Much as I love blaming the French for anything, Gaetan Dugas, widely identified as "Patient Zero" was French Canadian.

The French end up being as close to good guys as you can get in the AIDS story, being the first to successfully isolate and identify the virus.

Ebola is probably higher risk than H5N1, unless the Avian flu gets better at crossing the species barrier. That eola shit is really a lot scarier, even given that the infectious process tends to burn itself out rather quickly once it's identified and infection control procedures are followed to the letter. At least Ebola isn't airborne.

Ebola while horrifically contagious is easy to contain since the incubation period is so short. Its those looooooooong incubation period diseases that are cause for concern.

I have to confess that I haven't really kept up with this thread except to note that H5N1 is pretty much going to spread itself everywhere. How "incurable" is it and how "fatal" is it. I have trouble comparing it to the 1918 epidemic since, back then, some - maybe even a lot - regarded epidemics in certain areas to be "nature's housecleaning." I'm not sure the conditions which allowed that to happen exist anymore.

Depends on whether it's "us" or "them", that's dying.;)

They don't exist at all, I would guess. We tended to stay put in our own countries back then - hard to see how containment will be achieved with very man and his uncle flying left, right and centre these days....

Unfortunately, when too many reporters use English major logic rather than principles taught in junior high school science, then we have a history lesson. BTW, this is also why we have editors and anchormen - to hold those reporter's 'feet to the fire'. Early 1980s projections said we would all be dead today. IOW English major logic used linear estimations. We know the world is exponential. Aids followed the exponential curve which is why Aids deaths leveled off.

Unfortunately, the level defined for Africa has not yet reach equilibrium AND is much higher than compared to more educated nations. With even the George Jr administration now banning condom distribution in Africa as a condition for assistance, this has only increases what should be the leveling point.

The point being that those details must be understood before a reporter can accurately report. Too many English majors don't have sufficient grasp of logic to accurately report on AIDs - or on H5N1. Their inability to grasp the details results in hype.

I take your point TW, but there is the question: is AIDS directly comparable to a fatal air-borne/spread virus?

True we don't have air-borne H5N1 yet, but that is the scenario that frightens most. Under those circumstances it's hard to see how the exponential curve would mirror that of AIDs both in volume and in timescale, the difference being that a disease that can be curtailed by the direct influence that the educated individual can self-impose on their hygiene and living habits is different from that where the virus will not permit itself to be discriminated against in such a way.

I can see that imposed incubation would have the ability to flatten the curve over time, but set against that is the immediate and rapid increase in damage and spread that would result from an air-borne virus. The way we live our normal lives is counter-active to containment. Humans mix too much both nationally and internationally.

The curve would certainly flatten on three counts: as a result of the number of fatalities reducing the pool of susceptible hosts, upon the introduction and dissemination of a workable vaccination, and through incubation where this was viable/possible - but all this would take time. If the virus turns into something both instantly transmittable and at the same time is extremely aggressive, it looks to me that the ride would be a very ugly one for some considerable time. But once again I admit, this is worse case scenario.

More than happy therefore to have the above interpretation and resultant concerns grounded... (maybe I shouldn't have read Stephen King's 'The Stand')

Even if airborne, there's not a really good comparison ... AIDS kills over a span of years, H5N1 over a matter of days or weeks.

A paper from the New England Journal of Medicine on H5N1 that's actually fairly readable.

Yet another reason for eschewing civet cat "coffee".
Somewhere in this meaty thread someone did mention that Rumsfeld owns major stock in Tamiflu? He is like the Cigarette-Smoking Man in the X-files series--going to profit from the demise of civilization. anyway--I'm not too terribly worried about the birdflu. I'm more worried about driving in this snow we are getting right now.

Which only changes time scales and does not change the trend. The trend - whether by airborne or by contact - whether it is a fast killer or takes years - is still an exponential curve. Not a linear curve as the naive insisted. Again, using projections that were linear, then we are all dead from AIDs. That is the problem when reporters do not approach logic with what was taught in junior high school science. That is the problem when logic sufficient for fiction novels is used to report on science and reality.

Little details that some reporters never quite understood during AIDs predictions are that disease, like most things in nature, follow exponential curves. Diseases would be exponential whether transmission is airborne or other. To deviate from those exponential trends would require other outside influences. For example, a miracle drug would sharply change that curve. But the naive, instead, jump to linear assumptions.

I, for one, will be forsaking sex with poultry for the duration of this emergency.

And what about those meals that are better than sex? ... (A sign of age.)

A sign of age, indeed. I can think of at least two meals that are better than sex. I can't wait till I can think of ten. I can't wait until I no longer CARE about sex. Old age--freedom!

Depends on the meal, and depends on the sex, has nothing to do with age.

H5N1 is killed by cooking, anyway.

Well that goes without saying. Anyone who has the guts to fool around with you isn't chicken.:lol:

Did I miss something here? Did wolf just say she is looking forward to menopause? (Question asked safely out of sniper range.)