In practical terms, forget about the government doing anything sensible that will deal with the reality of a pandemic. Incompetents rule in the Bush Illusion of Government. Do expect the Republicans to use a pandemic or the threat of a pandemic to score political points.

Philosophically, if you will, I can’t help but think that any microbe that can wipe out huge swaths of humanity cannot be a bad thing now. One good plague deserves another and it is certain that humans are a plague on the biological and environmental systems of the planet. It has nothing to do with our ability to produce great poetry and plays, or to make great music and paintings. There are too many of us, we are as a race stupid about our environment, our leaders have neither a real clue nor the political will to act, and it’s too late in any event, certainly for the pitiful remedies that have been dallied with so far.

So as far as the bird flu, I’m neutral. If it comes it comes. I feel bad for the birds we slaughter in our fear. They don’t deserve it. We do. If the biosphere on Earth is to survive we need to be gone. All the ignorant Bible thumping, all the techno promises, all the politician’s platitudes aren’t going to change a thing. You can’t work out compromises with natural law. And that includes the lowly microbe that’s got our number on it.

Avian Flu (aka bird flu) has been around forever. I have friends who were grew up on poultry farms and they tell me so. Some years are worse than others. It is nothing new and certainly nothing to be scared of. Mostly hype.

Scam and hoax are also words that come to mind. Lining the pockets of pharmaceutical companies with tax dollars for vaccines that do more harm than good.

Have no fear. Enjoy your Thanksgiving Turkey with all the trimmings and your Christmas Goose too.

Ric has said it all. The only question I have is why in the hell his comments and others like his are not heard with more force in the mainstream media, much of which is supposedly liberally biased.

Bird flus have been around a long time and probably are the basis of most illneses that are flu like.  Treatment thru homeopathics is another way to balance the bodies immune system.

It’s hard to believe what our governement is telling us about the Avian Flu. And that can always be said about how much I beielve what the press has told us.

Unfortunately, the rise of JIT and other forms of ignorant economic exploitation ironically led to the situation where the most technologically advanced civilization in the history of mankind can’t produce a vaccine because we “downsized” and “rightsized” the vaccine production industry to maximize shareholder profit at the expense of humanity’s future.

I agree that the bird flu has been around for a long time.  If a pandemic is going to hit, so be it.  It is just another in a long list of issues designed to keep people afraid.  Individuals, populations, civilizations come and go.  No matter how careful you are, you will pass from this earth

Some of you guys really make me smile. Hey, if you don’t want to wait for bird flu, just hurry up and kill yourselves, OK? http://www.vhemt.org/

Anyway, no mere virus has a very good chance of wiping out humanity, but it could take out a pretty good chunk of the weak and less hygenic. Is that what you really had in mind?

“bird flu” is bogus, it is just another marketing campaign perpetrated by the scientific establishment.  You got to give them credit, they know how to raise funds.  That crowd at the NIH was delirious when Bush announced $7.1for research on “bird flu”.  Uncork the champagne. 

Let’s see… bogus legionaires disease, bogus swine flu, bogus HIV, bogus SARS, and what’s next, and how long will the public remain so gullable.  We are stupid!  We deserve to be snow balled.

i think the earth is trying to puke humanity out.

Memo to Rethinkit:  HIV is not bogus.  You’re an idiot if you think it is.

I"m most worried about the fact that the Bird flu vaccine is made by Gilead, the company Rumsfeld has been CEO of (1997).  So of course, Bush gives them $3 billion for a vaccine that has been shown to be too slow working.  The dangerous thing about such a situation is that the virus morphs into a much more dangerous strain during that period.  Follow the money.

The main purpose behind the ‘Planned Incompetence” is to line the pockets of Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rove, the true rulers of our sick nation.  At Raytheon we very seldom ever got ‘unbid for’ contracts despite our very powerful lobby.  Corruption rules our country.

Alice,

In 1977 the U.S. government proclaimed that we must “vaccinate every man, woman, and child”.  The threat? it was called “Swine Flu”, based on the belief that the “1918 flu” took refuge in swine and had now crossed back over into humans.  What caused the gov’t to make such a claim? Well, one soldier died after marching all night in winter conditions with a high fever.  He was said to die of flu, and it supposedly matched the 1918 strain (sound familiar?).  The U.S. government’s toxic “Swine Flu” vaccination program resulted in about 2,000 cases of paralysis and a number of deaths.  Thank God it was brought to a halt by president Ford.

These same public health experts are generating funding by making claims of another viral epidemic.  “Bird Flu” is detected the same was as “HIV” and other bogus viruses, by searching for antibodies, it seems they can’t find any actual virus.

Alice, your right that corruption rules our country.  But you are missing how most is perpetrated by the scientific/ medical/pharmaceutical complex.

Oh puh-leeze. There is no such thing as “bird flu pandemic”. It’s all a shell game and scare tactic meant to distract people the staggering levels of corruption in Washington DC>

chuckville,

Just saw on the news that “mad cow” was found in the USA.  If you read about “mad cow” you’ll find there is no proof of that either, the literature says “believed” to cause “mad cow” in humans.  Why can’t animals just get sick from all the garbage they are fed.  Including chickens, and humans!

It is true that Big Pharma will fan the flames of fear so that the sheeple will gladly shell out $3 billion to Rumsfeld’s company, Gilead, for a flu vaccine that won’t work.  Just one example.  Even tonight, they’re saying there’s another strain.  In the meantime, we can’t buy ventilators for the hospitals because we gave it all to rumsfeld’s company for vaccine that won’t work.

And we the sheeple get fleeced without even demanding that our Congressional representatives censure the Bush gang.  Time for us to act.

Has anyone read that there are concerns vaccines are linked to autism.  There is a book called “Evidence of Harm” and another one just published by a Kennedy which reports that the Vaccine Industry lobbied the FDA and were successful in adding two more vaccines to the infant immunization schedule, Hepatitus B, and inluenza (I believe).  Well, this seems to have caused a tipping point due to how the vaccines are preserved im mercury! Yes, mercury! The autism rate went from about 1 in 2000 in 1990 to about 1 in 150 in 2003.  The FDA denies that the mercury preservative Thimerosal has anything to do with this grotesque epidemic.  Outrageous!

Just shows to go you how we must be suspicious of any agency taken over by the Bush lying machine, owned by the corporate interests they are supposed to regulate.

Today GMA has a table full of stuff we need to keep on hand, should bird flu strike!!!  Be very afraid!!!!!  So why would our electricity go off during the 10 days we have the flu?  They did point out that those supplies are things we should keep on hand anyhow….true.  Batteries, garbage bags, etc.

Oh, yes, they are trying to find out where the cow got the mad cow disease in Alabama: easy.  From the mad politicians in Alabama.
At least it gets the nation’s attention off the church bombings by kids who went to the same Methodist college I graduated from, and the 21 years given the murderer of a gay, black, Ph.D in Birmingham (get about the same for selling pot).

Alice,

I like the mad politicians comment, it made my day.

Then you’ll appreciate what they taught me about the ‘Southern schizophrenia’, which now affects/infects our entire country:
We in Alabama developed growing up logic-tight compartments.  In that way, we could spend half the week in church, hearing of Jesus’ work among the poor and how he loved us, how we should love others, yet completely ignore half the population in our town.  And wink at lynchings.  Giving rationalizations, including Scripture all the way: same today for Muslims, gays, fill in the blank of the enemy du jour. 
And that’s how it’s done.  As for me, I despise bigots and can find no tolerance toward them.  You might say Im bigoted toward bigots, not what I was taught to do as a Christian, so I became a deist.

Isn’t it fascinating how similar the lives we are leading parallel Germany in the 1930s?
Thanks again to ABC, who lies continuously in their ‘news’ broadcasts, for airing this great episode of Boston legal that so succinctly laid out the destruction of our freedoms by these Bush administration goons.
Still don’t understand how our ‘fiction’ shows can speak truth, while the news anchors can’t.
Last night’s ‘Law and Order’ had the vigilante modern-day KKKs patroling our Mexican border up for murder, showing how easy the above-the-law folks turn into murderers (not to mention our presidente)..
Can’t wait for the book to come out by some of the network folks who know the anwer to this quandary.
I’m seeing this on NBC, ABC and CBS…..more the wonder.  (Especially with NBC, owned by the bomb-makers, GE.)

And NOW: On-TOPIC:
These on-air discussions of bird flu…....so ludicrous, with no discussion of diversionary tactics and/or the ownership of the ineffective flu vaccine company, Gilead, whose CEO was Donald Rumsfeld.  (And who we paid $3Billion for a relatively useless vaccine.)
Why would you have tuna under the bed anyhow?  How about duct tape and plastic sheeting to protect us from nerve gas?  God, how stupid can we as a nation be?  We don’t deserve to be the primo country of the world (and we no longer are, if you talk to any Europeans).
Cheers,
Alice, the patriot

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) wrote:
In a message dated 3/15/2006 8:54:21 AM Eastern Standard Time, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) writes:

You’ll be gone soon because of your bravery, but I consider you a member of the White Rose Society

I know Bonhoeffer wasn’t the one who said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing,” but he sure understood that principle.  And fought it.

Ronnie Dugger:

“When Mr. Bush is sworn in at noon today the United States Government will be seized in a judicial coup d’etat.
Applied to both 2000 and 2004

Remember how the Gov’t ignored AIDS? 

I’m terrified that the neocon’s could ignore 9/11 predictions.  Even I heard a rumor at a garden party in Jamaica Queens about 9/11, and on that very morning 3 Dunkin’ Donuts places in my neighborhood never even opened up for business.  They were all usually open by 7 a.m.  They never reopened again. 

They KNEW it was going to happen, and they didn’t tell us.

How concerned am I about H15A ?  Very——- very.

What the neocon administration needs now is an October surprise - a true love affair they can get when we’re under some kind of external threat again, just like they got after 9/11.

The thundering silence of the media.  While CBS/NBC/ABC, the propaganda arm of the Corporate America oligarchy that rules us is zipped tight about the 350,000 of us roaring our hatred of this war and the greedy dimwits proscecuting it….....they are extolling the wonderful Tamiflu virus, never revealing that Rumsfeld owns stock in it and was CEO in 1997.

Don’t you love people getting obediently shot with useless vaccine, that may make them MORE vulnerable to a morphed flu virus?  And an ignorant populace that meekly stands by while the stem cell research that could save us from MANY diseases or at least control their rampant attack on our systems is shut down?  Why?  We have a Dark Ages president, who doesn’t know Science, nor believe in developing it to fuel our homes without destroying the planet, to save us from cancers caused by Corporate America’s effluent, etc.

I’m too nauseated to continue.  There are at least 350,000 of us in NYC yesterday who DO GET IT.

ezedit,

I can’t believe you are concerned about “bird flu”.  It was first recognized in 1997, and it is just now making its way to America.  It takes birds almost ten years to travel? The whole story is bogus.  It is just another science fiction story generated by the public health officials.  Remember it is their job to hype stories about infectuos diseases.  Even though 99% of people in the Western world die of lifestyle causes (heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke, septicemia, accidents, murder, suicide). 

HIV? there still is not a definition of how this retro-virus kills t-cells.  Rather odd since it has been known for 70 years that retroviruses do not kill cells.  To learn about AIDS read Peter Duesberg, or the Perth Group, or check out newaidsreview.com.