Originally posted by Coby

---

Actually the bird flu can only be gotten by getting in touch with infected birds, so just stay away from the birds. And the flu isn't harmful for humans, but SHOULD the bird flu combine with our flu then we would have a problem.

---

Originally posted by emcee

---

I don't think it would spred as fast a some people are saying. The virus would travel from coughs and sneezes, meaning symptoms would have to be present before its contagious. So once an outbreak is identified, travel would be restricted to that area. If an outbreak occurs in a developed country, victims could be quarantined in a sanitary hospital. those who do become infected in developed countries would be less likely to die because they likely started out fairly healthy. Unlike developing nations, where much of the population is already weakened by famine and other diseases (most specifically AIDS). On top of that, outside of maybe a few big cities, there is almost no clean hospitals to quarantine patients. I'm not saying the First World would be unaffected by the Bird Flu, if it were to mutate, just compared to its effect on the Third World, it would be minor. The flu already kills like 40 thousand people a year in the US, so maybe during a pandemic year it might be more like a quarter million. Alot, but "minor" when compared to the likely tens of millions in the Third World.

---

---

What makes this scheme more complicated and also very important from the public health point of view is that the order in which the infectious period and the symptomatic periods happen is not fixed for different diseases. Thus in SARS people became sick (symptomatic) before they were maximally infective, so health care workers rather than the general population were most likely to be exposed. It was thus also easier to control the disease because apparently well people were not infectious. With influenza, on the other hand, the infectious period begins about 24 hours before the symptomatic period. This gives influenza a head start in infecting people, before the person knows he is sick and thus more likely to have contact with others.

---

Originally posted by beneficii

---

Originally posted by emcee

---

I don't think it would spred as fast a some people are saying. The virus would travel from coughs and sneezes, meaning symptoms would have to be present before its contagious. So once an outbreak is identified, travel would be restricted to that area. If an outbreak occurs in a developed country, victims could be quarantined in a sanitary hospital. those who do become infected in developed countries would be less likely to die because they likely started out fairly healthy. Unlike developing nations, where much of the population is already weakened by famine and other diseases (most specifically AIDS). On top of that, outside of maybe a few big cities, there is almost no clean hospitals to quarantine patients. I'm not saying the First World would be unaffected by the Bird Flu, if it were to mutate, just compared to its effect on the Third World, it would be minor. The flu already kills like 40 thousand people a year in the US, so maybe during a pandemic year it might be more like a quarter million. Alot, but "minor" when compared to the likely tens of millions in the Third World.

---

Uh no. Please read up, influenza becomes contagious (or infectious) during the incubation period (the period when symptoms haven't started yet), usually about a day or so before the incubation period ends:

http://www.fluwikie.com/index.php?n=Science.DiseaseTransmissionPrimer

---

What makes this scheme more complicated and also very important from the public health point of view is that the order in which the infectious period and the symptomatic periods happen is not fixed for different diseases. Thus in SARS people became sick (symptomatic) before they were maximally infective, so health care workers rather than the general population were most likely to be exposed. It was thus also easier to control the disease because apparently well people were not infectious. With influenza, on the other hand, the infectious period begins about 24 hours before the symptomatic period. This gives influenza a head start in infecting people, before the person knows he is sick and thus more likely to have contact with others.

---

---

---

Flu may not be as transmissible as imagined: The incubation period for seasonal flu averages 2 days, with a range of 1 to 4 days, and viral shedding may begin as much 24 hours before symptoms appear [1]. The generation time, which is the time between when the first person becomes infectious and when a person in the next generation becomes infectious, is estimated to be approximately 2 days as well. The speed with which a contagious disease spreads is a function of the number of additional people infected by each victim (R0) and the generation time.

Influenza, which has a very short generation time, will spread very quickly even if each individual does not spread it to many others. The R0 for the 1918 pandemic is estimated to be only 1.8 [2]. Other recent estimates of R0 for seasonal and pandemic flu typically range from 1.5 to 3 [3, 4]. In contrast, SARS had an R0 of 3 (excluding super-spreaders), and measles has an R0 of 10 to15 [5], all of which suggests that flu is not as highly transmissible in a community setting as has been imagined. Flu spreads rapidly because it has a very short generation time, rather than a high R0. This has two important implications: 1. There is too little time between exposure and disease to perform contact tracing or institute quarantine; 2. Generally applied efforts to reduce viral transmission, even if only partially effective, may reduce the R0 enough to slow the progression of the epidemic.�

---

Originally posted by Plus Sign Abomination

---

Meh, to be honest I'm not THAT worried. I usually weather illness fairly well and have survived lots of little nasty infections. Absolutely isolating yourself just seems somewhat over the top to me.

---