Temper, temper
Look for the world to get a lot more testy. Turkey is accusing its neighbors of not fully reporting their incidence of bird flu. Syria, which borders Turkey, says they’re not hiding anything. That area of the world is a real jumble anyway. Turkey borders about seven countries, and has recently had a major outbreak of bird flu in which its people, of course, were dying. It is understandable that they might be a little on edge, and they might wonder if everyone is fully cooperating in combating this menace.

The same is probably true of other countries. It has long been conjectured that China is not fully reporting its outbreaks. They are also bordered by a lot of different countries. A lot of birds fly in and out of there, possibly carrying disease far and wide. If China is not fully cooperating, one might imagine its neighbors getting a little angry because of that. I’m a little ticked off at them myself, just on general principles, as anyone who has read this blog regularly knows.

At a time when the world faces the potential of a pandemic, everybody needs to pull together. If they don’t, that can have real consequences in the real world. Those consequences can lead to death and chaos. If that happens, particularly through negligence, a lot of people might be really mad, and rightly so.

Bird flu symptoms
Scientists did a study of cats infected with H5N1. They discovered how the virus attacks the body, and what organs are affected. Just for the record, this is not your regular flu, with a cough and nasal congestion. Pretty gruesome.

Tags: bird flu, avian flu, pandemic, H5N1, flu, influenza, politics,