How Big Of A Threat Is The Projected Bird Flu Pandemic?
Some people aren't truly happy unless they have something to worry about. In some cases, having a common enemy can bring even the most diverse of people together. In this case, the common enemy is the big bird flu pandemic that is supposed to happen any day now. Of course, people have been saying that a big bird flu pandemic was supposed to happen any day now for the last decade. The bird flu is not a threat, unless you are a bird.
Care To Make A Bet?
In 2007, American health officials (including veterinarians, CDC personnel and infectious disease experts) held a betting pool for when the Asian bird flu pandemic would start. To win the bed, one human in Hong Kong had to positively come down with bird flu on the prospective date. The cut off date (to end the bet) was July 1, 2007. It's safe bet that the bird flu pandemic will never start.
Why All The Fuss?
Over the last few years, there certainly has been a lot of fuss about a prospective bird flu pandemic, and not just in the media. The threatening shadow of a looming bird flu pandemic has also been a constant topic of politicians and giant pharmaceutical companies like GlaxoSmithKline, which has been given scads of money to develop a bird flu vaccine for humans.
All of this nonsense about the imperative to develop and practice implementing a pandemic influenza plan and setting up emergency areas and vaccines has all been a smokescreen by world governments and big pharmaceutical companies in order to divert the public's attention from the real serious problems of the world.
Unfortunately, a lot of the serious problems in our world are very intangible and have very baffling causes. These problems include our rapidly declining environment, world poverty and abuses of all sorts. However, there isn't one source we can point our finger at and say, "That's the enemy. Let's go get him."
So now, our enemy is a bird flu pandemic. This is a sort of biological terrorist that threatens baseball, apple pie and good old Mom. As long as we can fight against bird flu, then all of our other problems will be solved. This is sort of mindset our parents used to keep us in line when they told us stories of the boogeyman. Well, we're grown up now. We don't need a boogeyman any longer.
