Upadated: Is Society Playing a Game of Chicken with Bird Flu?
Updated: With Summer in its last month and the Fall approaching, I am contemplating the possibility of a global pandemic which has been given the name Bird Flu. A good friend of mine believes that such an event is almost a certainty. In his. Winds of Change Blog, Joe Kurtzman writes "Playing Chicken With Avian Flu: Pandemic Rising?" Here is an excerpt:
Some of our readers will recall (a) China's dismal record of inaction and cover-up with SARS; (b) The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic that killed 20-50 million people; (c ) Winds' article about global democracy promotion as a global development policy; it pointed out the inherent and inevitable failings of planned/ authoritarian societies, and specifically noted their inability to react to things like avian flu pandemics as a key example of what we were talking about ...
In many ways, a pandemic isn't really all that different from a major bioterrorism scenario. Winds recommendations #2-9 from my June 2002 Bioterror Readiness 10-Point Platform for Change still apply, for instance. So, unfortunately, do the comments in Bill Quick's bioterror readiness post re: why the USA isn't farther ahead in 2005. There's a lot of heavy lifting to do, in order to change that picture. We may not have that time.
Some useful links about Bird Flu:
Preparing for the Coming Influenza Pandemic (click for PDF document)
Recombinonics.Com: Information about possible vacine.
Updated material:
Ralph Metzner from his GreenEarth website says."In the high-stakes cosmic game of planetary catastrophe, the Earth has one (or more) trump cards: ecological disasters could occur on such a scale that it would force the diversion of all technological and financial resources to address them. I confess to sometimes wishing it might happen thus. On the other hand we cannot wait or hope for this card to be played."
An Investor's Guide to Avian Flu (PDF)
I have to admit that I am not an expert in epidemiology. But it seems that it would be better if we started talking about Bird Flu now rather at some possible future time when all we can do is write dreadful headlines.
