Re: BUSH USING FLU THREAT TO TRASH CONSTITUTION !!!!!


Carla wrote:
> Razzbar wrote:
>
> > Carla wrote:
> >
> > > Hey, Razzie, check your facts. You have been listening to scare tactics
> > > that are unspported by the evidence.
> > >
> > > The bird flu is not transittable from human to human--just from bird to
> > > human.
> > >
> > > And IF it mutates to human > human transmission, the -extreme- odds are
> > > that it will be -less- virulent.
> >
> > Well, I haven't really dug or researched it. All I am going by is what
> > I've heard on the BBC. I have heard that if it mutates and becomes able
> > to transmit from human to human, the loss of life would be majorly
> > catastrophcal.
> >
> > You are so right about checking facts, Carla. The thing I was
> > addressing in my post was not so much about the flu, as the way some
> > people will be opportunists, spinning any event to their advantage. If
> > Clinton were still president, the usual mouths would be blaming him on
> > the flu, and accusing him of hidden agendas any time he tries to do
> > anything about it.
> >
> > Far be it from me to deny that the Bush Mafia doesn't practice
> > opportunism and hidden agenda every time they can turn a dime on it, I
> > do believe that when we are in war of ethics against a bunch of
> > criminals and liars, we should be especially ethical.
>
> What really worries me is that Bush is using the scare tactics about the
> bird flu for his own specific agenda that is REALLY SCARY. He already making
> noises about getting authorization from Congress for him to use military
> powers to address it. More likely, he is trying to get another abuse of
> presidential power in under the radar.

Yes this is my take also. Even if the worse case scenario does play out
(unlikely) the military would not be able to do much about it.
Quarantines wouldn't work with influenza. We'd still end up with 2
million dead and our streets patrolled by goons with guns that have no
local control. A heirarchy that ends in the white house. What worries
me most is that I think the cabal in the white house is made up of
criminals. If democrats win big in 06 and launch a few independant
investigations the whole group is not just facing impeachment but jail.
I sure don't want them to have the power to put the army on the streets
at a time like that. "It can't happen here" yeah, right. Just read
a good article from the Washington post that summerizes the avian flu
story pretty well.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/15/AR2005101500102.html

For two years, a deadly strain of chicken flu known as H5N1 has been
killing birds in Asia. While slightly more than 100 people are known to
have contracted the disease, and 60 of them have died, there is still
no sign that the flu has begun to spread from person to person.

That hasn't prevented a recent outbreak of apocalyptic warnings from
health officials and experts about the specter of a worldwide pandemic.
In Hurricane Katrina's wake, health officials in the United States are
talking more and more about pandemic preparation. Some of these ideas
-- such as stockpiling vaccines -- are sensible, whether or not bird
flu turns into a human disease and begins to spread rapidly.


But other ideas aren't. A few scientists have suggested "priming"
people with a dose of the new vaccine against H5N1 before we even know
whether a pandemic is coming. Vaccinating large numbers of people
against a disease that may never appear carries its own risks. Remember
the swine flu debacle of 1976? At least 25 people died from vaccine
complications and no epidemic ever erupted. That should be warning
enough.

Another dangerous idea for pandemic preparation has come from President
Bush. Earlier this month, he suggested using the military to enforce a
quarantine. "Who [is] best to be able to effect a quarantine?" he asked
rhetorically at a press conference. "One option is the use of a
military that's able to plan and move."

The very term quarantine can be misunderstood (not to mention the
military's role). Did the president mean gathering those exposed to flu
in a single location and forcing them to stay there? Did he mean
isolating them in their homes? Cordoning off whole communities where
cases crop up? Not all quarantines are alike; each carries its own
risks and benefits.

If this were idle presidential speculation, it wouldn't be worrisome.
But he isn't the only one talking about quarantines and calling in the
troops. In an Oct. 5 interview on "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," Julie
Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
also wondered whether the government would need to turn to
"containment" or "quarantine the people who are exposed." She too
remarked that the military or the National Guard might be summoned "to
maintain civil order, in the context of scarce resources or an
overwhelming epidemic. . . . It would be foolish not to at least
consider it and plan for that as a possibility."

This is an example of a cure that is as frightening as the disease. It
is hard to imagine how the military would oversee a quarantined area.
If a health worker, drug addict or teenager attempted to break the
quarantine, what would soldiers do? Shoot on sight? Teenagers and
health workers were the people who most often violated quarantine rules
in Toronto during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) scare in
2003. Moreover, the use of a quarantine to control a flu pandemic isn't
only a potential threat to life and civil liberties; it's also a waste
of money, resources and time. The reason: There isn't any kind of
quarantine that will do any good -- at least not for a pandemic
influenza.

Quarantine, from the Italian "quarantina," which means "space of 40
days," dates from 15th-century regulations devised in certain Italian
cities to control the spread of plague by sequestering those thought to
have been exposed to the disease. Along with isolation -- secluding
those who are clearly sick -- it can be an effective tool for
controlling outbreaks of certain types of disease. In 1910 and 1920,
before antibiotics, plague experts in Manchuria controlled several
deadly outbreaks of pneumonic plague using quarantine and isolation
alone. But pneumonic plague, now rare, spreads in a very different way
than flu does. Pneumonic plague germs are coughed out in large droplets
that quickly fall to the ground. If you are more than six feet away
from a plague patient, you're unlikely to catch the disease. Also,
plague patients are typically very ill before they can transmit the
germ to others. "There is no disease more susceptible to quarantine
than plague," wrote the physician Wu Lien-teh, who helped break the
Manchurian epidemics.

Influenza is entirely different. The virus spreads explosively.
Coughing, sneezing, or even speaking launches flu particles in an
aerosol cloud of tiny droplets, which can drift in the air for some
distance. Physician and flu researcher Edwin Kilbourne, who worked with
flu patients during the pandemic of 1957-58, points out that people
with flu may shed the virus even before they know they're sick -- not
much, but enough to transmit the disease. Worse, some 10 to 20 percent
of flu patients have subclinical infections; they never look sick at
all. Yet they can still spread infection. Faced with a flu pandemic,
you'd hardly know where the disease was coming from.

How can you quarantine a disease like that? According to Kilbourne, you
can't. "I think it is totally unreasonable on the basis of every
pandemic we've had," says Kilbourne. "Every earlier pandemic seeded in
multiple foci at the same time. Quarantine simply will not work."

Indeed, a strictly enforced quarantine could do more harm than good.
Herding large numbers of possibly infected people together makes it
likely that any influenza strain passed among them would actually
increase in virulence. Usually, in order to spread, human flu germs
need hosts mobile enough to walk around and sneeze on other people.
Those flu strains so deadly that they kill or disable their hosts won't
get the chance to spread and will die off. This keeps human flu
virulence within bounds.

The signal exception is the 1918 flu, which acquired its extreme
lethality, according to University of Louisville evolutionary biologist
Paul W. Ewald, in the crowded and terrible conditions on the Western
Front during World War I. Troops by the train and truckload were
constantly being moved in and out of this petri dish, meaning a
severely flu-stricken soldier didn't have to move much to infect
others.

.

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