Bend over, if you have the strength, and kiss your ass goodbye
Or at least kiss me goodbye.
It seems that the bird flu is killing nearly everyone that gets it now, according to an aggregate of links at boingboing. Oh, shit. Remember last winter when I was sick for nearly six months with the mystery respiratory illness, gravely ill for three of them? And the winter before that when I had the six-month cold? And the winter before that and the one before that when I got bronchitis and pneumonia?
Gentlemen, I can outwit zombies, commies, and roving hordes of postnuclear mutants, but I have a really terrible, terrible feeling that when the bird flu comes knocking, my number's up. Nice knowin' ya.
[wik]I mean, seriously. This Guardian piece quotes experts estimating an 8-million death floor and a likely 200 million death worst case if this thing figures out how to transmit human-to-human. Which they think it might be doing.
[alsø wik] The comment thingy wouldn't accept a hyperlink, so I'll put it here. Because I can.
As an added bonus, it looks as if that strain of Asian Birdy Flu everyone is worried about is resistant to the primary antiviral drug, tamiflu. Everyone is stockpiling that just in case, but it looks like that won't help for jack.
A strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus that may unleash the next global flu pandemic is showing resistance to Tamiflu, the antiviral drug that countries around the world are now stockpiling to fend off the looming threat.
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I guess when it comes to flu
I guess when it comes to flu pandemics, you're the spare.
Remember to drink your orange juice, and take lots of zinc tablets.
200 million is about 3% of the total world population. That's a lot - and while not quite on the scale of the black death, not by an order of magnitude - think of the effect on society that the BD had in an era with minimal communications tech. The flu would be in our face daily what with the interweb and boobtube.
Aw, g'wan, give me a messiah
Aw, g'wan, give me a messiah complex, already!
You are so right about technology. On one hand, we *know* what's happening and so on/so forth. But on the other hand, does it *help* us to know that the same thign is happening beyond the next village? Or just make things much, much worse.
At least the flu doesn't come with giant black buboes in your groinal area. If I was Jim Traficant, I'da said "your crotch."