H5N1 found in Ohio

[felisdomesticus]

holy crap!

http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...src=rss&rpc=22

[Maui's Mom]

O my this doesnt sound good at all.

[tielfan]

According to the article it's nothing bad. The headline is "Low-risk H5N1 bird flu in Ohio wild birds", and later in the article it says "Initial tests confirm that these wild bird samples do not contain the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain that has spread through birds in Asia, Europe and Africa."

Bird flu has been around for thousands of years, and in each and every one of those years it was spread from continent to continent by migrating birds, especially geese. Every once in a while a strain develops that can infect humans, but most of the time the flu is confined to certain types of birds. The current high-risk strain is deadly to chickens but not to some other birds, which is why it's able to travel. It wouldn't get very far if it made birds too sick to migrate.

Personally, I think a lot of the current scare is a combination of politicians trying to distract public attention away from some spectacular government blunders, and the mass media using sensationalism to sell their product. You practically have to live in a chicken coop to catch the current strain, and it'll only be a serious health hazard to the general public if the current strain mutates into something that can be spread from person to person AND causes serious illness in humans. Right now it can sometimes spread from poultry to humans, and causes serious illness when it does. But if it mutates into something that can spread from human to human, it might (or might not) cause only mild illness in its new form.