You may have been paying attention to the spread of the H5N1 bird flu virus and noting it seems to be gaining ground with more outbreaks and closer to major population centers. Also there are clearly two groups of people when it comes to publically talking about the bird flu topic. There is one group that says it is not a problem and wants you to not worry, and another group that says there is major concern. Both groups have the ear of the media, but only one is right.
The group that says there is a concern is the group looking through a microscope at the virus. The other group consists of politicians and businessmen. I will leave it to you to decide who is the expert when it comes to this topic. We have seen our share of disaster films knowing who the idiot is. Bottom line this is all about control.
Each human case of the bird flu, the virus gets another chance to more easily adapt to humans. Right now it is not an exact fit but it is not that far away either. The part of our body that the bird flu could easily infect us was originally deep in our lower respiratory system. Now it is nearing our upper respiratory system, and that can only mean the virus is adapting.
The production of an anti virus may certainly be a big hoax to stem panic. Early on the doctors said they could not produce antiviral medication until they know what the virus mutated to be. As the virus is like a key that fits our lock, the antiviral medications are like keys that fit the virus’s lock. At best what they are producing today will have limited effect. It is little facts like this that have found their way out of the news. Just because they are not talked about any more does not mean the problem has gone away and we can now predict the future of what the virus will look like. If only life were so simple, just close your eyes and the problem goes away. Not a chance.
So now that brings us to natures hand in this. From time to time nature throws us a curve to mold our evolution. Nature simply kills off human version 1.0 leaving version 1.1 to continue. This along with all the other pandemics of the past are part of the same molding cycle. However as we become smarter we slowly override natures ability to do this allowing our population to grow bigger and live longer further taxing the planets resources, but that is another story.
This leaves us with a clear problem, our desire to survive is primal and we do a fair job against things we can see. But a microscopic virus that can kill us sight unseen we must leave to the doctors and scientists to fight for us. Our weakest link is ignorance and the news on the bird flu spread is very closely tied to people transporting infected birds out of a quarantine area to turn a profit. Because they can’t see the virus, to them it is not there. Our best defense is to listen to the people that know and ignore the ones that are trying to calm the heard waiting at the gates of the slaughter house. There is no second guessing here, when the virus finally mutates to infect humans easily, you will see that nature is not kind or polite when it comes to doing what it does.
