{sarcasm mode on}
Yea, That whole pandemic thing is just a machination of the powerbrokers. They also rewrote history to include a couple other plauges so that this one looks legit.
The realy nefarious element of this- THEY started it to promote hatred towards asians. Notice how these pandemics always start somewhere else like India with the bubonic plague, and somewhere in Europe with the blue flue, aids from Africa.(nudge nudge, wink wink)
{sarcasm mode off}
Freakin NUTJOB!
[quote]jlesk68 wrote:
“Finally, the pieces of the puzzle start to add up,” writes Dr. Joseph Mercola, author of the “Total Health Program.” “President Bush sought to instill panic in this country by telling us a minimum of 200,000 people will die from the avian flu pandemic but it could be as bad as 2 million deaths in this country alone.”
[/quote]
Why is it that you say Bush is stupid and an idiot and then turn around and accuse him of a well thought out and cleverly developed scheme to make millions?
Avian Flue facts:
The fact is that the avian flue doesn’t yet exist. The scientific community is just predicting that the mutation will occur. If it occurs, it will take a month or so until they can develop a vaccine. In that time it will have hit most of Asia (where most originate) and be in the US population as well. So many will get it before the vaccine is created and distributed.
So the issue of “panic” is that it is a potentially deadly flue mutation that we will not have a vaccine for timely.
This is why the flue cannot be irradiated; because the virus keeps mutating into different forms, which require a different vaccine. So science is always chasing it.
Having said all this, most people who get really sick with flues are the old and very young and those with poor immune systems. So if you don’t fall into these category, don’t sweat it.
[quote]doogie wrote:
best book ever.[/quote]
It was Ok. Steve and I “collaborated” on some of the fine points.
The movie sucked ass, though.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
It has to be caused by the government to follow the book. Did they infect the chinese chickens? (LMAO)[/quote]
Not really. And the book follows the reality, not the other way around. The book was based on one “scenario” that Steve and I discussed, but like I told him back then - I’ve got lots of irons in the fire, so to speak. Always a couple of things in the works. If “bird flu” doesn’t pan out maybe I’ll get lucky with a leak like the one in the book. Or maybe I’ll hit on a virus that moves too fast and is too potent for a vaccine to work in time. Or maybe it’s gonna be a nuke. Who knows? I’m not in a real big hurry anyway, I’ve got nothing but time.
Wonder if that old black bitch Abigail is still around? Never really liked her much.
This goes to show that Orwell was right all along…
You can’t trust anyone…on anything…big brother is watching…he’s also telling you one thing one day and then something else the other.
I read the responses on here and don’t know what the fuck to think. It has nothing to do with politcal parties…we’r eobviuosly all confused and don’t have a united voice on this one…some people say it hasn’t mutated, I read in our local paper, people have died already b/c of the mutation…
None of us, know shit…face it…we’re all beign played I don’t care who the fuck it is (Bush, Clinton, Chretian, Martin, doesn’t matter)…realize it.
Which media source you read and what political overtones you throw into your agruments developes you opinions…
Guess we can just wait and find out.
Enjoy the suspense.
T
PS…chickens taste good by the way…damn good! not better than steak, let’s get that straight, but wait…don’t eat steak…it has BSE…shit don’t eat anything…oh wait…make sure you eat a shit load of soy…there’s no way that can’t be bad for you…
See what I’m sayin…I’m still shakin my head.
Wow!!! This bird flu stuff sounds like another serious threat to the population of America. Maybe we should send some troops:)
Bird flu, please. Aren’t birds SUPPOSED to fly?
Preparing for the Pandemic
By Henry I. Miller, MD
I have a long and intimate relationship with influenza virus. More than 30 years ago, I was the co-discoverer of one of the viral enzymes that are essential for the virus to duplicate and proliferate. Later, my medical training taught me respect for this pathogen. Real influenza – as opposed to a garden-variety cold – is a serious illness. Its victims don’t soon forget the fever, headache, muscle aches and profound weakness, and in an average year – in spite of vaccines that are usually at least moderately effective – it kills tens of thousands in this country.
Now it appears that the flu virus is poised to repeat its several-times-a-century metamorphosis into something much worse.
First, some background. The exterior of the flu virus consists of a lipid envelope from which project two surface proteins, hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). The virus constantly mutates, which may cause significant alterations in either or both of these, enabling the virus to elude detection and neutralization by humans’ immune system. A minor change is called genetic drift; a major one, genetic shift. The former is the reason that flu vaccines need to be updated from year to year; an example of the latter was the change in subtype from H1N1 to H2N2 that gave rise to the 1957 pandemic. This new variant was sufficiently distinct that people had little immunity to it: The rate of infection of symptomatic flu that year exceeded 50 percent in urban populations, and 70,000 died from it in the United States alone.
In the 1957 outbreak the mortality rate (the fraction of infected persons who die) was low, but we appear to be on the verge of another, much worse pandemic.
During the past several years, an especially virulent strain of avian flu, designated H5N1, has ravaged flocks of domesticated poultry in Asia and spread to migratory birds and (rarely) to humans. Now found from Russia and Japan to Indonesia, it is moving inexorably toward Europe. Since 2003, more than 60 human deaths have been attributed to H5N1. Public health experts and virologists are concerned about the potential of this strain because it already has two of the three characteristics needed to cause a pandemic: It can jump from birds to human, and can produce a severe and often fatal illness. If additional genetic evolution makes H5N1 highly transmissible among humans – the third characteristic of a pandemic strain – a devastating world-wide outbreak could become a reality.
Moreover, this is an extraordinarily deadly variant: The mortality rate for persons infected with the existing H5N1 appears to be around 50 percent, whereas the usual annual flu bug kills fewer than one percent.
We are ill-prepared for a flu pandemic. Reserve capacity is grossly inadequate for vaccines, drugs and hospital beds. The best and most cost-effective intervention – prevention with a vaccine – presents many obstacles, technological, economic and logistical.
Anti-flu drugs exist but are not a panacea. Unlike vaccines, which confer long-term immunity after one or two doses, drugs need to be taken for long periods. The only drug that has been shown to prevent the flu is Tamiflu, the prophylactic dose of which is one tablet a day, the effect lasting only as long as one takes the drug. (The other major anti-flu medicine, Relenza, has only been shown to be effective to treat, but not prevent, flu.)
Historically, flu pandemics have come in two or three waves, lasting a total of 13-23 months. In other words, the need to take Tamiflu – by first responders, health care workers and ordinary citizens – could go on for months and months, or even years. U.S. public health officials have said they plan to buy 20 million doses of Tamiflu, but that would be enough to treat only 200,000 people (fewer than the number who would attend a seven-game World Series) for 100 days. And the retail price per pill is around $8, so the expense to treat that small number of people for that amount of time would be $160 million.
According to various models, in the absence of sufficient amounts of an effective vaccine – which is not yet within reach – to blunt a pandemic we would need to treat perhaps a third to a half of the population with Tamiflu. Do the math: 100 million people for 100 days equals 10 billion doses, at a retail cost of $80 billion, in order to blunt the pandemic’s first wave.
Although President Bush and HHS Secretary Leavitt are saying some of the right things about the need to prepare for the pandemic, if they or their staffs have done this sort of calculation, they give no sign of it.
We need push-pull incentives to forming public-private partnerships. Public policy must reward both inputs on R&D (via grants, tax credits and the waiver of regulatory registration fees) and outputs of products (with guaranteed purchases, payments for the regulatory approval of new drugs or vaccines, and indemnification from liability claims). Part of this effort should be R&D on various new technologies and approaches to making flu vaccine, to boosting the immune response to vaccines, and to creating greater reserve capacity for the production of drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza.
Preparation for pandemic flu involves many thorny issues of science, technology and medicine, but also much more. It requires contingency plans for the “social” aspects of a deadly pandemic – when to shut our borders to travelers from infected regions, close schools, restrict public gatherings, and enforce quarantines, as well as a designated chain of command to implement those decisions.
Like the WWII Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb, preparation for a flu pandemic involves scientific uncertainties, strategic decisions that span many specialties and government departments, and prodigious resources. To oversee all this, we’ll need a Flu-Pandemic Czar – someone analogous to Army General Leslie Groves, who headed the Manhattan Project: a plenipotentiary with broad powers and discretion.
There is no time to waste.
Henry I. Miller, a physician and fellow at the Hoover Institution, was the founding director of the Office of Biotechnology at the FDA, 1989-1993. Barron’s selected his latest book, “The Frankenfood Myth…” as one of the 25 Best Books of 2004.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Preparing for the Pandemic
By Henry I. Miller, MD
I have a long and intimate relationship with influenza virus. More than 30 years ago, I was the co-discoverer of one of the viral enzymes that are essential for the virus to duplicate and proliferate. Later, my medical training taught me respect for this pathogen. Real influenza – as opposed to a garden-variety cold – is a serious illness. Its victims don’t soon forget the fever, headache, muscle aches and profound weakness, and in an average year – in spite of vaccines that are usually at least moderately effective – it kills tens of thousands in this country.[/quote]
–Dude, it’s the Flu. Dozens of things kill tens of thousands annually in this country. Adverse reactions to drugs being one of the worst offenders, higher than many illnesses combined. Big Macs being another. The general poor state of health that most Americans are in is, in my opinion, the reason why these mortality rates are what they are. Rarely do the fit and healthy succumb to “pest” viruses.
[quote]
Now it appears that the flu virus is poised to repeat its several-times-a-century metamorphosis into something much worse. Fear. Fear. Fear.
First, some background. The exterior of the flu virus consists of a lipid envelope from which project two surface proteins, hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). The virus constantly mutates, which may cause significant alterations in either or both of these, enabling the virus to elude detection and neutralization by humans’ immune system. A minor change is called genetic drift; a major one, genetic shift. The former is the reason that flu vaccines need to be updated from year to year; an example of the latter was the change in subtype from H1N1 to H2N2 that gave rise to the 1957 pandemic. This new variant was sufficiently distinct that people had little immunity to it: The rate of infection of symptomatic flu that year exceeded 50 percent in urban populations, and 70,000 died from it in the United States alone. [/quote]
–“Scientific” justification for the fear.
–Estimating our urban population at the time to be around 20 million(conservative, to say the least), that gives us approx. 10 million infected. If 70,000 died, that’s only .7%.
[quot]
In the 1957 outbreak the mortality rate (the fraction of infected persons who die) was low, but we appear to be on the verge of another, much worse pandemic. Fear! Fear! Fear!
During the past several years, an especially virulent strain of avian flu, designated H5N1, has ravaged flocks of domesticated poultry in Asia and spread to migratory birds and (rarely) to humans. Now found from Russia and Japan to Indonesia, it is moving inexorably toward Europe. Since 2003, more than 60 human deaths have been attributed to H5N1. Public health experts and virologists are concerned about the potential of this strain because it already has two of the three characteristics needed to cause a pandemic: It can jump from birds to human, and can produce a severe and often fatal illness. If additional genetic evolution makes H5N1 highly transmissible among humans – the third characteristic of a pandemic strain – a devastating world-wide outbreak could become a reality.
Moreover, this is an extraordinarily deadly variant: The mortality rate for persons infected with the existing H5N1 appears to be around 50 percent, whereas the usual annual flu bug kills fewer than one percent. Ooohhh, chilling.[/quote]
—So he’s saying, that in all of China and the rest of Southeast Asia(population in the BILLIONS)), only 120 people have been infected with this flu in the past two years. Is that highly transmittable?
Surely, not everybody that was infected sought medical help, probably because their symptoms weren’t severe enough. So can this mortality rate be taken seriously?
[quote]
We are ill-prepared for a flu pandemic. Reserve capacity is grossly inadequate for vaccines, drugs and hospital beds. The best and most cost-effective intervention – prevention with a vaccine – presents many obstacles, technological, economic and logistical.
Anti-flu drugs exist but are not a panacea. Unlike vaccines, which confer long-term immunity after one or two doses, drugs need to be taken for long periods. The only drug that has been shown to prevent the flu is Tamiflu, the prophylactic dose of which is one tablet a day, the effect lasting only as long as one takes the drug. (The other major anti-flu medicine, Relenza, has only been shown to be effective to treat, but not prevent, flu.)
Historically, flu pandemics have come in two or three waves, lasting a total of 13-23 months. In other words, the need to take Tamiflu – by first responders, health care workers and ordinary citizens – could go on for months and months, or even years. U.S. public health officials have said they plan to buy 20 million doses of Tamiflu, but that would be enough to treat only 200,000 people (fewer than the number who would attend a seven-game World Series) for 100 days. And the retail price per pill is around $8, so the expense to treat that small number of people for that amount of time would be $160 million.
According to various models, in the absence of sufficient amounts of an effective vaccine – which is not yet within reach – to blunt a pandemic we would need to treat perhaps a third to a half of the population with Tamiflu. Do the math: 100 million people for 100 days equals 10 billion doses, at a retail cost of $80 billion, in order to blunt the pandemic’s first wave.
Although President Bush and HHS Secretary Leavitt are saying some of the right things about the need to prepare for the pandemic, if they or their staffs have done this sort of calculation, they give no sign of it.
We need push-pull incentives to forming public-private partnerships. Public policy must reward both inputs on R&D (via grants, tax credits and the waiver of regulatory registration fees) and outputs of products (with guaranteed purchases, payments for the regulatory approval of new drugs or vaccines, and indemnification from liability claims). Part of this effort should be R&D on various new technologies and approaches to making flu vaccine, to boosting the immune response to vaccines, and to creating greater reserve capacity for the production of drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza.[/quote]
–So we should pay the drug companies to make the drugs, then we should buy the drugs back from them? Wow!
[quote]
Preparation for pandemic flu involves many thorny issues of science, technology and medicine, but also much more. It requires contingency plans for the “social” aspects of a deadly pandemic – when to shut our borders to travelers from infected regions, close schools, restrict public gatherings, and enforce quarantines, as well as a designated chain of command to implement those decisions.[/quote]
–Police states are always fun. Picture post-Katrina New Orleans throughout the country.
[quote]
Like the WWII Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb, preparation for a flu pandemic involves scientific uncertainties, strategic decisions that span many specialties and government departments, and prodigious resources. To oversee all this, we’ll need a Flu-Pandemic Czar – someone analogous to Army General Leslie Groves, who headed the Manhattan Project: a plenipotentiary with broad powers and discretion.[/quote]
–Yeah, more Czars. The others have been doing such a bang up job.
[quote]
There is no time to waste.[/quote]
–Act now and we’ll throw in a set of steak knives.
–This whole article is a joke, and I hope the post was intended as such. The sad thing is, these are the type of people that the President listens to. So, look for more of your tax dollars to be flushed down the toilet into another Big Business bank account. And maybe, just maybe, we can justify some more of our civil liberties to be taken away in the process.
[quote]
I like to leave with a quote.
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
– Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
Henry I. Miller, a physician and fellow at the Hoover Institution, was the founding director of the Office of Biotechnology at the FDA, 1989-1993. Barron’s selected his latest book, “The Frankenfood Myth…” as one of the 25 Best Books of 2004. [/quote]
Are you kidding me?
[quote]AZMojo wrote:
–Dude, it’s the Flu. Dozens of things kill tens of thousands annually in this country. Adverse reactions to drugs being one of the worst offenders, higher than many illnesses combined. Big Macs being another. The general poor state of health that most Americans are in is, in my opinion, the reason why these mortality rates are what they are. Rarely do the fit and healthy succumb to “pest” viruses. [/quote]
Influenza killed millions of people in pandemics, particularly in the early 20th century. Go look it up on Wikipedia. And that was even prior to the advent of Big Macs…
[quote]AZMojo wrote:
–Estimating our urban population at the time to be around 20 million(conservative, to say the least), that gives us approx. 10 million infected. If 70,000 died, that’s only .7%.
[/quote]
Did you pull that number out of your @$$? Our population was much more rural back then – go check the census.
Not to mention the author said the mortality rate was low for that outbreak – but look up stuff on the earlier outbreaks, like the Spanish Influenza outbreak around the end of WWI.
A more virulent strain could be much deadlier.
What’s a joke is how little you understand, both about the historic application of governmental police power in the face of health crises, the nature of this threat, or generally.
There are reasons to wonder whether any modern influenza epidemic would be as deadly as one in the pre-anti-biotic age, but none of those relate to anything you wrote.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Are you kidding me?
AZMojo wrote:
–Dude, it’s the Flu. Dozens of things kill tens of thousands annually in this country. Adverse reactions to drugs being one of the worst offenders, higher than many illnesses combined. Big Macs being another. The general poor state of health that most Americans are in is, in my opinion, the reason why these mortality rates are what they are. Rarely do the fit and healthy succumb to “pest” viruses.
Influenza killed millions of people in pandemics, particularly in the early 20th century. Go look it up on Wikipedia. And that was even prior to the advent of Big Macs…
My Reply -
–From Wikipedia: It has been suggested that the stresses of combat, possibly combined with the effects of chemical warfare, may have weakened soldiers’ immune systems thereby increasing their vulnerability to the disease and accelerating the process. Certainly the close quarters and mass movement of troops helped in its spread.
–Again, proving my point about the impotance of health.
AZMojo wrote:
–Estimating our urban population at the time to be around 20 million(conservative, to say the least), that gives us approx. 10 million infected. If 70,000 died, that’s only .7%.
Did you pull that number out of your @$$? Our population was much more rural back then – go check the census.
Not to mention the author said the mortality rate was low for that outbreak – but look up stuff on the earlier outbreaks, like the Spanish Influenza outbreak around the end of WWI.
A more virulent strain could be much deadlier.
My Reply -
–Actually, my populations figures were a guesstimate, but the U.S. census you’re so fond of states that the URBAN population in 1960 was 54 million. So please adjust my percentages accordingly.
The author wrote:
During the past several years, an especially virulent strain of avian flu, designated H5N1, has ravaged flocks of domesticated poultry in Asia and spread to migratory birds and (rarely) to humans. Now found from Russia and Japan to Indonesia, it is moving inexorably toward Europe. Since 2003, more than 60 human deaths have been attributed to H5N1. Public health experts and virologists are concerned about the potential of this strain because it already has two of the three characteristics needed to cause a pandemic: It can jump from birds to human, and can produce a severe and often fatal illness. If additional genetic evolution makes H5N1 highly transmissible among humans – the third characteristic of a pandemic strain – a devastating world-wide outbreak could become a reality.
Moreover, this is an extraordinarily deadly variant: The mortality rate for persons infected with the existing H5N1 appears to be around 50 percent, whereas the usual annual flu bug kills fewer than one percent.
AZMojo wrote:
Ooohhh, chilling.
—So he’s saying, that in all of China and the rest of Southeast Asia(population in the BILLIONS)), only 120 people have been infected with this flu in the past two years. Is that highly transmittable?
Surely, not everybody that was infected sought medical help, probably because their symptoms weren’t severe enough. So can this mortality rate be taken seriously?
No, that’s NOT waht he said at all. He said that the current strain of avian flu has 2 of the 3 characteristics that could lead it to turn into a pandemic. It can jump from animals to humans, and it is deadly in a large percentage of those who have been infected.
My Reply -
–I’m pretty sure he’s claiming a mortality rate of 50% here. The elements required for a pandemic and the mortality rate are two different things. What I’m saying is that the number of known cases probably only reflects those who became sick enough to seek treatment, and of those, only the ones suspected of and tested for the disease. Are you seriously taking these figures as gospel, yet quarreling over my population estimates?
The author explicitly stated that IF a genetic mutation made it highly contagious among humans, THEN we’d be looking at a pandemic. So the fact that it isn’t currently highly contagious doesn’t really disprove his point. What you’d need to focus on is the likeliehood that it may become highly contagious – not my area, but definitely something I might find worrisome in a fast-mutating virus.
My Reply -
Highly contagious and highly deadly are two different animals. Pink-eye is highly contagious, but it hardly provokes the hysteria we’re talking about here.
AZMojo wrote:
–So we should pay the drug companies to make the drugs, then we should buy the drugs back from them? Wow!
He was offering a possible solution to motivate research for and production of more effective drugs. If you’ve got some better ideas, please share them.
My Reply -
–I wish I did have the answer, but the solution presented is hardly groundbreaking. Throw money at it? Genius!! This approach rarely works, especially in medicine. What do we actually have a cure for anyway?
AZMojo wrote:
–Police states are always fun. Picture post-Katrina New Orleans throughout the country.
If they need to enforce a quarantine, they damn well better do so. It has traditionally been part of the state government’s police power to enforce quanrantines in this country, but given the current understanding of the Commerce Clause I’m sure there wouldn’t be any problem with the national government taking over that function on a national level in the case of a fast-spreading pandemic. Though with today’s mobility, it would be extremely difficult to make an effective quarantine.
My Reply -
–In the wide-spread panic that would no doubt ensue, police forces would be rendered useless. They simply don’t have the numbers needed to control a revolting population, a la New Orleans.
AZMojo wrote:
–Yeah, more Czars. The others have been doing such a bang up job.
Large problems often require large solutions – and it’s especially good to put one man in charge and remove the normal bureaucratic obstacles (see FEMA procurement rules as examples), to the extent that Congress is willing to remove them.
My Reply -
–That’s just scary. One man in charge, with no checks and balances? Hmm.
AZMojo wrote:
–Act now and we’ll throw in a set of steak knives.
–This whole article is a joke, and I hope the post was intended as such. The sad thing is, these are the type of people that the President listens to. So, look for more of your tax dollars to be flushed down the toilet into another Big Business bank account. And maybe, just maybe, we can justify some more of our civil liberties to be taken away in the process.
I like to leave with a quote.
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
– Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
What’s a joke is how little you understand, both about the historic application of governmental police power in the face of health crises, the nature of this threat, or generally.
My Reply -
–Ouch! Or generally? That’s pretty harsh, even from such a fan of absolute governmental power. Manufacturing crisis’ is what gives the government power, otherwise they would not be able to keep the desired level of control over the people.
Although, if you’re an attorney, I shouldn’t need to explain this to you.
There are reasons to wonder whether any modern influenza epidemic would be as deadly as one in the pre-anti-biotic age, but none of those relate to anything you wrote.[/quote]
–Antibiotics don’t work against the flu, or any viral infection for that matter. Ask your doctor. Hell, even the guy who wrote this article would confirm that.
[quote]AZMojo wrote:
–Antibiotics don’t work against the flu, or any viral infection for that matter. Ask your doctor. Hell, even the guy who wrote this article would confirm that.
[/quote]
I realize that. However, it’s my understanding that there is a theory that a lot of deaths from the flu that occurred in earlier pandemics resulted from secondary infections - many times bacterial infections - suffered while the person already had a depressed immune system.
I can accept that some deaths were caused by secondary bacterial infections, but whether this was what caused a majority of them is up for debate, since we surely didn’t have the means to determine it in that era. This is especially true in the third world were most of the deaths occurred(i.e. India c. 1918).
I’m suprised you didn’t comment on the rest of my post. I did screw up the text a bit. There is more to it than the highlighted portion. I’d be interested in your response.
[quote]Randall Flagg wrote:
I’m in Utah now, waiting till this thing gets rolling, then I’ll be heading south again. See you all in Vegas, maybe. [/quote]
just hurry up and get down to vegas.
you’ve missed so much already.
I don’t think the bird flu is a hoax. I do think buying a vaccinethe doesn’t work for a flu that doesn’t exist is a little stupid, though.
Until it mutates into the form that affects humans, they cannot make a vaccine for it. Bush has spent $2 billion on an illusion. I would say he should have spent it on Iraq, but then Halliburton would have pissed it against the wall anyway.
Aaa. This thread!
The Bird Flu is NOT a tinfoil hat hoax. It’s just not here yet. Unless Mother Nature changes her mind (it’s happened before, so cross your fingers), then there is a decent likeliness that the avian influenza will develop the ability to jump species.
So far, the influenza is dangerous to infected hosts, and it is can be thought of as foolishness to imagine that it will be magically less dangerous should it decide to attack the humans who hang around with it. The more time we spend around infected hosts, the more opportunity the virus will have to gain the ability to become pathogenic to us. This is common sense.
What I can see as debatable here is the extent to which Bush has prepared for this eventuality. A couple hundred million or whatever sounds like a good start, but seeing as how I’m personally involved here, I can’t help but wonder if it’s enough. Hope so.
I’m not too worried about myself because the only few times I’ve ever called in sick was when it was self-inflicted sickness (hangovers are a bitch when you’re 34), but I’m concerned about my coworkers who are in a little worse shape, physically, than me. If we get a nasty flu kickin’ around here, we better not run out of Tamiflu.
You guys don’t understand: Tamiflu kicks motherfuckin’ ass. Buy stock in it, it’s like magic. 
I think a bigger issue up for debate should be why people are still being hoodwinked into the whole vaccine thing. There is no mountain of research that shows that vaccines enhances the immune response.
I agree with Lothario in the sense that people who take care of themselves should have less worry. The sad thing about the whole drug company conspiracy thing is that there are natural alternatives that work as good if not better than synthetic drug meds and vaccines but people are clueless to them.
Why? Because your insurance doesn’t cover it and a large percentage of medical doctors are unqualified to present an opinion on nutrition.
[quote]storey420 wrote:
I think a bigger issue up for debate should be why people are still being hoodwinked into the whole vaccine thing. There is no mountain of research that shows that vaccines enhances the immune response.
[/quote]
Dr. Mercola, is that you again…!
AlexH.
About the whole alternative medicine,
most of the time they don’t work as well as the synthetics.
Mainly, we use natural compounds as starting points to improve upon.
Take Salicylic acid, a natural compound with analgesic properties but with great abilities to induce gastric ulcers and was modified to acetyl-SA to reduce side effects
Red Yeast Rice contain a bacteria derived compound which was purified and concentrated as lovastatin in Mevacor. Now we’ve developed semi-syntetic second generation and third genreation synthetic versions which kick Mevacor’s (or RYR) ass.
Penecilin…from a yeast…now we have many more effective variants of this drug of synthetic manufacturing.
Digoxin, from Digitalis Lanata for heart failure.
Testosterone from animal testicules…now don’t you guys prefer this whole new batch of designer steroids where you can choose your effect profile.
Ergotamine for migraines from fugus Claviceps Purpurea infect.
Thing is drug companies don’t give a flying f*ck where a drug comes from, they just find an existing version and tweak it to increase bioavailability, effect, potency, reduce side effects in much the same way as Biotest comes up with their supplements that allow them to unlock the effects of XYZ natural compound.
Or they look in the human body and find pathways, hormones and other ligands, copy them and try better formulation for availability, compliance and what-not…
Besides, more and more those ‘‘natural compounds’’ are getting eyed by the pharmaceutical compagnies. Who knows when we are going to get ECGC concentrate in nice pill form without having to consume 10 cups of green tea.
Or all those crappily absorbed anti-oxydant.
Thing is natural compounds have been the source of pharmaceuticals for more than the last one hundred years and will remain as such until our bioinformatics softwares and understanding of molecular interactions of ligand-receptors reach a critical step.
There is no duality in chemistry, just molecules.
Made by man, by nature or the Flying Spaghetti Monster…its the same thing.
If it works, medecine will use it, just like St-John’s wort is being investigated seriously.
Its strange that where we pay a fraction of what Americans pay…there is no conspiracy…
AlexH
Crazy Texans…
AlexH
[quote]Dandalex wrote:
About the whole alternative medicine,
most of the time they don’t work as well as the synthetics.
Mainly, we use natural compounds as starting points to improve upon.
Take Salicylic acid, a natural compound with analgesic properties but with great abilities to induce gastric ulcers and was modified to acetyl-SA to reduce side effects
Red Yeast Rice contain a bacteria derived compound which was purified and concentrated as lovastatin in Mevacor. Now we’ve developed semi-syntetic second generation and third genreation synthetic versions which kick Mevacor’s (or RYR) ass.
Penecilin…from a yeast…now we have many more effective variants of this drug of synthetic manufacturing.
Digoxin, from Digitalis Lanata for heart failure.
Testosterone from animal testicules…now don’t you guys prefer this whole new batch of designer steroids where you can choose your effect profile.
Ergotamine for migraines from fugus Claviceps Purpurea infect.
Thing is drug companies don’t give a flying f*ck where a drug comes from, they just find an existing version and tweak it to increase bioavailability, effect, potency, reduce side effects in much the same way as Biotest comes up with their supplements that allow them to unlock the effects of XYZ natural compound.
Or they look in the human body and find pathways, hormones and other ligands, copy them and try better formulation for availability, compliance and what-not…
Besides, more and more those ‘‘natural compounds’’ are getting eyed by the pharmaceutical compagnies. Who knows when we are going to get ECGC concentrate in nice pill form without having to consume 10 cups of green tea.
Or all those crappily absorbed anti-oxydant.
Thing is natural compounds have been the source of pharmaceuticals for more than the last one hundred years and will remain as such until our bioinformatics softwares and understanding of molecular interactions of ligand-receptors reach a critical step.
There is no duality in chemistry, just molecules.
Made by man, by nature or the Flying Spaghetti Monster…its the same thing.
If it works, medecine will use it, just like St-John’s wort is being investigated seriously.
Its strange that where we pay a fraction of what Americans pay…there is no conspiracy…
AlexH
Crazy Texans…
AlexH[/quote]
These were excellent points to back up your assertion however they show no support for the belief that vaccines are effective. Which by the way is not a “crazy conspiracy”, it is an unproven yet universally accepted fallacy.
I will just agree to disagree as far as the synthetics are better than natural thing. I believe that there are many synergists and cofactors that occur in nature that give nutrients their energy pattern or “body of light” from a quantum physics aspect that can not be replicated in a lab, at least currently.
The best example that immediately comes to mind is synthetis ascorbic acid vs whole food vitamin C. No amount of ascorbic acid will cure scurvy.