It is a fact that if you stuff lots of chickens into a small space diseases will arise and spread alot faster than if they are free ranged with lots of space.
Diseases (or viruses or whatever) seem to be a natural defense from overpopulation or the dominance of an area.
One thing we can be sure of is another big disease will come. But how big? and when?
You can imagine a totally devestating one simply by mixing sars and aids in your mind so who's to say one that bad or worse isn't just around the corner? One that takes out astronomical numbers of human beings?
There is a good chance of this happening and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Its nature, and I have a feeling nature is about to kick our ass...

Well, if nature handles overpopulation by diseases and plagues, which I also believe to be true, a new one should better come soon for the sake of nature because soon man will overpower diseases and they will no longer be of any use to nature...

I used to think the same way, BUT new ones will simply keep coming.
In 10 years man might cure aids; HOORAY! But then wham! what the hell is groids? argh!
catch my drift?
SARS was relatively soft, nature is just feeling out the situation, the next one could be unimaginably hardcore and impossible to cure or treat. It could spread faster and easier than anything medicine has ever seen, there is nothing to say this won't happen.

The next big diseases could be a kind of AIDS mixed to SARS. I mean a fast evolving virus that could be transmitted by contact or worse : through the air. A kind of "plague" such as the one that killed so much people in europe during XIV century.

That kind of diseases would be devastating in two times :
1 - it would kill children, old people and then adults, during the epidemic period
2 - as the population decreases, there are less new children, so even after the disease would have disapreared, it would have several effects

Have a nice future :D

(I hope that it will never happen...)

We don't need no new exotic diseases. One little mutation of a single AIDS virus that will make it infectious through the air will wipe out a good 80% of the population if not more...

[Edit: I'm starting to sound like I want this to happen. I don't. Really]

But the new exotic diseases will come whether we feel we need them or not.
We know nature's having its best shot at culling us. Thats what sars and aids are and probably the common cold and a plethera of others as well. The thing is it hasn't read the list of medicine we have, so it might "try" some and we will effortlessly get rid of them straight away. But that just means it will try again, and again until it hits the jackpot.
A big ones coming, I'm not sure when, I'm not nostradamus, but I know it will get us eventually.

(I won't comment on whether I "want this to happen" or not, I don't like seeing people suffer despite the way I act sometimes, but I will say this; I think its only fair if earth can fight back)

I'm a little uncomfortable with the way people in this thread are anthropomorphizing nature. It's not as if nature is making a conscious effort to wipe us out because we have become overpopulated; nature never makes a conscious effort to do anything, because nature isn’t conscious. There might be a devastating plague, or there might not. Whether it happens or not will not have anything to do with what nature 'wants.'

As for whether or not a killer plague is inevitable, with the rapid advances that are being made in molecular biology it's not inconceivable that in a hundred years we might be able to quickly and easily make a drug that can cure or prevent any disease.

uncomfortable? these "sky is falling" shit should be moved to free thoughts pronto. there is no room in this forum for superstition. if we have absolutely no idea what the "next" disease is, how on earth can we know what devastation it can cause? jeez! do not shit in the science forums!

Move it where you want.

I'm not giving nature traits it doesn't have, I'm merely wording it that way;)
Nature makes balances happen one way or another. When something defies survival of the fittest, be it domesticated animals or humans, diseases arise, to balance it out. Even if wild animals dominate an area, disease will spread through their 'clan'. It can be seen among "successful" chimpanzees and dolphins when too many of them are in one area. This isn't superstitious, I'm sure there is an indepth scientific explanation somewhere, thats not my specialty though, i'm a 'layman'. When lots of the one species are together disease will spread easier. I don't know whats so strange about that. And if the disease doesn't work for whatever reason a new one will arise, until one works.
Its fine to be skeptical but don't ignore obvious things in fear that they might change your concrete views.

Nature makes balances happen one way or another.

this is wishful thinking. nature is just a catchall term for individual stuff. nature just is. it directs nothing

One little piece of me thinks it would be best for the world as a whole if SARS willed 90% of humans on this planet from every walk of life. I think it could have the potential to be the next black plague, epecially if it is rna based and can quickly mutate.

well brother clockwood, i think humans would be well served if you too, were included in the 90% that sars "wills" away.

When something defies survival of the fittest, be it domesticated animals or humans, diseases arise, to balance it out.
That's not necessarily true. Those diseases are already around, but are more noticeable in dense populations.

I think it could have the potential to be the next black plague, epecially if it is rna based and can quickly mutate.
I don't think there will ever be something as devastating as the black plague again. Maybe in terms of numbers, but not in proportion to the population.

DrLou- I don't go in for all this stuff about what nature 'intends'. However your point about population density is a good one. Nature automatically creates checks and balances and dense populations become very vulnerable to disease and infection. Unfortunately I suspect that as time goes on we will find ourselves devoting even more and more resources to fighting these rather than just do the obvious, and will suffer badly for it. Any gardener knows the problem of disease and monoculture. (Growing mushrooms intensively is a good example - the fight against disease becomes constant).

The global flu epidemic at the end of WWI is an object lesson.

Spookz.... chill with the anal retentiveness..... its just a typo....

And though it would suck for me and many others the population drop most likly would be a boon for the species as a whole

Originally posted by Idle Mind
That's not necessarily true. Those diseases are already around, but are more noticeable in dense populations.

actually, given that transmission rates will be higher in more densly populated areas, the survival of more new mutated version of a virus is likely. So it could be said that in a more heavily populated area, 'new' diseases will be created more quickly.

to be more scientific, the rate of mutation will remain the same, but the possible opurtunities of a mutated version of a virus to infect a new host and survive past the first generation will be greatly increased in a densly populated area.




There are some very interesting studies going on right now which are comparing the long-term evolution of pathogens- seeing how their level of congagiousness effefts the level of their effects on a victim. the idea is that easy to catch deseases evolve to be less harmfull to their hosts (ie, you want to keep you host alive, cause when Bob dies, Bob's internal parasites die too). Hard to transmit deseases tend to be more nasty, even with a long time to evolve (think aids). So if we mutated aids to be caught easily, would it evolve to be less harmful to it's host? (nearly 100% of Cheeta's world wide have Feline HIV, and they are all fine. nearly no symptoms at all)

river-wind: I see what you are getting at, and I agree completely, but your statement doesn't contradict mine. Your post was simply more detailed. However, I admit I shouldn't have been so concise as my post was a little light on substance. Thanks for the fix-up.

Before thinking about future diseases, it seems that SARS is not over... at all ! When I wrote my first post here, it was still a small disease but now it's more and more dangerous.
Thanks, I'm not living in Hong Kong...
I hope that it will be over soon :)

Whoa....
Turns out sars originated from asians eating animals they shouldn't be(porcupines, racoons etc, wild animals)

it all makes too much sense...

Originally posted by river-wind
There are some very interesting studies going on right now which are comparing the long-term evolution of pathogens- seeing how their level of congagiousness effefts the level of their effects on a victim. the idea is that easy to catch deseases evolve to be less harmfull to their hosts (ie, you want to keep you host alive, cause when Bob dies, Bob's internal parasites die too). Hard to transmit deseases tend to be more nasty, even with a long time to evolve (think aids). So if we mutated aids to be caught easily, would it evolve to be less harmful to it's host? (nearly 100% of Cheeta's world wide have Feline HIV, and they are all fine. nearly no symptoms at all)
Surely this is back to front. Co-evolution of the disease and its victims ensures that there is this correllation between being easy to catch and being less harmful, since things that are easy to catch would soon run out of things that are easy to kill. They're not linked properties of the disease itself.

(Funny how we say we catch them, rather than that they catch us).

Funny how we say we caught something rather than it caught us
haha
yeah
almost like we "achieved" something

dude, even the flu is deadlier than sars. we prolly had that disease along time ago, under a diff name though

Considering deadly deseases we live in the safest era ever!

Diseases that used to be deadly can nowadays be treated easily.

We got a new diseases now, but they hardly are major killers, compared to other diseases in human history.

Let's calm down and don't get excited too much.

I recently saw a TV show about SARS. In fact only 5% of those who are ill would die of it because you have to catch lots of viruses to die (doctors, people who lived with sick guys...) and it seems that the viruses are transmitted only when the sick guy is already ill (10 days after he catched it).
So I agree with spuriousmonkey : keep calm...

Can't agree with that. Sars is helping to destroy the airline industry, causing widespread quarantining of hospitals, reducing economic growth in Toronto by a predicted 3% over the quarter (ho hum), causing deep political problems in China, diverting considerable medical resources, etc etc.

Whatever the medical truth about Sars it shows us the complete havoc that would be caused by something really threatening to human life, something that is bound to turn up as viruses preying on humans find it ever easier to reproduce and travel around the world.

Sars isn't too bad, but it's another useful lesson in the problems we are going to have to get used to be facing.

On the bright side of things. Air travel is a major polluter. Reduction in airtravel could actually save more lives because of the reduction in airpolution than the minimalization of SARS infection risk.

Quite agree. In the end disease may be the thing that saves ourselves from ourselves.

the thing about a virus is that its purpose is to live within the host but not kill it. AIDS is highly successful because it can stay in the body for very long periods of time without destroying the host. SARS is fairly successful but people still die. Viruses arent Trying in a manner of speaking to kill people, they are wanting to reach an equilibrium and reproduce, not specifically mutate to destroy everyone...

This makes sense - but I'm not sure that we can say we know it's true. What we mean (I think) is that it's better in evolutionary terms for the virus if it doesn't kill the host. It's kinda doubtful that the virus has worked this out.

All it seems to mean is that we are more at risk from viruses that don't have such a long term view, of which there must always be many. After all there are many humans who seem quite happy destroying their host.

Asian Bird Flu is next and we're not prepared for it. Unlike SARS it is now spreading throughout many Southeast Asian countries that do not know how to deal with it. The U.S. has the only manufacturer of the vaccine and we're supplying it to these Southeast Asian countries. However, the consensus amongst medical experts is that "it is not a question of how, but when." It is already at pandemic proportions and expanding. Its just that it did not hit headline news yet.

STOP!!!!!

You're pushing into three pages of ressurected threads.

Stop!!!!! For the love of God! STOP!!!

Your enthusiasm is to be applauded, but you're going too far. Far too far. You're pushing any live threads back so that they may end up vanishing. And many of these threads are on identical topics and topics that exist elsewhere.

STOP!!!!!

What are you talking about? If I'm resurecting them then, then by definition I'm pulling that back into the forefront, not pushing them back. In any case, why do you have a problem with this?

You. YOU. Are pushing them into the 'forefront'. But, then you're promptly burying them again. Your name is stretched out three pages long, guy.

That speaks for itself.
If you don't see that you're just making a mess of this forum with your obsessive behavior then.... Well. What can I say to convince you?

Why do I care?
Because you're mangling the forum, that's why.
You've been sitting here for what? 5 hours now? Posting, posting, posting. You're making a mess of this forum.

What utter claptrap. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the function of the forums is to promote discussions. If valich sees a point he wishes to address from an inactive thread, more power to him. If the other forum members think his new point is irrelevant and the thread should have remained dead they will indicate this by not responding.
Get real. Stop saying stop.

Claptrap?
I can understand him bringing back a thread or two.
But three fucking pages?
Three pages, man.
And he shows no signs of stopping.
And many of these threads are basically duplicates. Talking about the same thing and then he references a thread he just ressurected in another thread that he just ressurected.
Circles within circles.

As I said, I admire his enthusiasm, but it has to end somewhere.

There were threads that were active in this forum, now they're three pages deep. (Most of them.)

And I'll say stop as much as I want.
I think he's making a mess of the forum.
Simple as that.

Three pages and counting.


Hell. Just look at it from a practical standpoint. He's buried threads three pages deep. Notice that I didn't call him a spammer. I don't think he is one. He's making contributions to the threads. Even if some are repetitive. But, they are contributions.

But three pages deep. The threads are dead when they go off the front page. He asks questions in some of those threads. They're not going to be answered because nobody's going to read them. They're three pages deep. He's also addressing forum members and expecting them to answer but these forum members haven't participated for years. FOR YEARS.

All I'm saying is CHILL.
Go dig up some internet porn or something. Come back to tomorrow and see if anything interesting has been brought up in any of the threads. Hell, sit there and think up an idea for an interesting thread. Something which will take time to write and proofread and post.

Anything but please don't push it to 4 pages!!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the function of the forums is to promote discussions.

Yes. And that's my point. Burying threads three pages deep isn't promoting discussion. It's killing it.

The threads are not buried three pages deep. That statement clearly reflects the way in which you browse the forum, not the way in which some others browse. If this is a problem for you, an others, simply revise the way you browse. I wasn't even aware that valich was posting heavily till your enigmatic STOP appeared and I had no problem locating threads that were of interest to me.
I understand your argument, I just think it is way overstated and you are highlighting a 'problem' that is more in your mind and methodology than in reality.

This Asian Bird Flu is really starting to create a bit of a panic. Today there's an article on CNN.com World News:

"On Thursday, Dr. David Nabarro said a pandemic could come at any time and claim anywhere between 5 million and 150 million lives depending on the world's response to bird flu. However on Friday, a spokesman for the U.N.'s World Health Organization said it was impossible to estimate how many people could die."

The panic about Asian Bird Flu is total horse manure. In any given year a few birds and a few people out of the billions alive are going to die of mysterious ailments. Those ailments run their course and die out without causing much problems for the general population.

Isolationism is going to cause us more problems than it is going to solve. Set the barriers higher for disease transmission and that disease will evolve until it jumps the barriers. Then it will jump from a relatively immune population to one that is not immune. Then it will cause devastating plagues.

If we were as scientifically literate as a true 21st century culture should be we would not be fooled by the scams that have become SARS, AIDS, BSE, and Asian Bird Flu.

I have spoken.

Not according to the facts of history. The 1918-19 flu pandemic after WW1 killed more than 40 million died. The subsequent pandemics in 1957 and 1968 had lower death rates but caused great disruption. The big fear with this virus is that it is mutating. Once the virus mutates to a form that can jump from person to person - bang! One person with the virus gets on an airplane with two to three hundred passengers from twenty different country and you've got an instantaneous killer on the loose that will spread all over the world that we are unprepared to deal with. The World Health Organization (WHO) says that it is not a question of if, but when, and their estimates range from 2 to 150 million deaths. This disease has already spread to five Southeast Asian countries. When they find one case of the virus, they have to locate the origin of the bird that it came from and then you have to slaughter all the birds there (thousands). We do not have the vaccine to control it. The U.S. has the only manufacturer that makes the vaccine and we're sending all our stock to those Southeast Asian countries that currently are struggling to control the virus. This is a whole new ball game to some of them and they don't know what to do or what its all about.

SARS and HIV are certainly not scams. I was in China when SARS broke out and if it were not for the admirable swift viligence by the Chinese government to wipe it out, there would have been a lot more deaths. As it was, it spread from Hong Kong, to China, to Vietnam, to Canada, and one or two cases in the U.S. AIDS is still a growing global problem, especially in Africa and Southeast Asia. It is estimated that about 40% of urban women in Thailand now have HIV. This is second only to South Africa.

Read the article:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/09/30/birdflu.un/index.html

There seem to be two reactions to disasters of this sort:

"It's happened before, it'll happen again! We're doomed!"

"It hasn't happened for awhile, it'll never happen again!"

Both are just as absurd as the other.

yeah spookz man you do need to chill a bit, wishing someone was dead because of a typo haha.

Now come on now. Give me a break, aye? I'm not suggesting in anyway that we're doomed, or trying to start a panic scare, I'm just stating the facts. I was in China during the entire year when SARS broke out and I know what happened - first hand experience. Travel was suspended and they blocked off all the sewer channels in major towns to fumigate the entire systems each week. They really put a lot of effort into containing the SARS outbreak. That's why I know what the potential of this Asian Bird Flu outbreak can also do. It's been going around from country to neighbor country for over six months to a year now and genetic bio-scientists are watching it very carefully and seeing it mutate. If it mutates into a form that can be transmitted from one human to another - just like SARS did - then we're in for trouble. Because the countries that it's in right now (Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia) are third world developing countries without sufficient and modern medical facilities or knowledgeable health professionals - not like China (China is no longer a third world country. It's developed extensively in its urban cities and has extensive scientific and health programs going on - some even better than in the U.S.!).

But you're really understating HIV by stating it's a "scam." That goes contrary to every fact about it that there is. Actually the percentage of people who have HIV and AIDS is extremely underestimated in parts of Africa, other than South Africa (greater than 40% there), because there are no statistics available. The people just die and it goes unreported. The governments don't have the means or the infastructure setup to monitor how many cases there are, but its a lot! If this Asian Bird Flu were to migrate to Africa it would be a disaster. Most nations in lower Africa ARE third world undeveloped countries with NO medical facilities. Ya know? They still believe in using witch doctors, exorcism, and all sorts of folk tale cures. There are no doctors in the majority of these regions. Wham!

No, the facts show that AIDS is absolutely a scam. But I will go to Hell before I say one more word about it.

Define scam. Goodnight.

Oh, and what are your souces for your facts? Could I also review these facts? Thanks.

I suspect your 'goodnight' response to MetaKron's argument that AIDS is a scam was more appropriate than asking him for the facts.
On another thread MetaKron has accused me of being a bully. I'd like to suggest that someone who argues AIDS is a scam is effectively a murderer. I hope the logic for that conclusion is clear.
To valich, peace; to Metakron, goodnight.

According to an article in Science referencing two seperate scientific papers, the source of the SARS virus has been finally pinned down to bats. The horseshoe bat to be precise.

The question now is what order did the infection take? Did the virus jump directly to humans from the bats or did it pass through civets first?

Both bats and civets are eaten by the Chinese (imagine that.)

This is apparently the third deadly virus in a decade to pass from bats to humans. Hendra, Nipah, and now SARS.


On a lighter note. I love the episode of South Park where the Indians (native Americans) infect the citizens of South Park with SARS by rubbing naked Chinese people on blankets and then offering them as gifts.

I suspect your 'goodnight' response to MetaKron's argument that AIDS is a scam was more appropriate than asking him for the facts.
On another thread MetaKron has accused me of being a bully. I'd like to suggest that someone who argues AIDS is a scam is effectively a murderer. I hope the logic for that conclusion is clear.
To valich, peace; to Metakron, goodnight.

If you don't want to be perceived as a bully, discard the beany and the t-shirt with the sleeves cut off.

The fact that AIDS is a scam is very evident when you put the evidence together and evaluate it intelligently. The authoritarian mindset lets you see that the moon is white and still accept the word of authority that it is bright green with red polka dots. I think that is the kind of argument that AIDS supporters bring, those who are able to construct any sort of argument at all. They just point a finger at something that in no way proves anything and say "that proves it." I've tried dealing with these people logically before and there is just no way in hell. They drag the discussion down to the lowest level possible and make it a war of nerves. Then people go along with it.

Honestly, I said goodnight because I was going to sleep but then actually I did think it was first more important to ask for the source of the facts. That's why my quick second reply to KetaKron. Look at the time they were both sent - really.

Inverus:

Do you have the title or date of that Nature article. Most scientists still think SARS originated from the civet cat. I've heard that bats were just carriers.

As of Oct. 2nd, 2005: "HK researchers say SARS originated from cats"
www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=21593

Science. Not Nature.

"Researchers Tie Deadly SARS Virus to Bats." Science, Sept 30, Vol. 309, No. 5744, pp. 2154-2155. Online link (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5744/2154).

The papers referenced are one published in Science online (and to which I have no access): http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1118391

And the other was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Susanna Lau and colleagues at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) on the 16th of September. (I don't have a link or title to this one.)

The problem with the civets being the source of the virus is that no natural reservoir of the virus has been found in the wild or farmed civet population. The civets apparently get infected at the marketplace where they are in close proximity to both humans and bats.

But, it was found widespread in the horseshoe bat population. Not only was it found, but it was found as a number of variants which suggest a natural reservoir from which the unique mutation which allowed the virus to jump species originated rather than vice versa.

Research is now under way to take some of these wild coronavirus variants and try to infect either civets or human cells or both. The question being just how common is the mutation which allows the virus to jump species and at what risk are humans from future bat viruses.

An interesting fact, bats live 5-50 years which gives them plenty of time to maintain a 'stable reservoir' for viruses. I never realized that bats lived so long.

As of Oct. 2nd, 2005: "HK researchers say SARS originated from cats"

Not exactly:
"Posted online: Friday, May 23, 2003 at 1624 hours IST"

Thanks! I'm afraid I don't have authorization to access the full text on-line but can get it at our library. Did read the abstract though. There's been a lot of reaction to that article and other reports:

"The Australian," "Bat SARS may be clue: scientists" Sept.11, 2005

BATS found in Hong Kong carry a virus very similar to the severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS virus and might be able to spread it, Chinese researchers have reported.

They said the horseshoe bats, valued both as food and for their use in Chinese medicine, should be handled with great care. They may have helped spread the virus among different species of animals, the researchers said....

The isolation of SARS-coronavirus from caged animals, including Himalayan palm civets and a raccoon dog, from wild live markets in mainland China suggested that these animals are the reservoir for the origin of the SARS epidemic," Kwok-yung Yuen of the University of Hong Kong and colleagues wrote in their report, published in the Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences. However, several lines of evidence suggested that the civet may have served only as an amplification host....

They found a coronavirus similar to SARS in nearly 40 per cent of wild Chinese horseshoe bats they examined. Genetic analysis of the bat SARS virus showed it was closely related to the human SARS coronavirus. The researchers could not determine how the bats were originally infected or whether bats were responsible for transmitting the SARS coronavirus to other mammals including the civets."

Still seems like it might be controversial?

Did you catch this article in in the same issue?

"EPIDEMIOLOGY: Horse Flu Virus Jumps to Dogs," Science 2005 309: 2147

On the SARS report:

"One team from China, Australia and the United States reported its findings Thursday in the online version of Science. The other team, from the University of Hong Kong, reported its findings on Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Now two scientific teams have independently identified the Chinese horseshoe bat as that animal and as a hiding place for the virus in nature."It's pretty pleasant to see two teams that did not know each other reach similar findings," Dr. Lin-Fa Wang, a virologist at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory. The bats apparently are healthy carriers of SARS....

SARS now appears to join a number of other infectious agents that bats can transmit. Over the last decade, bats have been found as the source of two newly discovered human infections caused by the Nipah and Hendra viruses that can produce encephalitis and respiratory disease.

The New York Times, "2 Teams Identify Chinese Bat as SARS Virus Hiding Place," Sept.30th 2005

"GUANGZHOU: Scientists announced a possible breakthrough in the treatment of (SARS) on Friday." According to their report in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province... "China Daily"

It's pretty funny how random diseases ravage entire communities and then suddenly disappear.

I saw a TV program on Nat'l Geo on the 14th century plague in Europe, and it suggested that it wasn't any form of the plague that we know today (bubonic, pneumonic).

At least SARS has been controlled.

Do you remember what type they said it was. Everyone is taught that it was the bubonic plague?

Did you catch this article in in the same issue?

Yeah. I did. In fact, was considering starting a thread on it. I know that Fraggle, for one, would be interested. It'd be terrible if dogs started dropping dead all over the country from this. For now, it seems to be somewhat sedated... they make frequent mentions of racing dogs. That's one thing that would limit the spreading of a dog flu. Many dogs don't intermingle with other dogs. But, then again, a lot do. Dog-walking parks and such.

I was planning on doing a little research on the Chestnut blight too. This talk of viruses made me think of it. However, if I remember right, the Chestnut blight is a fungus... I forget though.

It's strange to think that a hundred years ago chestnut trees were common and now they're rare.

"Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." I've never roasted a chestnut in my life. Nor have I known anyone who has done so.

Still seems like it might be controversial?

It's still a touch early. But I don't know if I'd call it controversial exactly. The evidence of the virus in wild bats is striking. There is still the question of intermediary hosts and etc, but overall it's looking like the bat's the culprit.

The big difference between plagues and disease of the past that back then wiped out half a continent is the extent of international travel today. Like I said. One person with a virus, plague, or disease gets on a Boeing 747 with 300 or 400 hundred other people from twenty different countries and within one day you've got an uncontrollable pandemic and we all die. Sai la vie (did I spell that write?).

"Oh no. We're all going to die." - Chill out valich spookz man - "But we're all going to die. Help! Help! Help! What about my poor little puppy dog, such an innocent creature and he'll die too. Help!!!"

Chestnut blight was a fungus (Cryphonectria parasitica; formerly known as Endothia parasitica) and was introduced from Asia

"was first observed killing trees in the Bronx Zoo (New York City) in 1904. From there, Chestnut blight spread rapidly through eastern North America, and across the entire natural range of the Chestnut. It reached southern Ontario in the early 1920s; and by the 1930s almost all American chestnut trees were infected and dying. By 1950, this once prevalent tree species of the eastern forests was reduced to the status of a threatened species."

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~chestnut/chestnut_blight.htm

Similarly, we're seeing a disappearance of Southern tree species like oak trees replacing Northern trees like pine trees or those in Northern boreal forests because of global warming. Glaciers are receding 40 miles per year in Greenland. It's expected that the Arctic will have no summer ice by 2001. Permafost melting is causing forests not to grow where they once thrived in Alaska and Canada.

"The U.S.'s top health official says the world is "woefully unprepared" to respond to a pandemic, a problem made more urgent by concerns that the current avian flu virus could spread into a global health crisis. You'd think that it would be a matter of constant concern to us. It has not been, anywhere in the world....

The Bush administration has seized on the avian flu as a potential threat. A senior official from the U.S. Agency for International Development said Andrew Natsios, the agency's administrator, had made the virus "the top priority" for allocation of funding and personnel. President George W. Bush has said aggressive action would be needed to prevent a potentially disastrous U.S. outbreak of the disease....

The World Health Organization has confirmed at least 116 cases of the current bird flu virus, including 60 deaths -- with a mortality rate of more than 50 percent. All but a handful of cases were caused by direct contact with sick birds, suggesting the virus, so far, is unable to move easily among humans. But health officials have warned that with continued exposure to people, the virus could mutate further and develop that ability.

Officials have expressed fears that the virus is currently acting similarly to the 1918 flu virus, a pandemic that killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million people. Researchers announced Wednesday that they had reconstructed the 1918 strain of flu virus, a major advancement that could speed up preparation for -- and potentially thwart -- a pandemic.

from "Official: World not ready for flu," CNN.com, Thursday, Oct. 6, 2005.

Notice the quote "All but a handful of cases were caused by direct contact with sick birds." Possible direct contact with people?

Could you actually prepare for a pandemic?

Could you actually prepare for a pandemic?Yes - get a gun and shoot anyone approaching. Eat their bodies only after well roasted. :eek:

SARS was a pandemic and we effectively contained it relatively quickly compared to previous pandemics, like the influenza after WWI that wiped out 40 million before it was stopped.

Was it a pandemic if it could be stopped relatively quickly?

A pandemic is an epidemic that is found in more than one country or over a wide geographic area. "Pan" means "many, or spread out." We have a new posting on The Avian Flu called "Avian Flu Pandemic."

pandemic:

Epidemic over a wide geographic area and affecting a large proportion of the population: pandemic influenza.


You missed out on the 'affecting a large proportion of the population'.

Well, it all depends on what definition you want to use. People have scorned me for using Webster's definitions on a scientific forum but in any case, the Avian Bird Flu is now starting to be considered as a pandemic by both scientists and medical researchers alike, yet only about 115 people have been infected and 60 died.

It is a fact that if you stuff lots of chickens into a small space diseases will arise and spread alot faster than if they are free ranged with lots of space.
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Actually, that's wrong. In Europe the bird flu is a problem since the free-range chickens come into contact with diseased birds from asia. Factory style farms, less common in Europe, isolate poultry populations from wild birds.

Actually, that's wrong. In Europe the bird flu is a problem since the free-range chickens come into contact with diseased birds from asia. Factory style farms, less common in Europe, isolate poultry populations from wild birds.
Actually that's wrong too. The recent outbreak in bird flu in Turkey and Romania is taking place in a delta region that is a crossover migratory stop for birds migrating from Russia to Africa. Possibly these birds were somehow infected from a different migratory route with Southeast Asian birds. In any case, you can see how far and wide this is going to spread.