sorry! Bird Flu

[calliesue]

Ok Please don't flame me. I have been reading old bird flu threads and would like to know if the majority of the all nurse population think a pandemic is coming or not?:typing

[suzanne4, RN]

I actually lived overseas during the outbreak of bird flu and the only humans that contracted it were those that worked with the dead chickens or on chicken farms or similar and were outside barefoot and walking in chicken poop.

I am definitely not concerned with a pandemic of this coming here, unless there is some new information that comes out that I have not read as of yet. No one in hospitals got ill treating these patients either.

[Elvish, BSN, DNP, RN, NP]

My concern is not so much for right now, but that it will at some point mutate to a strain that is more easily adaptable from animals to humans and become more contagious human-to-human. So far (thankfully) that does not seem to be the case. That's just me, though.

[zenman]

Bird flu is a problem for birds. We have it all around us and it has really hit people hard, economic-wise. The only people here (Bangladesh) who have contacted it have been the poultry workers. Now that there is a shortage of chickens (and eggs), people are taking their chickens inside their house at night to prevent their chickens from being stolen.

Chicken farmers who find their chickens are sick will kill all the birds in order to get them to market really quick and sell them at a discount. Result: poor people who normally wouldn't be able to buy meat now have chicken for meals. Hope they cook them well....

[tencat]

Ok, now THAT scares me (sick birds killed and sold at market). Definitely NOT a good idea. Yes, I understand how poor people are in those areas, but this is one good way to get the virus out there and help it along in its mutation process.

[aeauooo]

The pandemic influenza virus does not yet exist. It is very likely that H5N1 will cross with a human influenza virus and become a human H5N1 virus. The currrent H5N1 has not been demonstrated to be transmissible from human-to-human, but once it crosses with a human virus it will - that will be a pandemic flu virus.

http://www.pandemicflu.gov/faq/pandemicinfluenza/

http://www.pandemicflu.gov/general/index.html