Laurie Garrett on bird flu

So after I finished writing the review of The
Coming Plague, I decided to see what Ms. Garrett
thought of the prospects of a bird flu pandemic.
It seemed to me to fit her viewpoint that a
massive plague caused by underfunding of public
health resources plus our intrusion into the
environment would someday soon decimate or
worse the human race.

I wasn't disappointed. The following article is typical
of her writing style:

Laurie Garrett article on
bird flu

Well-researched and sounding the alarm -- and in
the highly prestigious Foreign Affairs, no less.
She has moved up in the world.

And she starts off with the sound observation that
the pandemic may never happen. Or when H5N1 becomes
contagious, it may no longer be very lethal. Nobody
knows without consulting a crystal ball.

She mentions the "cyclic" theory of flu pandemics --
that they come around every so often and we are
long "overdue" for one. She does not analyze this
but I agree with skeptics that it's not reliable.

Flu pandemics -- like everything else above the
level of quantum particles -- obey laws of cause
and effect. They come and go based on other
conditions, such as random mutations of a highly
mutational virus. Not because God ordained that
we have a pandemic every 11 to 49 years.

Still, it's obvious that with bird flu spreading
today, that all elements are in place except
the mutation or recombination of H5N1 genes
that make is highly contagious.

She does a good job of analyzing the human and
economic disaster than a bird flu pandemic would
create, taking the details farther than I'd
wanted to think about!

This article makes a case not to panic:

Weekly Standard on bird flu

The author obviously doesn't think much of Ms.
Garrett. He does acknowledge that H5N1 could
become highly contagious and that if it does
that would be a worldwide disaster.

I think everybody agrees on that. But what are
the odds? Nobody really knows.

He makes the case, drawing from evolutionary
biology, that H5N1 is not likely to remain
highly lethal. Because it's smarter for a virus
to keep its host alive, in most circumstances.

In one circumstance only is it advantageous
for a virus to kill people fast -- and that's
when it can easily infect other people.

This was certainly true in 1918, when troops in
World War I's trench warfare were living in
virus-paradise.

However, although there's no such war in the
world today, I do have say that conditions in
much of the world still favor fast infections.

Millions of people live in extremely crowded
megacities such as Rio, Calcutta, Manila etc --
in highly unsanitary conditions. They're not
quite as stressed out as World War I combat
soldiers, but they are undernourished and
subject to many chronic illnesses.

And of course in 1918 there was no HIV. In
areas of Africa where large percentages of
the population are seropositive -- fast
death for flu victims would be unstoppable.

And in crowded conditions, how many millions
could escape infection?

The world's population is over 4 times as
large as it was in 1918 -- and much of the
growth is in poor areas. Including Southeast
Asia where H5N1 is now endemic in the chicken
population. Plus, it's spreading to Europe
which is also a highly overpopulated portion
of the world -- we just don't realize that
population density in many European countries
rivals that of Bangladesh since they are
obviously much wealthier.

So, much as I'd prefer to ignore this threat
to the world, I'm forced to believe that
a bird flu pandemic would be at least as
deadly as 1918 and maybe much worse.

To learn how you can protect yourself and your
family from bird flu, check out this site:

How to Protect Yourself
and Your Family From Bird Flu