In what was either an accident or abioterrorismattack, potentially lethal samples of the Asian flu weresent to laboratories around the world by a U.S. testingorganization. This flu strain appeared between 1957 and1968 and killed four million people worldwide. Was this anaccident?or an act of terrorism?
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The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control haswarned that the outbreak of bird flu in Asia is the singlebiggest threat facing the world today. Right now, bird flucan only be caught directly from infected birds?usuallychickens?but there are signs that the virus is evolving andmay soon be able to be passed from person to person. If thathappens, we could have an epidemic to rival the 1918influenza pandemic, which killed millions of people aroundthe world.
Researchers don’t know for sure that the H5N1 strain of birdflu will evolve into a form that can be passed from personto person. Right now, bird flu has a fatality rate of about75%, so if this form of flu spreads around the world, itcould be an international health disaster.
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In the U.S., many of us are still trying to get our yearlyflu shots. There was an earlier shortage of vaccine, but nowthere should be plenty to go around and you don’t need to beelderly or infirm in order to get a flu shot. In Asia,patients are coping with something much more lethal: birdflu. Researchers don’t think it’s just spreading from birdsto humans anymore?they’re worried that we can catch it fromother people. That means it will inevitably end up here.
Jo Revill writes in The (U.K.) Observer that a teenaged girlwho died in Vietnam has become the 11th bird flu victimthere in a month. Her mother died from bird flu the weekbefore. WHO wants to know whether or not they shouldclassify bird flu as a “pandemic,” and that depends on howit is transmitted.
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Bird flu persists in Asia, and that worries health officialsworldwide. The H5N1 virus is so lethal that it is believedthat it could kill fifty million people if it mutates andbecomes transmissible from human to human.
In 1997, virologists did not believe that the virus could betransmitted from birds to humans, but the deaths of 6 of 18people who got the illness in Hong Kong that year provedthem wrong.
At the time, the virus could only infect birds, but it hasbeen mutating at exceptional speed, and now is known to beable to infect cats, pigs and tigers.
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