird flu as I am that there will be no chicken to eat.”3580

This is equally true of human neighbourhoods, when bird flu viruses and other illnesses sweep across the planet. The poor and stressed always die first, and in greater numbers. They are also much more susceptible to non-infectious diseases, such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. When the aristocracy catches a cold, as it is said, the working class dies of pneumonia.

In 1968,” he continued, “Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich echoed Malthus in many ways in a wildly influential book entitled The Population Bomb, again predicting an inevitable disaster that never came. He later declared with conviction that four billion people worldwide, and sixty-five million Americans, would die of starvation by the year 1990. “In the seventies, many scientists became convinced that the globe was cooling, and raised alarms that a new ice age was just around the corner.” Elias shook his head. “I could provide endless examples of other coming disasters and doomsday scenarios that evoked widespread anxiety, but that were grossly exaggerated. Acid rain and low sperm counts. Y2K, AIDS, Ebola, mad-cow disease, and killer bees. The bird flu and the reversal of Earth’s magnetic poles. Severe shortages of everything under the sun, from oil, to food, to zinc. Black holes created by the Large Hadron Collider, and unstoppable genetically engineered organisms breaking free of the lab. Famine, nuclear war, and asteroid collisions. Oh, yeah, and predictions of the near extinction of all species on Earth, which was supposed to have already occurred. And on and on and on. Esteemed scientists or government experts convinced us to fear all of these coming catastrophes. Most never happened at all. Those that did wreaked only a tiny fraction of the havoc that we were assured was coming.

Covid hasn't finished with us yet, because it's only just getting started.

In 2005, Ferguson predicted that up to 150 million people could be killed from bird flu.33 In the end, only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 2003 and 2009.34

Fauci trotted out his reliable old chestnut that the new version of bird flu could be as lethal as the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic that killed 50–100 million people.51 Dr. Fauci had reason to know that this weary bogeyman was a canard. In 2008, he coauthored a study for the Journal of Infectious Disease confessing that virtually all of the “influenza” casualties in 1918 did not actually die from flu but from bacterial pneumonia and bronchial meningitis, which are, today, easily treated with antibiotics unavailable in 1918.52 The Spanish flu that government virologists have invoked to terrorize generations of Americans with vaccine compliance is, after all, a paper tiger.

I’m being practical. Bird flu is twice as deadly as bubonic plague.” “What’s

The 21st century is no exception, with Swine Flu and Bird Flu acting as nasty reminders that rearing animals in close quarters – and inhumanely – might still come back to bite us (no pun intended).

Western countries have been talking about pandemic preparedness since bird flu rang alarms in the early 2000s. This was especially true in the US, which was widely expected to be the country best prepared for something like this. But when Covid-19 hit the US, the plan was largely abandoned, while unexpected complications set in everywhere. Health workers didn’t have enough protective gear and ended up sick or in quarantine. Insurance rules meant people initially couldn’t afford to get tested. For weeks, they couldn’t get tests in any case because of problems with one test at the US CDC in Atlanta. Employees with no paid vacation came in to work, hoping it was just flu. The virus spread earlier and farther than surveillance systems could detect, partly due to years of cuts to public health.

common cold virus; from chickens came “bird flu,” chickenpox, and shingles; pigs and ducks donated influenza; and from cattle arose measles, tuberculosis, and smallpox.

Maybe we’ll have another bird-flu scare and I can revive the routine.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush......unless the bird has the flu!

Many people outside Korea subscribe to the belief that Korean food contains mystic healing properties. The SARS bird flu epidemic of 2003 made kimchi ubiquitous throughout Asia. SARs raged throughout China, Southeast Asia, and even Canada and parts of Europe, with about 8,000 reported cases and about 750 deaths. Meanwhile, South Korea experienced zero bird flu–related deaths (there were two cases, both nonfatal). Many theories as to South Korea’s immunity have been postulated; none were conclusive. One study suggested that the enzymes contained in kimchi strengthened immunity in birds; some people made the mental leap to assume that this also protected them from bird flu. Through

Mutation of a superbug, one of the ones they’d been watching for two decades. In the water supply etc. Combined with a bird flu. We called it the Africanized bird flu, after the killer bees. First cases in London and blamed on New Delhi. But that’s probably not where it originated.

Perhaps, in some innocent encounter in China between a child and a bird, a new killer flu is on its way. Or perhaps, even now, a young man or a young woman has become infected with two different strains of flu viruses. They are mixing together in the person’s lungs, their genes reassorting. Emerging from that witches’ brew is a new virus, a chimera, that, like the 1918 flu virus, is perfectly suited for destruction. Perhaps, as we grow almost smug about influenza, that most quotidian of infections, a new plague is now gathering deadly force. Except this time we stand armed with a better understanding of the past to better survive the next pandemic.

It’s a mildly technical term, zoonosis, unfamiliar to most people, but it helps clarify the biological complexities behind the ominous headlines about swine flu, bird flu, SARS, emerging diseases in general, and the threat of a global pandemic. It helps us comprehend why medical science and public health campaigns have been able to conquer some horrific diseases, such as smallpox and polio, but unable to conquer other horrific diseases, such as dengue and yellow fever. It says something essential about the origins of AIDS. It’s a word of the future, destined for heavy use in the twenty-first century.

In recent weeks, dead birds with the avian flu strain have turned up in Suffolk, England, Germany, and at a Grayson chicken farm in Tennessee, increasing fears of a possible pandemic.

As I write in 2015, scientists are looking at the next potential pandemics. It may take only a few mutations for a strain of bird flu to evolve into a new strain of human influenza virus. Reassortment could accelerate the change. No one can say when, or if, any particular strain will make the jump. But we are not helpless as we wait to see what evolution has in store for us. We can do things to slow the spread of the flu, such as washing our hands. And scientists are learning how to make more effective vaccines by tracking the evolution of the flu virus so they can do a better job of predicting which strains will be most dangerous in flu seasons to come.

Perhaps, in some innocent encounter in China between a child and a bird, a new killer flu is on its way. Or perhaps, even now, a young man or a young woman has become infected with two different strains of flu viruses. They are mixing together in the person’s lungs, their genes reassorting. Emerging from that witches’ brew is a new virus, a chimera, that, like the 1918 flu virus, is perfectly suited for destruction.

The science behind Bio-ALIRT was intended to determine whether or not “automated detection algorithms” could identify an outbreak in either a bioweapons attack or a naturally occurring epidemic, like bird flu.

The natural reservoir of influenza is generally considered to be birds, especially waterbirds. The big giveaway that a certain species plays the role of reservoir for a certain pathogen is that it doesn’t get sick from it.

virus emerged through a background of seasonal flu sometime in the winter of 1917–18, and was already circulating at low levels the following spring. Whether it came directly from a bird, or passed via a pig, he can’t yet say. In the summer of 1918, it mutated, becoming highly contagious between humans. This new, more virulent form spread through the viral population that summer, and in the autumn the disease erupted. By then, the seasonal background had receded, and there was nothing to dilute the ‘pure’ pandemic variety.

When infected people use Tamiflu as medication, it will cause more deaths than necessary. The culprits of this disease will use the fatal results of Tamiflu as proof that there is grave danger with the Bird Flu virus.

He was holding out his hand. What the hell was I going to do? I couldn't get out of it this time. And here we have our next lot, the soul of Mervyn Kirby. An exquisite one this. A few cracks here and there but in excellent condition. So who'll start the bidding? "I have dermatitis," I blurted. He took a step closer. "That's not contagious." My back against the door, I fumbled for the handle. "A swan just died of bird flu in Fife. If we're not careful, we could be next." "You're eccentric." He was coming straight for me, hand extended. "I like that." "Think of the children, Dennis. Think of the swans.