Is Were Bird Flu Fears Overblown?

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is yes, yes it was.

PARIS - Fears of a flu pandemic originating from the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus were overblown, the head of the World Organization for Animal Health said Thursday.

But "the risk was overestimated," said Bernard Vallat, director general of the animal health organization, also known as the OIE.

"We have never seen such a stable strain," Vallat said.

But wasn't there a consensus saying the flu pandemic from H5N1 was going to wipe out huge swaths of the universe? Didn't world governments pour billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars into foreign economies to help contain the *deadly* bird flu? Hmmmm, how can that many scientists be that wrong about something that just a year ago they were so positive about?

However, although bird flu is nothing to worry about any more, the UN is preparing us for the next horrible catastrophe that will DEFINITELY happen:

At the same time, the United Nations influenza coordinator said that governments around the world need to do more to prepare for the dramatic economic impact of the next flu pandemic.

“The economic consequences could be up to $2 trillion -- up to 5 percent of global GDP removed,” he said, reiterating previous World Bank and UN estimates.

I see your $2 trillion and raise you $50 gagillion.

You have to give the UN credit, you pretty much have to chop off their arm to get it out of your pocket.

If the global scientific community and the UN didn't have a clue about bird flu, I wonder what else they may not have a clue about--something that is costing us billions of $$$ each year. I'll give you a hint: It's getting warm in here.

It's the end of the world as we know it, And I feel okay

Birds are pretty creepy to begin with, but now Canada has feathered disease rockets infesting and infecting our beautiful skies:

Several wild birds carrying H5 flu viruses have been found in Quebec and Manitoba, officials from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced Monday.

"Preliminary testing has identified H5 influenza in 28 samples from Quebec, and five from Manitoba," Jim Clark of the CFIA told a news conference.

Should I start to boil water? Is this an emergency? Who do I contact for help? Should I start killing my own pet birds? Why isn't anyone taking me serious, I told you 20 years ago that the earth would be destroyed by birds. But did you listen? NOOOO!!!

However, officials don't know yet if the birds have the lethal H5N1 subtype of the avian flu; there are believed to be nine different H5 subtypes.

And he noted that the virus does not appear to be killing the birds.

Not yet it hasn't killed them. The birds are most likely in the early stages of bird-flu. First there's the coughing and the runny nose, next there are the sore bones and a bad hack. Then comes the diarrhea and the loss of appetite. Finally, it's death.

Even if the Canadian birds are carrying the H5N1 virus, it does not mean they are necessarily related to the viruses behind the poultry outbreaks in southeast Asia.

"It is important to clarify that the avian influenza virus is not new to wild birds," Clark said. "Experts worldwide know that this virus, in one form or another, has circulated among wild birds around the world for hundreds, or perhaps even for thousands of years."

Oh good, a new bird disease. Maybe we can call this one "SARS, with a side of wings".

The world only has two options to combat this terror: We either all move away to some place that doesn't have birds, OR, we kill every single bird in the world right now. While we're at it we should also cull every cat, it's better to be safe than sorry.

I have already chosen which option that I think is best. I'll give you a hint: I'll be having a funeral/dinner at the Manor tomorrow night around 6-ish.

Here birdie birdie

Something to Consider...

So far I have made it through the real and not-so-real NUCLEAR winters, mega-famines, global cooling, acid rain, bird flu, death by fluoride, Y2K, SARS, MAD cow and Chernobyl.

Somehow I think I can make it through global warming.

**Add Ebola and killer bees to the mix--please let me know what I have forgotten so I can update this list

*MERSA virus (I believe that was introduced by sports doctors--I say that in jest. Somewhat)
--Thank you, Nancy. Florida sounds great right about now. Are you with me, fellow Canadians?

Herpes
Aids
HepC
tainted blood
chicken virus
chicken dance
Trudeau, and other Marxist dictators
the cold war
--thank you, Greg. An impressive list, indeed.

Ozone hole
--Enas Yorl--In baseball terms, Enas just got a triple for that answer. A stand-up triple. And had a guy on first and second. In other words, Enas just drove home two runs and is on third. Base. C'mon, you're making this very hard for me.

Thank you, Greenie Watch

The Black Plague Is Back--And It's Pissed!

Sure, we made it through nuclear winters, mega-famines, global cooling, acid rain, bird flu, death by fluoride, Y2K, SARS, MAD cow and Chernobyl, Ebola and killer bees, MERSA virus, Aids, HepC and tainted blood, but that's junior league compared to what is on the horizon for planet earth:

A bacterium known as Yersinia pestis causes bubonic plague, known in medieval times as the Black Death when it was spread by infected fleas, and the more dangerous pneumonic plague, spread from one person to another through coughing or sneezing.

"Although the number of human cases of plague is relatively low, it would be a mistake to overlook its threat to humanity, because of the disease's inherent communicability, rapid spread, rapid clinical course, and high mortality if left untreated," they wrote in the journal Public Library of Science journal PloS Medicine.

While it has only killed some 100 to 200 people annually over the past 20 years, plague has appeared in new countries in recent decades and is now shifting into Africa, Michael Begon, an ecologist at the University of Liverpool and colleagues said.

Move over global warming, there is a new bitch in town.

I think I can speak for the whole universe when I say that world governments need to start pouring billions, perhaps trillions, into research and find a cure right the hell now before this whole plague business wipes out hundreds of billions of our fellow humans--just like that super-bug last year that got the evil GWB in so much trouble because he hates the poor and didn't get enough pills made to stop the impending death. Remember that? Ya, it was HORRIBLE!

Now is the time to panic. Not tomorrow or early next week, but NOW! If my typing in caps isn't warning enough for you, then there is no hope left, for you are already dead.

Kill all the rats and hookers, the plague is upon us!!

**How moral are you? Take Mitchieville's Morality Quiz

Ice Returns To Greenland

Residents of Manhattan: Everything is okay, the ice caps are not melting. Please resume your regular business (of being rude and arrogant)--

On Disko Bay in western Greenland, where a number of prominent world leaders have visited in recent years to get a first-hand impression of climate change, temperatures have dropped so drastically that the water has frozen over for the first time in a decade.

'The ice is up to 50cm thick,' said Henrik Matthiesen, an employee at Denmark's Meteorological Institute who has also sailed the Greenlandic coastline for the Royal Arctic Line. 'We've had loads of northerly winds since Christmas which has made the area miserably cold.'

Matthiesen suggested the cold weather marked a return to the frigid temperatures common a decade ago.

Temperatures plunged to -25°C earlier this month, clogging the bay with ice and making shipping impossible for small crafts, according to Anthon Frederiksen, the mayor of the town of Ilulissat, where Disko Bay is located.

'We Greenlanders have acclimated to changing conditions over the past 1100 years,' said Frederiksen. 'Temperatures change at regular intervals.'

Wow, it has really been a bad month for environmentalists, politician's, celebrities and conspiracy theorists: This month we found out that Bird Flu is basically a load of shit, we have enough oil to last us for the next zillion years, and now we find out that the ice caps are not in fact retracting.

What next, Africa isn't being ravished by AIDS? Oh, right.

The best ice-cap is a Tim Horton's Ice-Cap

Who around you is Infected?

The coughing death will come upon us quickly. They call it plague on the radio. In the morning you will get out of bed and climb into your cold work clothes. The CBC is off the air by three. By supper time, the city will be burning and the snot oozing dead lying in slippery heaps in the lobbies of office buildings. There will be fist fights over masks and respirators. Those who have a mask will live to see the next sunrise, which is your tomorrow. It is the Bird Flu, and you are going to die. Takes six hours, average. You cough yourself horse, then the dry heaves. Nobody will go near you. They ignore your crying for help. Even your mother. Everything wet about you carries the green death. Do not touch the snot that glugs out of the noses of the infected.

Are you ready, right now? The next cough you hear is the green snot plague. Look around at all the people who are going to die. Will you join them in a mass grave? Not if you have a mask, even better, surgical gloves. And the will to live, and the hard fists to back up that will to live.

Then the raccoons and the skunks will come out of the ravines to feast upon the banquet of human carrion that Mother Nature has prepared for these urban pest mammals. House pets form hunting packs ... shocking in how few days the cute dog turns into the toothy wolf. There are not enough people and too few guns to fight them off. Anyone who admits to being a liberal is beaten with rocks and left for dog food. The human survivors will gather in fortified buildings, hording food and heat, and going forth into the boneyard streets to gather more.

For a few days, anyway. Winter is coming! Yes, the harvest is not yet complete for Death. A great snowstorm will sweep in and another massacre will occur. After the plague will come the great freezing winter. Welcome to Stalingrad!

You are all Doomed.

Only one in ten of you will survive to see the Spring of 2006.

My name is Maximinus Thrax
and I am going to see the Spring.
Maybe you will
Maybe you won't