Whilst they might have a few good reads, this is 'garbage'. At best scaremongering. You read you decide.
WHO is one of the biggest 'pro depopulation outfits' on planet Earth. Where is the proof they offer. They will not even let any other outfit test their 'speccie' results.
WHO center is on the trail of deadly bird flu
Team on alert amid fears of pandemic
By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff February 19, 2006 http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2006/02/19/swiss_lab _is_on_the_trail_of_deadly_bird_flu?mode=PF
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
GENEVA -- In a bunker-like chamber beneath the headquarters of the World Health Organization, day blends into night as teams of virologists and epidemiologists track a killer called H5N1 across a dozen time zones.
Fingertips tip-tap on keyboards as e-mails fly to distant corners of the globe amid a constant murmur of phone conversations. A virologist urgently questions a doctor in Vietnam. On another line, a logistics specialist untangles the knots of moving a mobile lab from one remote village in Turkey to an even more remote hamlet.
The suspicious deaths of wild ducks in Romania warrant fast-track tests for pathogens. Reports of the latest human infections in Indonesia leap onto an electronic screen. Confirmation of strange mortality among chickens in Nigeria sends health teams scrambling for the next plane to Lagos.
Detection of the virus in the carcasses of wild swans in northern Germany last week signaled the swift spread of H5N1, with the virus penetrating deep into Africa and Western Europe for the first time over the past several days. In the latest alarm, the H5N1 virus was confirmed in densely populated India yesterday, less than a day after emerging in Egypt and France, among other places. A new death was reported in Indonesia, one of the epicenters of the outbreak.
The $5 million basement facility here serves as the command center in the global war against bird flu. Using information gleaned from offices in 66 countries, public health and veterinary officers in the field, and breaking health data acquired by computer programs, the war room tracks the relentless spread of the virus case by case, almost minute by minute.
''It is very intense; we are seeing 15 to 20 events every day," said Dr. Michael Ryan, head of the facility, with a staff that includes 112 epidemiologists, logistics specialists, communications technicians, and other specialists from 29 countries.
Each new human infection raises the prospect of a pandemic that could claim millions of lives and wreak economic havoc. For nearly a decade, the H5N1 virus was largely confined to poultry flocks in Southeast Asia. But six months ago the disease blazed across the Russian steppe, veering into Turkey before slicing into southern Europe and backtracking into Central and South Asia. Last week, traveling with a rapidity that has stunned medical watchers, the highly pathogenic virus appeared for the first time in Africa.
Mutations that could change the H5N1 strain into a virus able to spread from human to human could occur in hours. The only signal of the shift would come from an unusual spate of deaths.
''We're not going to have much warning," Ryan said. ''One day, two days, maybe three, if we are extremely lucky. Once contagious among humans, the virus will spread like a tsunami. There will be the flash point -- probably in Asia, perhaps somewhere else -- followed by waves of infection that would hurtle around the world."
In the era of jet travel and world commerce, where almost no place is truly isolated from the rest of the world, every country would quickly become a front line in the battle against a new form of influenza, epidemiologists say.
The facility over which Ryan presides features wall-mounted video monitors, electronic maps, sophisticated communications gear, and banks of ''James Bond" computers (whose screens disappear into desktops with a purr of hydraulics to clear space for meetings). ''This room is the eyes and ears of epidemic response," the Irish physician said. ''We're already providing immediate information to the world, assessing risk in each local outbreak, getting response teams into the field, and coordinating their work once they get there."
Satellite communications equipment is designed to circumvent normal phone systems that could become overloaded in an emergency. A strike force with about 400 public health doctors and other specialists on standby at medical centers around the world -- ranging from the US Centers for Disease Control to Israel's public health agency -- is ready to respond on six hours' notice to emergent disease hotspots.
Influenza pandemics -- a pandemic refers to the spread of deadly disease over vast areas -- have erupted about every 30 years, on average, over the past century: After the 1918 Spanish flu came less-lethal pandemics in 1957 and 1968, which killed millions.
In worst-case scenarios based on extrapolations from the 1918 outbreak, some epidemiologists predict that a pandemic spawned by bird flu could kill 140 million people in a matter of months, and sicken so many hundreds of millions that some governments and national economies would collapse. A study by the Lowy Institute for International Policy, an Australian research center, predicted that a pandemic could wipe out $4.5 trillion in global economic output.
The World Health Organization is urging countries to brace for a ''mild to moderate" pandemic likely to kill 2 million to 7.4 million people, according to Ryan.
''We need to steer away from worst-case scenarios or we'll end up like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck, too terrified to move," he said. ''We need preparation, not panic."
As a sign of mounting concern, international donors led by the United States last month pledged $1.9 billion to fight bird flu worldwide, substantially more than had been expected. The figure includes more than $330 million from the United States and $250 million from the European Union. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has earmarked $7 billion to combat an influenza pandemic on the home front, although the amount will also go toward research and vaccine development expected to benefit the world.
But United Nations health specialists acknowledge that the world is ill prepared to meet a major outbreak among humans.
Although many governments are stockpiling such antiviral medicines as Tamiflu, even the best existing drugs may not necessarily help people infected with an aggressive new virus. An international rush is on to boost the world's production of antiflu vaccines -- but there is no guarantee these vaccines will prove effective because no one knows exactly what form a mutated H5N1 virus might take.
Medicine aside, the trickiest task for the WHO is to persuade countries to recognize outbreaks of the disease, report them immediately, and move swiftly to quarantine outbreak areas. China, in particular, has been accused of refusing to provide timely information on bird flu. Impoverished countries, meanwhile, simply lack the will or the resources to slaughter infected chicken flocks and conduct blood work and other tests on individuals.
Bird flu is believed to be borne by migrating birds, making it impossible to control the spread. Still, epidemiologists have been stunned by the rapid advance of the disease. ''The virus is moving quite substantially into new locations," said David Nabarro, the official responsible for coordinating the UN response to avian and human influenza. ''The truth is, this virus is undergoing changes. This warning that nature is giving us has to be heeded."
So why should a few hundred sick chickens in West Africa set off international alarm bells?
''The greater the spread of the avian disease, the greater the risk for humans," Ryan said. ''The more exposure, the more the danger that virus will mutate into deadlier forms that can be spread from human to human."
In its present form, the H5N1 virus is dangerous only to humans with intensive exposure to chickens, ducks, geese, and other barnyard fowl. Most of the more than 90 people who have died of the disease have been peasant farmers or slaughterhouse workers.
But viruses mutate, often rapidly. And bird flu has a fearsome track record: In 1918, a form of bird flu leapt directly to humans, triggering the so-called ''Spanish" influenza pandemic. In less than a year, Spanish flu killed at least 25 million people and perhaps as many as 50 million, according to medical histories.
''The danger is grave, the threat is real," said Dr. Albert Osterhaus, a virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, head of the Netherlands National Influenza Center, and one of Europe's top ''virus hunters."
''Another pandemic is probable, not just possible. It's only a matter of time," he said in a telephone interview. ''Whether [the H5N1] virus will be the basis of the next pandemic is impossible to say. But the virus is already highly pathogenic."
& now another view.
Turkey reports second death from bird flu UPDATE 01.05.2006, 02:26 AM
ANKARA (AFX) - A second person has died from bird flu at a hospital in eastern Turkey, a doctor there said.
The victim was a sister of a 14-year-old boy who died of bird flu Sunday in the same hospital in the town of Van, the doctor, Ahmet Faik Oner, was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.
end AFX report
Two human deaths. Same family. Bird flu. The doctor said.
Reuters has filed several pieces on the two children dying in Turkey. One headline suggests that bird flu, the H5N1 virus, is to blame.
However, reading down in two relevant Reuters stories I found, there are comments from a World Health Organization (WHO) official. The tests for bird flu in the children have not been confirmed by WHO. In other words, no one really knows whether the initial diagnosis of human bird flu was accurate.
Furthermore, the WHO official states, no one knows what type of diagnostic test was done in Turkey.
On the basis of this ignorance, the press has nevertheless taken off with the story and the impression given is: H5N1, bird flu, has killed two children.
Now, even if that were the only error, we would have a ridiculous state of affairs, called JUMPING THE GUN.
But there is more.
The samples of blood from the children are being sent to a WHO lab in the UK, where the final determination will be made. That may sound kosher, but it isn't. Based on past performance (SARS is a perfect example), WHO will make its finding, announce it, and then no other labs outside the WHO sphere will actually have a look at the blood samples or the WHO analysis.
Needless to say, this is not how science is done.
Here is another layer: as I've found through a search of past articles from Asia during the "bird flu crisis," it is routine to test both humans and animals for H5N1 by conducting an examination of antibodies.
What does this mean? The presence of antibodies (scouts for the immune system) is a traditional sign that the person or animal is HEALTHY and has resisted the germ in question. However, since the early 1980s, this science has been turned on its head. Suddenly, antibodies were being taken as evidence of illness or coming illness.
Since then, we have had literally millions of false diagnoses of diseases, based on a misinterpretation of the meaning of antibodies.
Will WHO test the blood of these two young Turkish children for antibodies? It's possible we'll never know.
But in the best-case scenario, let us suppose that WHO searches for the actual H5N1 virus (rather than the antibodies). How will that be done?
There is a good chance some form of "amplification" will be used. The PCR test is the primary method. Extremely tiny amounts of genetic material found in the blood of these two children will be "blown up" so that they can be recognized. Let's imagine that this is what WHO will do. And let's further suppose that, after the amplification, WHO scientists will say, "Yes, this genetic material we found is actually from H5N1."
Bird flu.
Yes, but that's not the end of it. Why, in the first place, did they need that PCR test? Because they found SO LITTLE material of any kind that could be thought to be part of a virus.
In a sense, they admitted they couldn't find gigantic amounts of H5N1, so they had to go to this extraordinary length to find anything they could call H5N1.
That raises a major problem. Every reasonable disease researcher in the world (and here I'm talking about conventional researchers) knows that, in order to say a particular germ is implicated in illness, you have to find HUGE NUMBERS OF THOSE SPECIFIC GERMS IN THE BODY.
That's the way it works.
Therefore, a positive PCR test proves nothing. It, in fact, suggests that the germ in question had nothing to do with why the person was sick or died.
None of these critical factors are being discussed in the mainstream press, and very few alternative outlets are grasping them, either.
On top of all of this, no one is providing or alluding to medical histories of the two Turkish children. Had they been ill previously? Were they badly malnourished? Had they been receiving (toxic) drugs dispensed by doctors? Were they living in a situation where sanitation was endemically bad? Had they been exposed to non-pharmaceutical toxic chemicals in their environment? Pesticides used on nearby chicken farms? Industrial waste?
After arriving at the hospital shortly before their deaths, were they treated with toxic medicines? Was the hospital prone to the spread of infection in-house?
The issues I'm raising in this article are not at all esoteric. They are quite basic.
But the press does not have the time or the inclination to examine them. Too busy spreading fear about an oncoming "pandemic" that, at the most, has killed 70 people globally over the last two-plus years.
And when I say "at the most," I mean it. Because no one has released, in one place, the EXACT tests run (and the ensuing analysis) on those 70 people. So we have no idea how or why they died.
It's interesting to note that, at last count, the 2006 US Defense Appropriations Bill sets aside 3.8 billion dollars for "flu preparedness." They are talking about bird flu.
3.8 billion dollars.
In my many articles on the subject of imagination, I frequently ask the question, do you want someone else to imagine the world for you, or do you want to use your own creative power to invent your world?
As you can see, bird flu is an excellent example of other people imagining the world for you.
Here is the hook they use. They get you, through constant pounding on the same theme in the press, to ask yourself the question, "But what if they're right? What if we are on the brink of worldwide decimation from H5N1?"
Once you seriously entertain and mull over and digest and ponder that question, they've got you. They own you.
You may as well be asking yourself, "What if someone on the edge of the Milky Way blows his nose, and a germ we've never encountered drifts all the way to Hong Kong or Capetown?"
What if the sun yawns, feels bored, and shuts down tomorrow?
