2006-07-17 12:35:06 · 4 answers · asked by Alicia 2 in Health ➔ Diseases & Conditions ➔ Infectious Diseases
No one knows if it will become a pandemic in the US in the next year, but it certainly could.
The reason that people are concerned about bird flu is that the fatality rate is well over 50%. Our seasonal flu that we see each year has a fatality rate way below 1%.
At this point, most people who have contracted bird flu seem to have gotten it from birds. There have been a limited number of cases of human-to-human transmission.
We would need to worry if the virus mutates to become easily transmissible from person to person.
Right now, there have been outbreaks in birds in 51 countries in Asia, Europe and Africa. Unfortunately birds that migrate from those areas mix with birds from the Americas as they migrate - who can then bring it to the US.
The other possibility is that a person who is infected could come here by plane before he knows he is infected. It could be spread across the country that way.
2006-07-19 18:21:15 · answer #1 · answered by starlight 3 · 2⤊ 0⤋
the only thing pandemic about the bird flu is the media coverage.
2006-07-17 19:38:58 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
gimme a friggin break! it doesn't even exist!!! thousands of ppl die from normal flu every year. noone is worried about that!
it's just a diversion from what you should really be worried about-global warming, and a terrorist in the whitehouse.
2006-07-18 05:46:47 · answer #3 · answered by knowledgeispowerforsure 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If it does I'll just use all the stuff I stockpiled for Y2K.
2006-07-17 19:38:43 · answer #4 · answered by tsopolly 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋