I can’t stop reading news about bird flu. Last week, Google News became customizable and I promptly reconfigured my page to have a section on bird flu.

From the Chicago Tribune via The Kansas City Star, March 10, 2005:

Vietnamese officials recently ordered all chickens in Ho Chi Minh City slaughtered or removed; the city has now banned all poultry of any kind through the end of the year.
…
Last week Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., requested $25 million in foreign aid to respond to any outbreaks of the disease. The request, which also stipulates that the government form a “high-level, inter-agency task force” focused on a coordinated U.S. response to bird flu, is part of the Foreign Assistance Act, which faces approval in Congress and from President Bush.
…
A 1999 study by the CDC estimated that if a new flu pandemic from something like the avian strain took hold among humans, it could kill up to 207,000 people in the U.S. alone - far more than the toll of 36,000 from normal flu in a typical year.

It’s also plausible that the virus may never find a way to spread among humans, and the global death toll will be only in the dozens or hundreds.

From The Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2005:


“There are so few human cases that I don’t think restricting travel is an issue yet,” says Dr. Cherie Hinchliffe, a Laguna Beach internist who specializes in travel medicine. She tells her patients, “Stay away from farms and open-air markets. Avoid domesticated birds. Stay away from zoos and aviaries.”


There goes my plan to take Stephen to the zoo this week.

xposted