A very bad bug indeed

[Guest guest]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170728,00.html

[Guest guest]

Scientists in Desperate Race With Bird Flu

Bird flu has scientists on the edge of their seats about when and if

it will become a human pandemic, a sobering report shows.

More than half of the people who got bird flu have died. The true

death rate for human cases of bird flu is not known. Mild cases don't

show up in hospitals and don't get counted. But a new report on human

bird flu infection shows that this is a very bad bug indeed.

The report comes from a May 2005 meeting of doctors and researchers

held in Hanoi, Vietnam, by the World Health Organization. Among them

is Frederick G. Hayden, MD, professor of clinical virology and

internal medicine at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

" The news is concerning, " Hayden tells WebMD. " Most cases are in

apparently healthy adults and children. About half of them die from

what appears to be a viral pneumonia, sometimes with secondary

bacterial infections. Some suggest this virus behaves differently

from human flu. "

The disease has been particularly deadly for children. In Thailand,

89% of patients under the age of 15 years died an average of nine or

10 days after illness onset.

" All of us virologists and infectious disease epidemiologists who

worry about flu for a living, we all feel a pandemic is virtually

inevitable -- as inevitable as any unpredictable event can be, " Morse

tells WebMD. " We don't know if it will be a 1918-like epidemic, which

is what we all fear -- the worst natural disaster we know of in

history -- or whether it will be more of a standard pandemic like

1957 or 1968, where we have 4 million deaths rather than 100 million. "

But if the next pandemic is bird flu, there really is no precedent.

The terrible 1918 flu had a mortality [death] rate of only 2%, Morse

says.

" The extra charge on that bomb is that H5N1 bird flu has a high

mortality rate, " he says. " That is one of the things that is very

worrisome about this virus: A pandemic would mean a lot of people who

are very sick. An H5 pandemic would be something very serious to

contemplate. "

> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170728,00.html

[Guest guest]

I'm not a doctor and won't even pretend to know, but

another thing that's been frightening me lately is

this new " Canine Flu. " It went from pigs to dogs this

summer, I believe. How did that happen? Tuscon's

Humane Society reported that ten of its dogs have died

from the canine flu this month, for which there is no

antibodies. Symptoms are similiar to kennel cough.

Which has me wondering what would happen--if this is

possible--if Dog Flu mutates with Bird Flu and strikes

Humans with even stronger force? Different strains,

different species, but is this a possibility?

__________________________________

- PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005

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[Guest guest]

Canine Flu isn’t even listed at the

Centers for Disease Control website.

http://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/browse_by_diseases.htm

[Guest guest]

So does that mean Canine Flu is not transmittable to

humans? Or that canine flu is so new (I've never hear

of it till this week) that medical officials know so

little about it?

--- Coy <catherinecoy@...> wrote:

> Canine Flu isn't even listed at the Centers for

> Disease Control website.

__________________________________

- PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005

http://mail.