Editor's Note: In order to bring The Post's audience more diverse and local opinions, there will be seven columnists (two on Tuesday and Friday) this quarter in addition to letters to the editor, turnstiles, Between the Lines and our editorial opinions.
Doesn't it seem like everybody's saying that Chicken Little might be right about the sky falling? The danger of the avian flu (H5N1) is impossible to understand unless it is put into perspective that relates to the incendiary statistics being bandied about by the media and international health-care officials. The rampant danger everyone is heralding is that there are millions of chickens dying. But so far, only a few human deaths are occurring for about every two million dead chickens. Kentucky Fried Chicken accounts for the demise of more poultry than that every week. It has been stated high and low by the multi-media that today's panic reflects on the fact that Chicken Little is not only the harbinger of the pending avian flu pandemic but actually the ground-zero source of it. His H5N1 virus-infected body will be the likely contributor to the incubation and recombination of a version that would infect pigs. This would then easily mutate, as it does every year, into a swine flu version that could easily infect one out of three people it comes in contact with - and then kill one in every twenty of those victims - as it did in 1918. The end is near all right, except that this time the entire cause for this celestial consternation is actually the fault of this flighty foul fowl. So why shouldn't you be panicking and running amok like Chicken Little with his head cut off? Well, maybe because nothing that was just stated has happened yet, and it is not at all likely to happen to you or your loved ones. Unless you're noticing that you're growing feathers or feeling an inexplicable need to migrate south for the winter, your chance of getting H5N1 avian flu, without consuming infected poultry or its raw blood products (yeah, some cultures use it like a gravy) is slim to none. This particular flu virus primarily infects birds and has not mutated into a strain that can attack and grow within human cells in the population at large. That still doesn't answer the question of why people are screaming about this non-existent scenario for a global avian flu pandemic. The fear of the future is always easy and fun to speculate on, not to mention incredibly profitable for those whose business and political breads are buttered by the funding of the preventative measures being called for. Even Scientific American bought into this free ride to greater subscribers with their very lengthy cover story about how IF the avian flu manages to mutate faster than our immune systems can learn to fight back, the outcome could equal the endemic proportions of the past twenty-five years of AIDS in the span of only one year. From the beginning of any human-to-human transmission, currently non-existent antivirals would have to be immediately and diligently dispensed everywhere that the outbreak hits. The WHO has found that certain human H5N1 cases have taken more than 20 days to confirm. This would, if extended to a worldwide theater, leave a mere ten days to vaccinate as many as one million people, or about 100,000 people a day. Seeing as though there are 1,440 minutes in a day, about 70 people would have to receive their vaccination every minute with no breaks for ten days straight. All hope would have to come from unprepared health-care workers who until after 2007 will be without any serum for a disease that hasn't occurred yet. With the Hurricane Katrina disaster still fresh in our minds, it's difficult to imagine this jump street scenario as being the one most likely to unfold. As the media roars on about possible fatality figures and potential of rapid outbreaks, remember that these instances are still make believe. An epidemic in the near future, while feasible
is not likely from this version of H5N1 and is not likely to mutate into that type of flu that will take you out. That is, unless someone offers you chicken sushi, and you accept it. So, take it easy and don't panic ... yet. - Jessica Beinecke is a freshman journalism major. Send her an e-mail at jb275005@ohiou.edu. 17
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