Basic subject – what is the debate over? Is the avian flu a serious global threat as presented by mike davis, Richard chavis believes davis had magnified the threat.
Strengths
Arguments
Sanitations, vacines and antibiodics, better overall health care in last 100 years have reduced infectious diseases such that they account for less than 2% of deaths in Canada.
Diseases such as Marburg, hanta and ebola viruses, lassa fever, sars failed to live up to their predicted scares.
People were willing to accept deaths from heart disease, cancer and car accidents, but a single death from meningitis or west nile virus makes front page news.
Examples
SARS which killed fewer than 1000 people worldwide, dominated world headlines for months and is comparable to the number of people who die from a tabacco addiction ever hour.
Pandemic flus of 1957/1958 and 1968/69 were quite mild, hardly different from the annual winter flu, however more people got sick and more people died because more people got infected, not because the pandemic flu was a supper killer.
Facts & figures
Prototype for influenenza disaster was 1918-19 spanish flu desmenic which may have killed as many as 60 million people, a similar pandemic would be a real challenge for public health however a repeat would have much less suvere consequence atleast In developed countries. Since developed countires would now have a chance of an affective vaccine and better antibiodics.
H5N1 in endemic among birds especially chickens. It is a human zoonotic disease, meaning affected animals can affect humans but is not spread between humans.
Appeal
refers to davis as a alarmist fear mongerer that uses words such a horrifying and shocking. since scientists have never had the change to use modern methods to study the emergence of a pandemic stream, predictions that the H5N1 avian
