Attack of the Avians

And thus it has come to be. What was inevitable has happened. India finally acquired the dreaded Bird Flu this week. How a nation so vast and so disease prone lasted so long against this virus is really beyond me. I mean, come on, Usually, in such matters, India surges ahead of its competitors. Diseases like Tuberculosis are enough to get you quarantined in countries abroad. Here it's as commonplace as the cold.
But I digress.It's important to know some basic facts here to beat the enemy.For eg :
1.There is a possible risk to people who have contact with infected birds or surfaces that have been contaminated with secretions or excretions from infected birds.
2.Symptoms of avian influenza in humans have ranged from typical human influenza-like symptoms (e.g., fever, cough, sore throat, and muscle aches) to eye infections, pneumonia, severe respiratory diseases (such as acute respiratory distress), and other severe and life-threatening complications.
4.Being a virus,they can become resistant to most drugs, so these medications may not always work.Hence for now, PREVENTION is definitely better than CURE.
4.So far, the spread of H5N1 virus from person to person has been limited and has not continued beyond one person. Nonetheless, because all influenza viruses have the ability to change, scientists are concerned that H5N1 virus one day could be able to infect humans and spread easily from one person to another.
5.OK, this is from the CDC( CENTRE of DISEASE CONTROL, Atlanta ) site so it's all the more scarier :-
Does the current seasonal influenza vaccine protect me from avian influenza? No. Influenza vaccine for the 2005-06 season does not provide protection against avian influenza.
However, there is one basic fact I think people are just overlooking in their goal to achieve mass hysteria. In the last 2 days, the prices over here in Kannur for chicken meat has dropped rapidly coinciding with a rise in prices for fish ( One man's poison, another man's meat!!) As of yesterday, the prices stood at Rs 18/- per kilos in most markets.18 bucks.That's the price of a cadbury's roasted almond..or is it less than that!! And still the stalls were devoid of people. The basic fact that people are overlooking is just this - as far as eating chicken is concerned , India probably becomes safer than most of other countries because of our cooking methods. You see, the virus is killed if heated @60 degrees for 15 minutes. Surely we do better than that when we cook chicken.
Hitting the panic button is not the answer right now. Take the trouble. Learn the facts. Who knows? If an avian flu pandemic does hit the planet, knowledge may just be the vaccine that keeps us alive.

As I write this, turns out NDTV just did a report on the price fall in chickens in all the states of India..The biggest drop being of course, the affected Maharashtra, where as of today, the rice for a kilo of chicken stands at Rs 8. Hmmm...choices choices. A ballpoint pen or Chicken Mughlai ?