Mon Blog

Bird Flu, Fear and Oprah!

I am writing this as my application is compiling and about to run which generally takes around 5 mins on a monday morning. Nevertheless my mood is upbeat today as I reached office in a record 50 mins. It generally takes me around 2 hrs. The secret?? well I started early today at around 7:15AM while Hyderabad is till sleeping!!! Lazy city is mine.

Well..yesterday was the day that the bird flu fear took over India. There had been many news reports handing out bunch of data but none comprehensive. It made me nervous as I didn't know what to do as an average citizen. The only precaution I took was not to eat chicken on a Sunday. As I kept wondering and zapping the TV channels, I came across Oprah's show. The guest was Dr Michael Osterholm, a renowned 'Communicable Disease Specialist' itseems.

Key points from that discussion:

1 There is every chance that the flu can mutate in a human body into a form that can transmit between the humans easily.
2 This is no vaccine available to counter this.
3 The world economy could cripple as each country takes measures to keep the disease off it's shores.
4 Each country is on it's own..so the lesser developed countries could suffer a lot.
5 People should think abt stacking up food supplies right now.

And many more scary things. I am not sure if this guy is gone over board but he looks very confident and his past record suggests that he is more or less accurate.

Only the next few months could tell if we are again to face a situation like the one in 1918.