Science Daily published the article “New bird flu strain dangerous to humans” on October 7, 2007. The article says that, apparently, the strain of bird influenza that is circulating about Europe and Africa have a mutation that makes the illness more communicable to humans. This strain of the virus is not yet seen in the U.S. So far 329 people world - wide have been infected with the bird influenza and 201 have died. Because of the mutation in this strain of the bird influenza many health groups are preparing vaccines and emergency treatment in case of a pandemic.
Yep, the bird flu. Of course the bird flew: that’s what birds do. I wish that the media would call this by some other name. Every time I hear about the bird flu on the news I always think about birds flying. I know that bird flu is intended to mean influenza, but the pun is just so silly to me.
Maybe a bird influenza pandemic would be a good thing. Throughout history epidemics and pandemics have helped to keep the world population lower. But now that we have vaccines and treatments for so many diseases and life expectancy is so much longer the earth’s population has swelled. I don’t think that we need to kill off millions of people, or not try to find a vaccine for the bird influenza, but there would be a silver lining if researchers are not able to find a vaccine. Some vaccines are very good, like smallpox and tetanus. I wouldn’t want to contract diseases like those. Hopefully if researchers come up with a vaccine the virus won’t mutate to be resistant to the vaccine.
This happens to bacteria, that’s why there are drug resistant strains of staph infection and other bacterial diseases. I’ve heard that it’s because we are too clean and we take drugs for too many diseases and don’t take the drugs correctly, thus allowing the bacteria to develop resistance to the drugs.
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