Bird Flue News And Sane Responses

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One of the issues I have been monitoring is the spread of bird flue and the development of policy toward combatting it. I am still not sure whether the spreading panic is justified, but I will tell you what the official story is, the problems I see with their analysis and what we are doing about it currently.As you are probably aware from the news, bird flue has continued to spread world-wide. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) are both alarmed and believe that continued spread, to the U.S. in particular, is inevitable. Official statistics estimate 1/3 of the U.S. population will be infected and the CDC's current projection of 50% lethality means that up to 1/6 of the U.S. population may die from the disease. The government has stated that people should expect a breakdown of basic services for as much as 18 months. The WHO has also announced a general shortage of one of the few flue-fighting drugs available (Tamiflue) due to a bad harvest of the star anise which is a critical ingredient. The WHO has enacted sales restrictions to curtail panic buying.Now, that being said, I think their estimates are seriously high. The 1/3 infection rate depends on a mutation making the disease transmissible directly from human to human, something which is possible but has not happened yet. We do not have that kind of infection rate even in Asia where the flue started. The 50% lethality is based on reported/identified cases, but there very well may thousands of people who have been infected, were not seriously affected (standard flue symptoms), therefore did not report it, and recovered. There is some support for this in Asian press outlets. I do believe the disease has potential to do serious damage, but at much lower levels than is currently publicized and do not think outright panic is useful or justified.What I do think may be very detrimental is knee-jerk responses by the government and a panicking public. In particular, the Department of Agriculture has already stated it intends mandatory culls of all birds within miles of a possible infections site, before any tests can possibly be conducted. Culls have not been effective in any other country, bird flue is transmissible by wild birds, and, as it turns out, even by domestic and feral cats. Panicked culls have the potential to compound whatever damage the flue actually does with devastation of our food supply and of farmers nation-wide. I think there should be an organized response for this but, at the moment am at a loss on where to start.Anyway, I would recommend people stock up a bit anyway, because what the flue does not do, general panic might. I am going to keep tracking this and hope that people start to lighten up a bit.For ourselves, we are stocking up on seeds to medicinal herbs which research has demonstrated are effective against flues and flue-like infections but which are not in common use (primarily different species of echinacea and St. John's Wort). The logic is that if standard medicinal practices fail, the solution (if there is one) will be something they have not yet tried. We are stocking up on seeds rather than the herbs themselves because of very poor quality control in the preparation of the commercial herbs. Less than half of the echinacea products in a recent survey were correctly labeled and several had dangerous levels of lead. By growing our own, we know what we are getting. This is especially important since research shows that the different echinacea species may have very different effects (early flue trials with E. angustifolia may have been successful because of mislabelled E. pallida).