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The Bird Flu As It Is
The bird flu story is one that is continuously changing. Because this virus is a virus, it has the ability to
mutate into, well, whatever it would like to be. The world is full of various viruses. In the United States and
most modern countries, the most common viruses that you probably know are those that you get every winter. That is,
the common cold and the common flu. These two are usually different, at least slightly each year. Unlike a disease
that is caused by bacteria, there is no cure for these viruses because of just how fast they can mutate. For
example, should a doctor find a cure for the common cold, it would likely be rendered useless by the next cold
season.
The bird flu is the same type of thing. It is a condition in which the virus can easily spread from one person to
another person easily. It is important to note that the bird flu has not made that drastic leap from the bird
infecting humans to the human infecting other humans. This is an important element because, unlike others out
there, this virus can be quite lethal to human beings. With that said, it is important to note that this can
happen. Many scientists actually believe that it will happen within the next several months.
So, what’s so bad about this virus? Many scientists believe that the flu has a cycle of 20-30 years in which it
will worsen to a stain that is so deadly that the virus can actually kill large amounts of people. It is this way
because of how fast it can move through the population and how fast it can wreak havoc on the human body. In short,
it happens hard and fast. The last pandemic level of the flu happened in 1957 with the Asian Flu. In this flu, some
one million to four million people are thought to have died from it. It originated in China and was eradicated by
1970.
The bird flu that we are seeing today is a much more lethal strain. There is no way to tell the probability of the
spread of the bird flu if in fact it does mutate enough to become something that is dangerous. There is no way to
know how many people can potentially die from it. It is estimated that the worst case scenario would be that 150
million people, which is 2% of the world’s population, would in fact die from the bird flu.
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