H5N1

Further to my last post, it was confirmed last night that the strain of Avian Flu found in the Turkish birds was H5N1 (the South Asian strain). It's also likely that the one in Romania will be the same, although so far it's only been narrowed down as far as H5. There seems to be some agenda by the media to whip this up as a precursor for an inevitable human pandemic. Irresponsible is too soft a word for this. Some facts:

• The H5N1 virus is not communicable between humans
• It requires prolonged contact with an infected bird(s) to infect humans
• Although the mortality rate is 50% this is probably due to the fact it has been poor badly nourished people that tend to have been infected who's lifestyle means that they come into contact with potential carriers for long periods of time every day.
• It will require at least one stable mutation for it to become communicable to humans and another (at least) one to become human-human communicable.
• The UK currently has 14m courses of Tamiflu stockpiled, this would enable us to treat the 25% of the population that the WHO estimates will require medical treatment. (As opposed to the Immune System defeating it on it's own.)

I'm confident that in the event of it actually becoming a human infection the number of deaths in the UK will not be greater than the numbers killed by influenza each year. (Don't have the figures but I believe it's around 10,000 mainly elderly and immunosuppressed individuals.)

In other news...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4340794.stm
Railtrack shareholders have lost court action to get compensation for the government re-publifying (if that's the word...) the railways!! Haha! A good day for Lefties!