Monday, April 3, 2006

Over the past 2 weeks, there has been continued medium-high interest in the ever expanding bird flu situation with a constant low-level stream of new human cases and more countries getting either migratory birds or chicken flocks infected. Current number are 188 infected and 103 dead. Recently, there has been migratory birds (mostly swans) infected with H5N1 detected in Western Europe. France as only country with some domesticated chickens and turkeys infected. They quickly handled it by culling. Other countries such as Italy had migratory bird(s) infected, but no chickens and still chicken sales in supermarkets and restaurants has plummeted by as much as 50 to 60%. My prediction is that infected migratory birds may (not definitely) make it to USA and that there will be very little contamination of chickens because of the agriculture controls. Yet, it will affect (by misperception) the chicken industry. There has been some backlash among people in press about the over-hyping of the threat. I am in good shape here since I have always maintained that the threat, although non-quantifiable, is likely low. This is in contrast to others such as Rob Webster, who says that there is a 50% chance that we will have a bird flu pandemic among humans with H5N1!!! I have no idea how he came up with that number. Also, my friend Michael Osterholm is also singing doom and gloom.