Big Bad…..Bird?

Okay, quick quiz. Which do you think poses a greater threat to the United States: terrorism or the bird flu? If you said terrorism then you are watching way too much cable news. The reality is that while terrorism has certainly grabbed the headlines every day since September 11, there are actually other problems out there that are of more concern though you would not know that if you rely on the news or the administration to keep you accurately informed.



As most of you know, the bird flu has made the news off and on (more often off) since the first human case was detected in 1997. There have been outbreaks of the most virulent stain of the bird flu since then, but those have mainly been confined to Asia, specifically India, China, Indonesia and Vietnam and others. The bird flu has so far reached only as far west as Nigeria and so many in the United States may have the false notion that we are protected by the Atlantic on our east and by the Pacific on the west. This is, of course, not true, as we are also well aware that we truly are a global community now and not even an ocean is too large to traverse.



So who cares about a virus that infects birds anyway? Well, under normal circumstances, no one, but this is a very special virus. The wondrous thing about viruses that have made them such a success over the course of history is their ability to adapt, and to adapt quickly. The goal of a virus is the same as that of every other living being, to survive. In order to survive a virus needs a host, it cannot survive on its own, but the virus faces a significant challenge once it infects its host. What happens to the virus if and when it kills it host, where does it go from there? The virus has its best chance at survival if it can infect multiple species and hop from host to host. Luckily this is a somewhat difficult feat for the virus to achieve, but unfortunately for us, not an impossible one. The bird flu virus is special in that it is sometimes able to jump hosts and infect humans, though it isn’t yet very good at it. Because the bird flu isn’t very good at infecting humans that means that the flu doesn’t spread very well. But the virus keeps changing and there is a very real chance that someday soon it will get very good at, and then we are in trouble.



How much trouble? The problem that humans face when a virus jumps species is that it is absolutely unfamiliar to our immune systems. Most of the viruses and bacteria that we experience are like the pesky next-door neighbor, they always find a way in and stick around longer than you might like, but at least they aren’t strangers and we know how to get rid of them. It is the same way with common pathogens, our immune systems have already seem them and have provided us some protection by producing antibodies that detect the foreigner and immediately kick start the immune reaction. The virus that causes the bird flu would be completely different from any other virus that our immune system might be familiar with, and we would have no immediate protection from it. We can look to the past to get an idea of just how devastating a new virus can be to the population. The Spanish flu ravaged the entire world from 1918-1920 and lead to the death of 2.5-5% of the world population with around 20% of population suffering from the flu to some extent. 50 million-100 million people worldwide died as a result of the Spanish flu at a time when the world population was only 1.8 billion (let me remind you that that is less than the current population of only China and India combined). Another important point to make about the Spanish flu is that though it happened nearly a century ago when travel was much less common and international travel was incredibly rare the disease easily spread from its origin in the United States all over the world.



So what can we expect if and when the virus makes the jump to humans? It doesn’t look promising, there have been 350 human cases of the bird flu reported so far (as of Jan. 15, 2008), and of those 217 died, that is a mortality of 62%. Estimates of a bird flu pandemic range anywhere from 2 million- 150 million deaths worldwide though most experts agree that the death toll will be probably less than 10 million. These figures depend entirely on a couple of things, how easily the virus is transferred from one person to another, how lethal it is, and how effectively the global community responds to the pandemic.



I bring all of this up to try to make the point that I am pretty worried. A couple of days ago I was flipping through the channels on TV to try to find something decent to watch when a headline on the news grabbed my attention. The bird flu was detected in West Bengal, an Indian state in the east of the country. I know that the bird flu was found in India in February of 2006, but at the time I was living in the US and India was a far-away foreign place whose problems didn’t really affect me. Now I know better, and I am concerned. Why am I so worried? The entire world is depending on each and every country in which the bird flu is detected to act swiftly and responsibly to contain the threat and try to prevent its spread. After living in India for over one year I have never seen the government do a single thing either swiftly or responsibly. Additionally, ignorance abounds in India and there are reports that in the villages that possibly infected birds are being culled, villagers are either not turning in birds for culling or are handling the live and dead animals in the traditional dress (read, half-naked) with no protective gear and dumping the culled fowl in the nearest bodies of water. God help us. I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I cannot imagine a worse scenario, the responsibility of containing the bird flu in Indian hands. The government is so inept, it would simply be overwhelmed and I am sure that the world over people would suffer as a result of its incompetence. One could be sure that in the US the government would act swiftly, it might infringe on every citizens’ civil rights, suspend habeas corpus and start involuntary and unnecessary quarantines, but you can be sure that it would act. Well, as long as white people are in danger.



Anyway, I think I’ll skip the chicken for a bit.