Date:   1/31/2006 12:44:45 PM ( 19 y ago)
Hits:   2,304
URL:   https://www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=345607

wow. after reading that doctorwithin page, and checking this forum a little, i see there certainly is a lot of distrust shown to the media. it is true, of course, that they tend to overhype events. that's their job, in part, because they need to sell news to make a living. that's just a fact of life. and so is the risk of a human-to-human form of bird flu. if we did not have historical precedent to give us some sense of the threat involved (and i am talking about the loss of 20-40 million lives in 1918 due to the Spanish Flu Pandemic) then those who denigrate the part of our society that keeps us constantly aware of these threats might have some substance to their argument.

bird flu did not suddenly appear just recently. in particular the H5N1 strain has been known to cause human infections since 1997, and has been carefully monitored since that time. because we now live in an age where everyone can get their opinion out there in front of people we tend to suffer from information overload and it is very hard to tell what information is good and what is not. there is a good deal of dis-information out there about bird flu. i have read (wrongly) that it is not possible to produce a vaccine against the current threat, which is H5N1. why not? it is just a form of influenza, and we have been producing vaccines against influenza for a long time now. but part of the problem is that it is just not profitable for companies to make vaccines. only 10 percent of the population take them, doing society a favor by supressing outbreaks, while the other 90 percent ignores the problem and bad-mouths the technology. "Vaccines are dangerous. You're not going to get little Jimmy vaccinated, are you? My friend said she gets sick every time she gets vaccinated." How often have you heard these sort of utterances? If we listened to that ignorant portion of the population we would still be living with polio and smallpox.

so, i guess what i am saying here is beware the naysayers who tell you those who spread warnings about the unpleasantries of life are just doing it for profit. there are actual bad things to deal with in life. bird flu *might* just be one of them.

 

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