Let's hope the Killer Bees kill the Bird Flu.
Killer Bees & Bird Flu
Do you remember the Killer Bee panic a few years back? If you've forgotten just watch the news and replace the words Bird Flu (now being called Avian Flu, and once Avian Influenza) with Killer Bees! These two psuedoscientific media scare tactics seems to have a lot in common.
Both have had "experts" tell us "It's not a matter of if its only a matter of when!" Wooooo scary.
Both were supposed to happen sometime in the near but ambiguous future. There is nothing to do about either other than panic and die. The response of politicians to both is very similar, research the problem (until media attention dies down.)
And it turns out the Bees didn't come, and if they did you'd just have to poison them or not go near the big gnarly bee hives. For the most part, the "Killer" Bees that "rampaged" through South America only succeeding in killing a lot of European Bees (their smaller cousin that we all are familiar with.)
Similarly the Bird Flu is just the big cousin of the regular flu. (Why? Because we have no natural antibodies... yet.) All the scientific evidence (in Discover magazine) seems to lead me to the conclusion that there is a 1 in a billion chance the bird flu will make the gigantic evolutionary leap from birds to infecting humans (or any mammal). And if it does it will just be a bigger flu. It will only kill the already sick, the weak, the infirm, the old and the extremely young. (Bear in mind the regular flu already does this already it is just not newsworthy.) This is like West Nile Virus! It is more deadly but only to people on the edge of life and death already. It is just a new strain of a Virus we already are exposed too.
I'd also throw in the Y2K panic to the list of media disasters that never actually happened. So is Bird Flu going to kill us all. Well I crashed with y2k, I got bite by a West Nile Mosquito, I've been stung by a killer bee. I will survive this newest global terror. It must be a slow news month or something.
posted by Trey Laminack @ 9:50 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
I saw an article on page 9D of yesterday's USA Today that in 2004 there were 500,000 fewer deaths than in 2003 -- the first time in about 60 years (end of WWII) that there has been a drop that dramatic. I thought how odd it was that I had heard nothing about that -- and if there had been 1 death by bird flu, it would have been on the front page, the 2nd page, and 4 side articles on page 8A.
Y2K NEVER HAPPENED???????
Man, I guess I can come out from my basement now. I'm just sorry I didn't find out before I went Donner Party on the other troglidites while I was waiting for it to blow over.
I always keep an eye out for those bees, I have a plan to throw myself into the pool and breath threw a hollow reed until they fly away.
I guess you're saying I don't need a back up plan for sickly birds flying over?
Everybody click on the link to Stacey's (Trey's sister) blog, there are actually pictures of my grandkids.
Ah, scare tactics.
It seems like every other week they're telling me that coffee will kill me. Then the next week, they say it actually prevents heart attacks.
And remember that month when they talked about how unsafe eggs were? Eggs? Really?
I also have a hard time being scared of something called the "bird flu." I think they started using "avian" because it sounds slightly more menacing. Personally, I would've gone with "Chirping Death" and adapted lyrics to play to Metallica's "Creeping Death" every time there was a new story about it. Fox News could've taken that and ran with it.
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