[ClorrerVeks]

In UK we are stock piling enough flu vaccination for 2 shots per person but there is no vaccine for bird flu yet and even when the strain is known it will take months to manufacture it. There are plans being made at the moment to stop travel, large groups of people and to close schools if a pandemic strikes. We also have a large number of birds migrating to spend the winter here. At the moment the media is only reporting what the head of the Health Service is telling them but Betti is right and reporting tends to say the worse of everything as soon as they can because doing that sells more newspapers.

At the moment bird flu is only spreading through bird populations and it hasn't changed into a strain which is easily spread amongst people. When it does and if it mixes with 'normal' influenza there will be many more deaths than an normal year. I think UK recently quoted a minimum of 50'000 deaths (UK only) but the BBC is reporting that a health official at the UN is saying a world-wide total *could* be 150 million. The WHO doesn't agree and they say it could kill between 2 and 7.4 million which is still a large number of deaths. Either way, bird flu does have a high mortality rate amongst people who catch it.

I hope the UK plan to deal with a pandemic if it arrives is good enough and a lot will depend on how quickly a vaccine can be manufactured.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asi...ic/4292426.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4270755.stm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/02/bird_flu/