One more problem containing bird flu

There's another factor that makes the
containment strategy for bird flu probably
less effective than it was for smallpox.

Smallpox did not exist in nature in any
animals -- except the human species.

(Yes, monkeys have been infected with it
through injection of enormous quantities,
but although many -- possibly most all --
species have their own pox viruses, none
of them host smallpox.)

This means that when the WHO smallpox fighters
found a case of smallpox and then proceeded
to vaccinate everybody around the victim,
they did effectively isolate the virus so that
it couldn't spread from the victim in dogs,
cats -- or chickens . . . because the smallpox
virus could not infect animals.

Containment of a lethal strain of bird flu
means not only isolating and vaccinating
everybody around the bird flu victim -- but
all chickens, ducks, turkeys, pigs, dogs, cats
and who knows how many other animals.

It's obvious from bird flu's increasing spread
into both Europe and Africa that this
is not so easy to do -- even though millions of
chickens are already been killed.

So possibly, once bird flu does mutate into a
highly contagious form, a team from WHO will
move in quickly and isolate the victims and their
villages and control the virus -- in humans.

But it's in a duck that flies through a village
50 miles away -- and so infects the chickens
and then the people there.

All the more reason to learn what you can do:

How to Protect Yourself and Your
Family From Bird Flu