G
GaudiaRay
Guest
GR: Bunk like this will lead to deaths of millions in the UK. Get the tar boiling and grab a sack of chicken feathers. Sir David King is the Marc Siegel of the United Kingdom.
What audacity to reject the evolution of nature! To add insult to injury, the article references Gregory Hartl, of no less than WHO itself, another who claims that the virus has not mutated. He obviously failed basic virology, or most probably is a low end WHO-Hac, with zero knowledge of virology, either formal or self taught. He can't see that the virus has become more infectious, that polymorphisms are being switched and added, that the virus does not need to "mutate", as in reassortment??? thank you very much Robert Webster for poisoning the few brain cells available in the WHO Hacks around the world.
Regarding postings from imo total fools who dismiss what now appears as the greatest natural destruction of mammalian life ever recorded, as Rhett Butler said so eloquently stated, "Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a ****."
They're worth recording here in FT as dunces presenting themselves and worthy of the full measure of derision they will receive as time passes and the virus becomes more menacing in fact. They join the hall of fools, replete with many who held the limelight and who yet cling to their last vestiges and claims of legitimacy.
Enjoy the article.
GR
Expert says bird flu risk to humans 'very low'
KEVIN SCHOFIELD
Key quote "The pandemic flu that we are now talking about would be in the human population. It is not in the human population at the moment. So yes the government is preparing for that possibility, but I would say it's a very low possibility. I don't believe it is inevitable" - Sir David King, scientific adviser
Story in full:
THE likelihood of the bird flu virus mutating into a form that could be transferred between humans is "very low", the government's top scientific adviser has said.
Sir David King said any suggestion that such a mutation was inevitable, thereby triggering a global pandemic, was "totally misleading".
His comments came as it emerged that the government has drawn up plans for the mass closure of schools should the virus enter the human population.
But that plan was dismissed as impractical by Professor Hugh Pennington, a leading microbiologist at Aberdeen University. Prof Pennington said that schools would have to be closed for up to seven months while the virus ran its course, and said he believed this would only happen as a last resort.
Sir David sought to reassure the public that there was no immediate risk to humans following the discovery of a dead swan infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu in Cellardyke, Fife.
He said: "The pandemic flu that we are now talking about would be in the human population. It is not in the human population at the moment.
"So yes the government is preparing for that possibility, but I would say it's a very low possibility. I don't believe it is inevitable."
He went on: "As time progresses we have got a virus in the bird population that has gone on since 1996, and in Asia particularly there has been a lot of contact between human beings and the birds that have got that virus.
"We still haven't seen the development of a human virus from that."
Sir David also denied that bird flu was in Britain, claiming that the Cellardyke discovery appeared to be an isolated incident.
He said it was "absolutely not" present among poultry, adding that he was "fairly optimistic" about its absence from the wild bird population.
"The one swan doesn't mean it has arrived here. We need to see more evidence of spread before we can say that it has arrived in the UK," he said.
This weekend it appeared the country was far from being in a state of panic about the disease as people continued to feed swans, ducks and other wild birds.
Sir David's comments on the chances of the virus mutating were supported by Gregory Hartl, of the World Health Organisation. "We really haven't seen it mutate yet," he said. "One of the interesting things about this virus is that it doesn't appear to mutate easily. But, yes, there is always, always the risk that it could mutate."
The government's plans to close schools emerged amid warnings that 100,000 children might die in the event of a human pandemic. Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer for England and Wales, advised ministers that shutting schools could halve the number of pupils infected.
In a letter to Jacqui Smith, the Westminster schools minister, he said: "If all age groups were affected equally and the virus was particularly severe (ie at the upper end of our assumptions), the excess deaths in school-age children could be as high as 100,000.
"This would mean that potentially 50,000 deaths might be prevented by school closures."
But Prof Pennington said that if a human pandemic followed the same pattern as a previous outbreak in 1957, schools would need to be closed for months. He said: "I'm not all that convinced that closing schools is going to be a particularly practical thing to do.
"The pandemic, if it comes, would arrive in the summer and then there would be two waves of infection going on for six or seven months.
"Could you close the schools for that long?
"It sounds to me like a policy that would only come in if people started dying - there would have to be a high level of mortality for it to come to that."
Related topic
* Bird flu
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=161
This article: http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=546052006
Last updated: 09-Apr-06 00:51 BST
What audacity to reject the evolution of nature! To add insult to injury, the article references Gregory Hartl, of no less than WHO itself, another who claims that the virus has not mutated. He obviously failed basic virology, or most probably is a low end WHO-Hac, with zero knowledge of virology, either formal or self taught. He can't see that the virus has become more infectious, that polymorphisms are being switched and added, that the virus does not need to "mutate", as in reassortment??? thank you very much Robert Webster for poisoning the few brain cells available in the WHO Hacks around the world.
Regarding postings from imo total fools who dismiss what now appears as the greatest natural destruction of mammalian life ever recorded, as Rhett Butler said so eloquently stated, "Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a ****."
They're worth recording here in FT as dunces presenting themselves and worthy of the full measure of derision they will receive as time passes and the virus becomes more menacing in fact. They join the hall of fools, replete with many who held the limelight and who yet cling to their last vestiges and claims of legitimacy.
Enjoy the article.
GR
Expert says bird flu risk to humans 'very low'
KEVIN SCHOFIELD
Key quote "The pandemic flu that we are now talking about would be in the human population. It is not in the human population at the moment. So yes the government is preparing for that possibility, but I would say it's a very low possibility. I don't believe it is inevitable" - Sir David King, scientific adviser
Story in full:
THE likelihood of the bird flu virus mutating into a form that could be transferred between humans is "very low", the government's top scientific adviser has said.
Sir David King said any suggestion that such a mutation was inevitable, thereby triggering a global pandemic, was "totally misleading".
His comments came as it emerged that the government has drawn up plans for the mass closure of schools should the virus enter the human population.
But that plan was dismissed as impractical by Professor Hugh Pennington, a leading microbiologist at Aberdeen University. Prof Pennington said that schools would have to be closed for up to seven months while the virus ran its course, and said he believed this would only happen as a last resort.
Sir David sought to reassure the public that there was no immediate risk to humans following the discovery of a dead swan infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu in Cellardyke, Fife.
He said: "The pandemic flu that we are now talking about would be in the human population. It is not in the human population at the moment.
"So yes the government is preparing for that possibility, but I would say it's a very low possibility. I don't believe it is inevitable."
He went on: "As time progresses we have got a virus in the bird population that has gone on since 1996, and in Asia particularly there has been a lot of contact between human beings and the birds that have got that virus.
"We still haven't seen the development of a human virus from that."
Sir David also denied that bird flu was in Britain, claiming that the Cellardyke discovery appeared to be an isolated incident.
He said it was "absolutely not" present among poultry, adding that he was "fairly optimistic" about its absence from the wild bird population.
"The one swan doesn't mean it has arrived here. We need to see more evidence of spread before we can say that it has arrived in the UK," he said.
This weekend it appeared the country was far from being in a state of panic about the disease as people continued to feed swans, ducks and other wild birds.
Sir David's comments on the chances of the virus mutating were supported by Gregory Hartl, of the World Health Organisation. "We really haven't seen it mutate yet," he said. "One of the interesting things about this virus is that it doesn't appear to mutate easily. But, yes, there is always, always the risk that it could mutate."
The government's plans to close schools emerged amid warnings that 100,000 children might die in the event of a human pandemic. Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer for England and Wales, advised ministers that shutting schools could halve the number of pupils infected.
In a letter to Jacqui Smith, the Westminster schools minister, he said: "If all age groups were affected equally and the virus was particularly severe (ie at the upper end of our assumptions), the excess deaths in school-age children could be as high as 100,000.
"This would mean that potentially 50,000 deaths might be prevented by school closures."
But Prof Pennington said that if a human pandemic followed the same pattern as a previous outbreak in 1957, schools would need to be closed for months. He said: "I'm not all that convinced that closing schools is going to be a particularly practical thing to do.
"The pandemic, if it comes, would arrive in the summer and then there would be two waves of infection going on for six or seven months.
"Could you close the schools for that long?
"It sounds to me like a policy that would only come in if people started dying - there would have to be a high level of mortality for it to come to that."
Related topic
* Bird flu
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=161
This article: http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=546052006
Last updated: 09-Apr-06 00:51 BST
