Introduction to How to Beat the Bird Flu -- Better safe than sorry: It pays to prepare for the unknown

Monday, February 06, 2006 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: health news, Natural News, nutrition

You’re about to get some straight talk about bird flu preparedness. First, we’ve got to talk about why to prepare for the bird flu pandemic. And I’m not saying that you necessarily should; it’s completely your choice, because this is not a sure thing this year. We don’t know the timeline – nobody does – but what scientists around the world, and microbiologists especially, do know for sure is that a pandemic is coming. In fact, we have seen the emergence of infectious disease at an unprecedented rate recently. We had a narrow escape from the influenza virus SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) a few years ago. SARS was a virus that was quite lethal and quite contagious, and if you remember, spread to several different countries, including Canada, before the disease authorities got it under control. It very nearly got out of control and became a global pandemic, so we had a narrow escape from that one. But even then, some things happened in the market in terms of what people purchased and what things were wiped out. Things disappeared off the shelves then that indicate what you should be doing right now to prepare for bird flu pandemic. So, we can learn some lessons from SARS – big lessons, in fact – that can help us survive the coming pandemic if it emerges as many world health authorities think it will.

For those who aren’t that familiar with the bird flu virus – where it comes from and how it operates – let me give you the short version. Basically, this is a virus that is undergoing a mutation. It has been present in animals, most notably pigs and birds, and it’s undergoing a mutation to make it able to survive in human beings. This is happening because in certain parts of Southeast Asia, humans are in constant close contact with these animals. There are open air slaughter markets, meat markets, bird markets and so on, in China, Thailand, Vietnam and other countries, and this creates the perfect environment for the mutation and spread of infectious diseases. This is happening right now, and we’re seeing that the so-called H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus has been able to mutate into a form that lives in human beings, which is a dangerous sign. All it will take for this to become a global problem is for a few carriers to leave their countries and spread the virus to some tourists, businesspeople and other international travelers, who will then take it home and spread it to their local populations. Then, as the virus becomes less lethal and doesn’t kill people as quickly, it will become more contagious and have a longer survival time in each host, where it can live undetected, while spreading itself to other populations.

From the point of view of the virus, this is a successful strategy, and this is exactly what SARS did, exactly what the 1918 Spanish flu did and exactly what the bird flu is threatening to do right now. If it is successful, there is no technology in the world that will save you. There is no public health system that will save you. There is no magic drug that will save you. Our hospital beds will be filled virtually overnight. Everyone who is in healthcare knows this to be true. They know we have a certain so-called bandwidth, a certain capacity of hospital beds. We can treat a certain number of people at any given time, and anytime there is a big peak in that – let’s say a million people needing hospitalization for bird flu infections all of a sudden – we simply don’t have adequate facilities in the United States or any other country. So, there comes a point at which the beds are overflowing, and people are then basically told to go home and die or go home and treat themselves. "Do the best you can. Sorry, we are full."

Now, the World Health Organization continues to warn nations and health authorities around the world about this bird flu pandemic, and the Centers for Disease Control in the United States is warning about this, too. There are big warnings – warnings that say things like, "This is the single greatest threat to humanity today." I've heard people from the CDC say things like, "This is the most frightening virus I have ever seen." This is a bad virus, this H5N1. If this gets out, that's the only news you're going to hear for about a year as the deaths begin mounting. Some estimates say half a million people in the United States could die. Other estimates say tens of millions could die in the United States alone, and up to a billion people around the world could die. That's the high end of this estimate, and I hope it's not accurate. I hope that if this thing does get out, far fewer people die – if any – but the reality is that nature doesn't really care that much about who lives and who dies. This is just a virus in action, and there's no humanity in it. The virus has no compassion for its victims; it's just out there replicating, and if that replication happens to mean harvesting your internal organs for its food source, then that's what it's going to do. I know it sounds kind of gruesome, but that's what these viruses do.

No one knows when this is going to mutate, when it’s going to become a pandemic, or even if it will. We only know that it happens every so often on the planet. We know that infectious disease is able to infect the population at regular intervals. We’ve seen it throughout history. About every 27 years it seems, something comes along and wipes out a few million people, and the time is due right now for another one, and it seems we’ve created the conditions that are ripe for this. I mean, look at the way we treat animals; the way we confine them to cages creates a situation that leads to the effect of infectious disease in these animals, so we as human beings are partly responsible for it. But I don’t want to get any hate mail from anyone if this thing doesn’t happen. I’m just telling you that these are some of the things that you can do to prepare if you so choose. I’m not saying this is absolutely going to happen next year, if ever, and I’m not saying that you should spend a bunch of money and have this stuff sitting around in your garage just on the chance that this might happen. I’m just saying that if you want to prepare, this is the way to do it. This is what we learned from SARS, from watching the supply-demand curve shift any time there’s a pandemic. This is the way people who do survive are going to manage their survival.

This article is excerpted from the book How to Beat the Bird Flu by Mike Adams. The full book can be purchased in downloadable or hardcopy editions at www.TruthPublishing.com.