I'm waiting til my house is on fire before I get home owners insurance.

Wow. Headline gives me a humpday headache.

There's a joke about getting sick with the bird flu and whether or not you should eat chicken soup to feel better,

but I forget it.

How many issues can there be that are much bigger than tens of millions dieing in a pandemic?

How bird flu gets to Humans 101

Republicans: OMFG the sky is falling! We need to spend money preparing for it.

Democrats: UR STOOPID. We need to spend more than that! Why the fark didn't you do this 10 years ago?!? Oh wait.....

The really fun part is that you can swap the words in italics around and it still works for any issue!

Just ask Donald Rumsfeld what we should do... he's the one vested so heavily in it.

I think this Flu is a media blitz to keep the iraqi misuse of intelligence from being on the news... wouldn't want them to dwell to heavily on the whole shiat sammich that is...

GurneyHalleck: I've read that the lag time on coping with any outbreak will likely be two to three years (to develop a vaccine, get it produced in quantity and distributed). It's not worth worrying about.

What you say would be true if the congress doesn't get off their collective asses and pass some laws that give the government authority to seize stockpiles and force the companies to share their formulas in the event of a national/worldwide emergency.

If a company holds IP rights to a product that is necessary for an emergency public health crisis, then the government should have the power to seize, manufacture, and distribute that product for the benefit of the people with a small royalty paid to the IP owner.

2005-11-02 03:59:27 PM calculator13 [TotalFark]

How bird flu gets to Humans 101

Wow, I don't know why I find that picture so captivating, but I do.

I was planning on getting vaccinated for bird flu after I die anyway.

That will keep me from becoming a zombie, right?

2005-11-02 04:04:30 PM scooby111 [TotalFark]

If a company holds IP rights to a product that is necessary for an emergency public health crisis, then the government should have the power to seize, manufacture, and distribute that product for the benefit of the people with a small royalty paid to the IP owner.

Hmm, I wonder how many posts until you get called a Socialist or Communist because of that statement.

2005-11-02 04:07:42 PM crunch-o-matic [TotalFark]

I was planning on getting vaccinated for bird flu after I die anyway.

That will keep me from becoming a zombie, right?

No, because the vaccine doesn't work to make you better once the virus has already run its course.

The best way to do it, once you get the flu and clearly won't be getting better, is to shoot yourself in the head, thus destroying the brain. Just make sure you don't get blood in the eyes, nose, mouth, or other openings of the people who aren't infected.

calculator13

How bird flu gets to Humans 101

Quoth the raven: "Oh my lord"

elchip: Hmm, I wonder how many posts until you get called a Socialist or Communist because of that statement.

This is Fark. Duh.

I'm a libertarian, but I think that there are things that the government is supposed to do.

Submitter is an asshat.

stock up on kleenex and STFU

NuttierThanEver: My football coach always told me that if you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

But I AM preparing to fail.

/hates disappointment

All my brothers and sisters in the house who understand how evolutionary biology works... let's get bunkers next to each other so that once they DO force this thing to mutate by burning all of the bird-only strains out we still have someone worth talking to nearby.

/tards.

The way Dubya's been hawking this bird flu stuff, you'd think that the phrase "September 11th" had lost all it's political cache...

Anybody remember the swine flu "epidemic" back in the '70s? More people were killed by the vaccine.

lou dobbs was critisizing it last night, but that was because it was rife with factual inaccuracies.

Can't I just buy duct tape?

/hates emergency planning

Is there a point to developing a vaccine for a strain of flu that hasn't even been identified yet? Methinks that would make the vaccine nothing more than a placebo shot.

"Here, we don't think this particular vaccine will help, but cross your fingers!"

This seems like an excellent way to start the bird flu terrah!!
http://www.upc-online.org/battery_hens/42203woodchipper.htm
/ Bird flu is my favorite current event

otakucode

Umm, I do understand how evolutionary biology works, and I am worried about the pretty much inevitable arrival of human-to-human H5N1.

However, you are wrong when you imply that killing off infected flocks is in someway going to accelerate the speed with which the virus mutates into a human transmissible form.

submitter
...in order to deal with a problem that does not yet exist today

Let the redundancies begin and start.

My football coach always told me that if you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

Actually, that was The Sphinx.

Mr. Furious: Okay, am I the only one who finds these sayings just a little bit formulaic? "If you want to push something down, you have to pull it up. If you want to go left, you have to go right." It's...
The Sphinx: Your temper is very quick, my friend. But until you learn to master your rage...
Mr. Furious: ...your rage will become your master? That's what you were going to say. Right? Right?
The Sphinx: Not necessarily.

I'm still waiting for my West Nile shot.

Politics getting in the way of progress again.

I for one will sign a petition stating that I wish for my tax dollars to be spent on more immediate and tangible problems. In exchange, I will forego any vaccine on the government's dime should I get the bird flu.

On another note, why don't we have a bird flu pandemic color-coded scare scheme. When something big happens, like Scooter Libby gets indicted, the government can jack the meter up to say, Hunter Green, to take our minds' off it.

Barnstormer: The way Dubya's been hawking this bird flu stuff, you'd think that the phrase "September 11th" had lost all it's political cache...

Sorry, but that is now known as: September !!1!11eleventy!!!

I think that Hurricane Katrina has showed us that no matter how well prepared we think we are for the bird flu, we will be completely, utterly, pwn3d once that crap starts ripping through our cities.

And the social services shut down, the military tries to corden off state borders, the riots start, the highrise fires burn, the exodus begins, guns and ammo become more valuable than gold, and the End of Days is upon us.

Steven King pretty much pegged it, IMO, aside from the supernatural crap and who knows about that. Spaghetti Monster comes to touch his flock?

George bush is going to ride this country right into the storm, laughing at the helm, powerless to alter our course.

It's already happening.

I am so glad the great national government has another boogey man to slay! Woho! More power to the politicians!

2005-11-02 04:19:33 PM Clavis


Nice image of George W. Bush with his hands round a 12" rubber cock, by the way.

Angostura: It will not guarantee that such a mutation occurs, but it will increase the likelihood dramatically that WHEN the mutation occurs that it will find its way into the human population.

Witness staph infections in hospitals.

Oh, and since when is it so easy to make a vaccine for a virus? Last I looked, every virus that exists is still kicking our ass and we can't prevent or kill any of them with a decent effectiveness?

Bird flu trifecta now in play.

More Fark stories about bird flu this week than deaths from same in US this year.

Pour some 'tussin on it.

"It also includes $251 million for affected nations in Asia to help monitor the disease and build new laboratories, but the initial outlay is modest."

What ever happened to fighting the war on their soil?

scooby111: If a company holds IP rights to a product that is necessary for an emergency public health crisis, then the government should have the power to seize, manufacture, and distribute that product for the benefit of the people with a small royalty paid to the IP owner.

I know that in a time of war, the government can seize your patents and use them as they see fit, so long as after the war is over they pay you fair market value. IANAL, but I bet there's other situations where the government can do that too.

Oh, and I forgot my most important question, can I get bird flu by choking the chicken?

calculator13 [TotalFark]-- reminds me of the junior-high "explanations" of how AIDS got started.

And that girl is so, so hot . . .