Bird Flu and fly tying

[Gigmaster]

I think the fears about the Bird Flu are, as Shakespeare once said, much ado about nothing. There have been less than 150 cases world-wide, of humans being infected, and all were commercial poultry workers. You can't get it from eating cooked poultry and the virus does not reside within a birds feathers. U.S. commercial poultry is kept indoors. The birds feet never touch the ground, so there is little danger of it spreading from migratory birds.

Everyone's going ballistic over 1 case of Mad-Cow Disease, and 150 cases of Bird-Flu, yet 44,000+ people die in this country from car accidents every year. That's about 116 people EVERY DAY!.....but everyone still drives cars.......! Don't figure???

Just my opinion, for what it's worth.

Semper Fi!

[DianeID]

Gigmaster,
Sorry, I disagree on this. But you're right about the practice of large commercial birds farms isolated from wild. It's not 100% foolproof however unless there's positive airflow and other conditions of a clean room. There are many farms like our favorite farm in Idaho that raise organic turkeys kept in open pens. Many friends have free-range chickens during the summer for eggs and Fall roasts.

The fear is not having bird flu in the US. It will happen and probably will occur this year. Birds migrate, the flu is spreading. The fear is if this mutates from the bird-dropping transmition to the human variety of air-borne transmition. Viruses mutate. It's more common than most think.

As a genealogist, I have many cases where several memebers of a family--or entire families--died in pandemics. And the world was a lot larger back then. We live in close societies and easily travel. It's darn hard to stop a virus. It's fairly easy to avoid a car accident by not going out in bad weather, driving very defensively, and leave that darn cell phone on your desk. (Major pet peeve of mine as well as drive thru coffee shops.) Comparing accidental car deaths to death by a virus is same as apples and potatoes.

[mickporter]

I think the fact remains that 'Bird Flu' is not caught from feathers, or even eating meat, but as in all flu's from being in close proximity to the breath of infected birds.

It can be passed from bird to bird in droppings etc.....

[Jonezee]

The breath to breath theory is a new one for me. Where did you find out about this? Just curious...thank you, Jonezee

[DianeID]

Jonezee, you don't have to worry unless it mutates. You can't get the avian flu by picking up a bird that exhales on you. Otherwise, there would have been over 10,000 deaths in Egypt this year instead of two.

Avian flu is not airborne. You can't catch it by having a bird breathe on you.

This might help:
"Many wild birds carry avian flu in their intestines and shed the virus in their droppings, but they don't usually get sick from it. Domesticated birds, however, can get sick when they come into contact with contaminated water, feed or soil. Birds spread the disease to each other through their saliva, respiratory secretions and droppings."

In case the link was missed in an earlier posting: [url=http://health.howstuffworks.com/bird-flu1.htm:853f4]http://health.howstuffworks.com/bird-flu1.htm[/url:853f4]