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A Bird in The Head
For now, only those who handle fowl in Asia appear at high risk for avian flu.
(Sakchai Lalit/ap)
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Eat right and get plenty of exercise -- the same things your doctor always tells you. Right now, the best thing you can do is to not obsess about it and to continue with your regular routines. Personal attention is better paid to a healthy lifestyle and a display of positive emotions like courage and caring than to worry about health threats that may never materialize.
What are the chances of bird flu coming to the United States ?
The chances of an infected human bringing bird flu to the United States on a plane are practically nonexistent, simply because there are so few cases of human bird flu. But even if someone brought bird flu here, it would not spread because there is no human-to-human transmission with bird flu in its current state.
It is very unlikely that a live bird will pass bird flu to North America, though bird smugglers do exist and Pacific flyway birds can occasionally make it across Siberia to Alaska. It is far more likely that some chilled or frozen poultry containing H5N1 will arrive here, mislabeled or smuggled from Asia. In that case, the virus would be destroyed as soon as the poultry was cooked, and the virus would not be transmitted to humans or other animals.
What if the worst-case scenario does occur and the H5N1 bird flu does mutate to a form that can infect me? What if it comes here to the United States in that altered form? What would I do then ?
Stay calm, listen to public health advisories and avoid crowds.
Beyond scaring ourselves unnecessarily, is there real danger in overreacting to fears of a bird flu pandemic?
Yes. Consider what happened in 1976. Fearing an emerging swine flu pandemic, public health officials pressed drug makers to produce a vaccine in record time. Once they did, a mass immunization program geared up quickly.
More than 40 million U.S. residents were vaccinated between Oct. 1 and Dec. 16. Then the program was abruptly halted. The problem: More than 10 states reported cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological disorder, in those vaccinated. Twenty-five people died. The flu never came. ยท
Marc Siegel last wrote for the Health section about smoking and exercise. Comments: health@washpost.com.
