[Acrylic-bob]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/birdflu/story/0,14207,1591358,00.html



This morning BBC news was full of “Experts” who claimed that H5N1 is unlikely to become a pandemic with the ability to kill at least one in every eighty people in the UK and worldwide. The chance of it becoming transmissible between humans, we were told, was so slight as to be barely negligible.

Why then the government rush to spend £186 million on stockpiling 14 million courses of “Tamiflu” (Oseltamivir) which is only effective in large doses and then only if administered within a relatively short time following infection? If the pandemic strikes this winter however, the stockpile as yet contains only 3Million courses, which are earmarked for civil servants and health professionals, so the chances of help from that quarter are slim to say the least.

As the report in the link above points out, H5N1 is already transmissible between humans, albeit in a limited manner.



Another link, to a different article in the Guardian,


http://www.guardian.co.uk/birdflu/story/0,14207,1592857,00.html


shows that the three main sites for entry of H5N1 into the UK are The Wash, The Thames Estuary and… Morecambe Bay and the River Ribble. Apparently, Bird watchers have been recruited to scour the area for signs of tell-tale deaths among wild birds arriving here from Russia that could be carrying the infection. The last outbreak of foot and mouth caused widespread disruption to the UK Economy as a whole and to the tourist and farming industry in particular even though nobody died of Foot and Mouth, because the disease is not transmissible to humans. The full cost to the Economy was in Billions of pounds!


Imagine then the full impact of a viral pandemic.


Accrington has a population of 38,000. The mortality rate is expected to be at least one in eighty of the population. H5N1 is fatal in 50% of cases, so that means that with 475 deaths within the first twelve weeks of the outbreak there will be something in the region of 1,000 infections. That means an extra forty funerals per week; more than quadrupling the winter average for Accrington. But those figures are extrapolated from national averages that are, at best, informed guesstimates. Considering that the population of the North West has one of the poorest standards of health in the country, my guess is that those figures are a considerable underestimate.


A point to be aware of is that victims of this virus die in considerable pain as their lungs slowly fill up with blood.


Then consider how easily colds get passed around in offices and ask yourself, would you want to go to work during such an epidemic? Would you want to send your children to school? Would you even want to get within twenty feet of another human being?


The price of food going up because imports are restricted. Businesses going bust because they cannot export or recruit enough staff to fill vacancies caused by absenteeism and illness. No money coming in. People are forced to rely on their savings to make ends meet. Banks begin, first to struggle to meet demand and then to fail. Rationing of health care. Anger. Grief. Desperation. Civil Unrest.


Speculation? Possibly. But the outbreak of Foot and Mouth and the Fuel Strike which followed it showed us how uncomfortably close to anarchy the country actually is; and lives were not at stake in either of those two cases.