Avian Flu!!!!  Pandemic!!!  We are DUE for the FLU!
 
The last pandemic, the misnamed 1918-1919 Spanish flu, killed 50,000,000. This flu made its debut not in Spain but in the US of A, with fresh World War I recruits camped in Kansas. Many of these soldiers were fresh from farm country, with limited exposure to such germ cauldrons as, e.g., a Manhattan subway.  Their healthy backgrounds made them ripe for the picking.  The fact that fewer older folks got taken down by Spanish flu has led scientists to wonder if a related  but less deadly strain had wafted through the world around the 1850’s, granting some immunity to the aged.  The 1918 flu was a H5N1 flu, like the bird flu pandemic we’re threatened with as I write.

 

  Curiously, this 1918 flu had a presequel in 1916 in an obscure part of France. Some British soldiers became violently ill, dying quickly. Their faces took on a bluish hue, a sign that some lethal bug had ravished their lungs and was now sucking oxygen from red blood cells in their faces. The 1918 victims had a similar bluish tinge.
  All we need with this new avian flu outbreak is a slight mutation that would allow the bug to pass from human to human. As we know, flu bugs are always mutating. That’s why we can’t use the same vaccine year after year. The vaccine fits into the bug like a latch key fits into a lock. However, the lock keeps changing shape just a little bit so you have to keep changing the key.  Occasionally a mutation is positive. The scarlet fever that we read about in the early 1900’s mutated in a way that made the illness much more benign.  But we’re not expecting that kind of break with bird flu.
  The 20th Century had a number of start-up flu’s but none of them graduated to pandemic status. Old timers might remember:

1957 Asian flu – Elderly suffered the most.
1968 Hong Kong Flu – Children took the biggest hit, suggesting that their seniors, who might have whiffed the scent of the Asian flu, had a bit of immunity.
1976 – Swine flu scare in America. Nothing much happened.  I remember one of my elders remarking at the time that if the flu’s didn’t have such scary names, people wouldn’t be so worried about them. Hong Kong was a foreign, alien (and therefore frightening) name to some of the locals. “Swine flu” does, I admit, sound like something to run from!
1977 Russian flu – This again gave a harder hit to people who weren’t around in 1957.
1997- Avian flu pre-scare.  Prequel?
  Wild birds carry viruses in their intestines.  Usually, these birds stay well. Domesticated birds like chickens and turkeys can catch avian influenza from the wild birds. Infected birds spread the virus through saliva and feces. Water, feed or cages used by sick birds can sicken well birds.
  The Avian Flu has crept through China, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Turkey. Thus far, the victims are thought to be people who have raised birds, sold birds, butchered birds or had some kind of intimate contact with birds. The virus can go from birds to person but not person to person- yet. It awaits one small genetic mutation.  As we’ve seen, these mutations easily occur. Often another animal is the conduit for the virus to travel from bird to person. In the 1916 France outpost that sickened British soldiers, there were pig farms. Pigs are an excellent intra-species jumping off place.

The scientists stand ready to save us all. They claim they have some medicines that might help in treating avian flu. Yet, the U.S. hasn’t even been capable of distributing ordinary flu shots to the population that is the most vulnerable to ordinary flu!

 
In  2004  and 2005, there was such a shortage panic that the frail, the pale, the elderly and infirm didn’t have the strength to queue up for 5 hours to get their flu shots! So I don’t see much hope coming from officialdom!
 
 
 Most religious folks that I know have little doubt that they will go to heaven when they die. The mainstream churches talk up a pretty good case about heaven! But what about.....HELL! Hell has been shamefully watered down in 21st Century theology. 
 *Purgatory* has just about been purged from the Catholic lexicon. When I was younger, I used to take great solace from the idea of Purgatory. I knew full well that I wasn't good enough to ascend right into Heaven, like the Virgin Mary, with my shoes on. Purgatory, I could handle. Doing Purgatory wouldn't be any harder than doing jail time. Shamefully, the Encyclopaedia of Catholicism only runs a half-page on Purgatory. "As its core, the doctrine affirms simply a transitional spiritual state ((possibly instantaneous and coincident with death)) of transformation in view of the assured prospect of the Beatific Vision." That's pretty lame. So it must be either Heaven or Hell! 
If you're a Catholic, you could always die in a state of Mortal Sin. Many years back, I was in Dublin. On Sunday, churches used to run Masses all day long. Outside St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral, a couple dozen vagrant-types were hanging out, trying to shake you down for a bit of silver before you went into church and threw everything in the collection plate. But at a certain point in the Mass, the guys from outside came filing into the last couple of pews in the church. Later, they all left early. They had it down pat! In order for the Mass to count, one has to be present for 3 parts: the offertory, the consecration and the communion. If one missed any of those 3 parts, one missed Mass. That was a mortal sin. If any of these fellows had got their timing mixed up, left too soon, then got struck dead by a car outside on Marlborough Street, they would go to HELL
Evangelical types of Christians, so-called, swear on their bibles that: other Protestants, Jews, Episcopalians, Atheists, Unitarians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jains, Scientologists, Anthroposcopists, Quakers, Ethical Culturalists, Pagans, Wiccans. Santerios-well, anybody but an Evangelical Reborn Christian---will surely go to Hell
 

 Anyone could go there. Anyone still can. Temptations lie everywhere, even within your own body. "Self-abuse." Deliberately calling a line wrong in tennis. Drunkenness. Adultery. Cussing out your mother. Anything AT ALL to do with the Occult. Reading the "Book of the Law " April 9, l0 or 11 to commemorate Aleister Crowley. Playing with Tarot cards. Playing with matches. Messing around with Ritual Magick. Acting too proud. Not acting proud enough.
 
 Just remember the words of the Athanasian Creed: 
"He ascended into Heaven, He sits on the Right hand of the FATHER, GOD Almighty: from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. At Whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies: and shall give account of their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting: and they that have done evil into everlasting fire." 
  -DB

Modern Day: Even more Things to Worry About

  Today the list of things to worry about is unfortunately greatly expanded. Sadly, terrorism is added to the list-as are economic difficulties in the U.S. with widespread unemployment and a growing budget deficit. The list of things to worry about shows little sign of diminishing.

 
           
                New Disease Spreading!
 
 

 Plague
 The Return of Smallpox
 Anthrax
 Brucellosis
 Prairie Dogs
 Encephalitis
 West Nile Virus


  
Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Dead
 
 Plague's Return

 
Catching the Plague

 Symptoms of Bubonic Plague:  Fever, headache, vomiting, pain, delerium, coma, death. The site of the original flea bite forms,  first a blister, later a blackish carbuncle.  Lymph nodes swell and suppurate, forming "buboes." Red colored spots appear on the skin. The formation of these red spots inspired the nursery rhyme "Ring around a Rosy."
 A "Health" item from the BBC online, September l999, raised the spector of possibility that the original l7th Century Black Death might return to Britain. Some black rats, rattus rattus,   the host with the most so far as plague-bearing fleas are concerned, have been sited in parts of the Scepter'd Isle. By the way, the transmission route is rat-flea-man.  "Man bites rat" might also work.

 
 The world's shrunk quite a bit. With folks just as quick to jet back and forth to all four corners of the globe  as we used to be to walk down to Main Street for a soda,  your disease in Tanzania is my disease in the U.S. of A. and visa verse.  (Now that's smart, how can a globe have corners!)

 
       The Return of Smallpox
 
  Smallpox vaccine is a bitch to administer! William Jenner discovered that milkmaids who had cowpox seemed immune from smallpox. So the earliest vaccines were administered straight from the cow. The dead cow lay on the table in the doctor's office, and the hordes and multitudes cluttered around and got their poison right from the cow. Since Jenner's time, medical science has gotten a lot less crude. Still, the vaccine gives you a live pox. The doctor makes a hole in your arm with a bifurcated needle and the pox is dropped right in.
  You'd think the first ones to be vaccinated in the event of smallpox attack would be the doctors. And likely that's right. But you can't have the doctors running around with a live, contagious pox on his arm running around the ER, even if it is kept under careful wraps. A vaccinated doc will be knocked out of the action for two or three weeks.
  Sometimes something called "accidental vaccination" happens. If one baby gets vaccinated and has the open pox mark, his brother or sister could rub into it and spread the pox all over their bodies. If someone gets unwittingly vaccinated that way and they have a weakened immune system -- well, let's not visit that just now. There is also a scenario called "progressive vaccinia" where the original vaccination smallpox site gets much, much worse. We're talking necrosis or worse.
  One in l,000,000 people who get vaccinated die. But if there's any consolation, smallpox makes you feel really crappy before the pox marks come out. There wouldn't be a situation where someone with smallpox got on a plane and infected everybody. The person would feel too sick to make the flight!
Things we never thought we'd have to worry about:
            Anthrax
 
 Mighty scary, yes. If it's any consolation, you can usually tell cutaneous anthrax from an insect bite because the anthrax looks like just one insect bite. If it really is an insect bite, you'd have seven or eight bites. In the more serious inhaled anthrax, the patient might not look too toxic at first, but as we all know, looks can be deceiving. One symptom that might tease out the diagnosis is tachycardia.
  So store up your Cipro and Doxycycline. Either is good for anthrax. The latter is also helpful in smallpox, brucellosis and plague.
 
        Brucellosis
 
  This is also called Cyprus fever, Gibraltar fever, Malta fever, Mediterranean fever, rock fever. It is mainly a disease of cattle, pigs, goats and some of our other four-legged friends. But people mess with these animals and drink some of their milk products. Or a simple break in the skin… Symptoms include fever, weight loss, headache, muscle and joint pain and the disease can either be acute or hang around for months. Although the disease doesn't usually kill, nasty things can develop: encephalitis, meningitis, pneumonia. So what out for that.
 
         Prairie Dogs
 

  These animals are regular reservoirs for bubonic plague. There are a lot of prairie dogs in the S.W. United States. And while on the subject of bubonic plague…….
 
Other Stories
 
I read also that a woman has given her husband part of her liver, the first transplant in the US involving a living adult liver donor who is not a blood relative of the recipient.  I guess if I donated part of my liver to someone, they would come up with anxious depression.
  A story came across the AP wire that Polar bears in the arctic are endangered by PCB's.  Researchers reported they found seven female polar bears with vestigial male organs. This anomaly might be caused by chemical toxicity. I start getting worried when I see sex organs changing, sperm counts being lowered, that sort of thing. I mean--reproduction--that's the Whole Hog, isn't it?
  Along that line, a new antidepressant has been approved in the U.S. by the FDA.  It is still another SSRI, called citralopram  (Celexa). The more, the merrier?

 
  Encephalitis in New York!  (four and twenty blackbirds)
 
A severe mosquito-borne form of viral encephalitis, the "West Nile virus," has struck New York. Birds first began dropping around the Bronx Zoo.  Later - people! 
 
  Crows were dropping like flies!  Health official sprayed the streets of New York. It read like a chapter from  "Death in Venice."  People in New York and points south were asked to box up dead crows and send the corpses in for toxicology tests. With the autumn migration of birds to the south,  the "West Nile virus" will sail right down with them. This disease is a "newbie" to the Western Hemisphere, but it is similar to St. Louis encephalitis.
 
          
   Getting struck by lightning:
 
 
No one is exempt from this unpleasant experience. Most of us know that a golf course is a great place to get struck. You can also try a beach.
Lightning tends to strike the highest thing, and on a beach a vertical person is the highest thing.
 Or--you
might even get struck sitting right where you are, on your computer chair.
 I read a newspaper article (N.Y. Times l Sept.98) which indicates that another dangerous seat is your toilet: electrical charges can travel through metal pipes. 
 Two women walking near the Rose Garden in Hyde Park, London, in Sept.99 met sad ends being struck by lightning. Findings at the inquest suggested that the
METAL IN THEIR BRA might have acted to conduct the electrical charge to their hearts."
 The article goes on to explain that being struck by lightning gives you many more volts of electricity than being fried in an electric chair. But the shorter duration usually does not dispatch you into your next reincarnation -- unless the current passes through your heart and the heart stops beating.
 HOWEVER: many people who survive being struck by lightning do not emerge unscathed. Post-strike symptoms include seizures, memory problems,headaches, and sexual dysfunction. This list is not exhaustive.
Survivor support groups exist.
 
   1918 Flu and Beyond
 
 I have long had great interest in the virulent flu of 1918. This pandemic devastated the population, killing 20 million people or more worldwide.
 Some put the numbers at nearly twice that high. In those days, there were no antibiotics to treat the pneumonia and other bacterial infections that often invaded the virus-weary immune systems of the sufferers.
 
 We have antibiotics now--temporarily. Wouldn't it be something if it turns out that they are with us for only a couple of generations? We all know that they are rapidly losing their effectiveness. It is classic survival of the fittest: the antibiotics knock out 99% of the bacterial bugs so the resistent 1% live on to procreate!
 One curious thing about the 19l8 flu is that a few of its survivors were left with permanent sleeping sickness, eventually falling into a comatose state. This phenomenom was publicized in Oliver Sachs' book "Awakenings" and the film by the same name. The movie version has people waking up after 40 years, dancing around, falling in love and going on fun outings, courtesy of an experimental drug treatment. The small, newly aroused patient community is quickly sobered, however, upon noting that the person who had been reawakened the longest starts going back to sleep. Alas their wakeful bliss is temporary. Any bliss is.
 n reality, a few patients did show signs of temporary arousal but I don't think they did any dancing around.
 Scientists are now investigating the 1918 flu bug in a few bodies buried in the Norwegian permafrost. Their lungs are expected to exhibit the bug, which will then be sent to several laboratories.
 We all know that flus rapidly transmute. That's why the flu shot formula for this year won't do much good a few years down the line. The "lock" changes so the key no longer fits. And sometimes a fairly benign flu can mutate to the point where it is much more lethal--in short, we could have another deadly 1918-style pandemic.