Vocal Voices

We have had Malaria for decades, and it is still not controlled. Then we had Smallpox and Polio, which were dealt with. Flu? However, we also have Dengue, Ebola, Marburg, SARS, MERS and Covid, and we know that they can all pass from mammals to humans to humans. They do kill.

The latest is the H5N1 virus (Bird Flu) and it has been found in cow's milk in the US, the stuff we all drink. It is also in foxes, seals, mink and dolphins in the UK. We culled millions of poultry and other mammals to try to contain it. It is now known that it can pass to humans via many routes. So far it has only been seen by contact, simple contact (sweat) and not just with bodily fluids such a urine, faeces and blood, but if it becomes airborne, the way bubonic plague turned into pneumonic plague, all bets are off.

The threat is driven by a few things: too many of us; our concentration in mega cities; the ways we can travel from place to place, and very quickly; our increasing closeness to what were once animals we contacted rarely.

When it comes to bacteria we are fighting a losing battle - a simple cut to a finger could kill.

Never mind, we can all sit in our our windmill driven free electricity net-zero air pump houses or aircon EVs and we'll all be safe.

This scare tactic comes round every few years.

H1Nx has been around for over a century. Perhaps forever but we haven't been able to isolate it until about the last 60 years or so. We know that human outbreaks are decades or even centuries apart.

What is key with all of them is they have never been pneumonic. None of them. Constantly they rail on about it "could" happen. Yeah and Gravity "could" reverse and throw us all out into space.

Meanwhile I'll carry on carrying on and my heart will probably finish me off long before any of these diseases become that big a problem.

I said "airborne" as in aerosol droplets through coughs and sneezes, not "pneumonic", and we do have them: Covid; SARS; MERS; marburg; measles; TB; chickenpox; influenza, whooping cough; RSV; anthrax; mumps; meningitis. Some are deadly, as we well know.

Dengue has now been found in Italy and France as the moquito carriers move north. Malaria is also back in Europe having once been eradicated.

I also said H5N1 (1997 not 100 years) not H1Nx and H5N1 caused the culling of 140 million poultry the US and Europe in 2022. There was quarantining of other flocks to try to prevent it spreading. That's how concerned some vets and goverenments are. Other newer strains also exist: H7N9 (since 2013); H5N6 (since 2014); H5N8 (since 2016). That's a lot of new strains in just a decade. The chances of zoonotic transmission thus increases.

I do not call being aware a scare tactic, I call it sensible.

Workingman wrote:I do not call being aware a scare tactic, I call it sensible.

I agree. But that is not how it is being communicated.