Sunday, November 04, 2007

"The generals may propose, but H5N1 will dispose."

Crawford Kilian at H5N1...

Pakistan is now just the eastern edge of a disaster extending west to Jordan and Syria. Every country from India to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea is either at war, facing impending war, or struggling to cope with the consequences of its neighbours' wartime difficulties. Three of those countries have nuclear weapons. At least six have experienced outbreaks of H5N1.

When the Germans were planning their big offensive for the spring of 1918, they do not seem to have paid much attention to the influenza that was already weakening their divisions. But by the time they launched their assault on the western front, H1N1 had already defeated them.

Whatever happens in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq in the coming weeks, avian flu will follow its own course. The generals may propose, but H5N1 will dispose.
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From Wikipedia, Spanish Flu...

The 1918 flu pandemic, commonly referred to as the Spanish flu, was a category 5 influenza pandemic caused by an unusually severe and deadly Influenza A virus strain of subtype H1N1.
[...]
While in most places less than one-third of the population was infected, only a small percentage of whom died, in a number of towns in several countries entire populations were wiped out.

Even in areas where mortality was low, those incapacitated by the illness were often so numerous as to bring much of everyday life to a stop. Some communities closed all stores or required customers not to enter the store but place their orders outside the store for filling. There were many reports of places with no health care workers to tend the sick because of their own ill health and no able-bodied grave diggers to bury the dead. Mass graves were dug by steam shovel and bodies buried without coffins in many places.

Just saying...

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