Europe bracing to battle bird flu - Boston Globe

[Coastie for Truth]

<>

Europe is bracing for bird flu and the potentially catastrophic pandemic the virus might bring.

Public health officials on the continent, spurred by grim warnings from the World Health Organization, are hoping that the disease spreading westward from Asia will afflict only domestic poultry. But as a strain of the avian disease was detected in Europe for the first time over the weekend, governments were seeking ways to cope with a virus that epidemiologists consider likely to transform into a human pathogen that could trigger a global outbreak of deadly influenza similar to one that killed millions in 1918.

In Romania, three cases of avian flu were confirmed Saturday at a poultry farm in the Danube delta marshlands, causing officials to quarantine several small communities as health workers wearing protective garb against microbes slaughtered hundreds of domestic ducks and geese apparently infected by birds migrating from Russia.

Authorities fear that the Romania outbreak marks the arrival in Europe of the H5N1 strain of the flu, which has the potential for mutating into a form that could sweep the globe in a matter of weeks, according to international health agencies. There is still a strong possibility that the Romanian fowl were infected by a less virulent strain, and more tests are underway to isolate the virus, officials said yesterday.


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Edited to comply with the "Fair Use" requirements of the Copyright Code, Title 15, United States Code

[flowomo]

1. a lot of DUer's still think this is a Bush plot to distract us....

but I doubt if the rest of the world sees it that way.

[melody]

2. I think he's using it to distract us and to attempt "political gains"

I don't think he invented the virus out of wholecloth...or maybe that's why all the scientists have been dropping dead. :tinfoilhat:

[flowomo]

3. how do we inform the public/ get prepared without talking?

I think it's the president's duty to raise the alarm when it is warranted, no matter who holds the office. If he gets a "political gain" in the bargain, that doesn't change the need to get such things out on the public agenda.

[melody]

4. I'm not talking about should/shall, I'm saying what his real motive is

He's a sociopath - he's not doing anything for positive reasons.