Its a big word. SARS was touted as being a possible pandemic. Now we have the Asian Bird Flu. It could get into a person who has human type A virus, morph a bit, and voila, we have a new flu virus that no-one has immunity too. So far, most people who get the ABF die, so the potential new flu could be a killer too. Last bad flu was in 1918, and 20 to 50 million people died. No wonder everyone is taking this seriously...
Posted by Toni at January 29, 2004 07:09 PMYeah man. I used to work at MoH with the Douglas Lush quoted in your link and my spies back there are keeping me informed.
I think the idea is that this is going to keep happening for a while - viruses being passed between animal and human and mutating a bit. And all the public health legisaltion is really old - mainly 1956 - and it's not really designed tp cope with all these new public health threats.
Posted by: Cal at January 30, 2004 08:09 PM