India and bird flu - some questions

[Guest guest]

The news of the raging bird flu epidemic in India seems to get ever

worse. There are stories about how most of the population in the

affected areas are paying no heed to the warnings to cull their

chickens and are in fact eating the dead birds. They are saying that

the epidemic is approaching Calcutta now and predict chaos and panic

in the huge crowded city. Yet they report that there are no human

cases of bird flu to date. I wonder what the cause of this is. The

incidence of the flu in birds is now very wide spread and the

population of the area is very dense and poor and mostly ignorant of

the dangers. You would think that there would be many cases of human

infection. So is the reporting of human cases accurate? Or is there

a gene for predisposition toward infection and the Indians do not

carry it but the Indonesians and Egyptians do? Or is the reporting

of known human cases being suppressed?

Another question that some of the more informed people on the list

might be able to answer: As more people catch bird flu from birds,

does it increase the likelihood that there will be a mutation that

will make the virus become efficiently transmissible? For example, if

seasonal flu is spreading through the city and numerous people catch

both seasonal and bird flu, is there a better chance that the two

varieties of influenza will cross-breed to produce the killer we all

dread?

Finally, I wonder what the seasonal flu situation is in Calcutta right

now.