I meant to post this last night but then I fell asleep. But before I went off to snoozyland a thought struck me: if bird flu does turn into a horrible pandemic that kills off the young and healthy, will hundreds of thousands of Myspace sites serve as a tribute to these dead teens?
I watched the BBC documentary on bird flu on SBS a few hours ago and have been thinking about the possibility of an outbreak ever since. Yes, two hours thinking about bird flu; I lead an exciting life. Subject matter aside, the use of faux drama interspersed with current statistics and prognoses was rather clever, in my opinion. Instead of just being a frightening, but dry (given the science involved) look at what could possibly happen, we were treated to an emotional view of Everyman's experience, from a Cambodian mother old enough to have experienced the brutality of the Khmer Rouge who wouldn't cooperate with authorities (government fear dies hard) and her infected son to upper middle class American deaths and a British backpacker who'd just been after some cheap sun and sand and her mother's reactions after the proposed epidemic. Very effective.
I admit, I'm sceptical of an epidemic approaching the level suggested in the film. While we have far more effective methods of human (and virus) transportation in a world that's easy to navigate over the course of a day or two in the air, we also have tens of thousands of people (at least - possibly more?) who are working to ensure that potential pandemics are caught before they shut down the entire world. Remember SARS? So it wasn't flu, but the predictions of a SARS outbreak were, if I recall correctly, almost as terrible as they are of a H5N5 outbreak. SARS died in the arse sometime back in the early '00s. Sure there have been numerous cases of infected birds in all sorts of exotic locations; from Indonesia to Romania, even the UK. There have been hundreds of cases of bird to human infection. I believe the numbers quoted in the film were 213, of which something like 150 died. Scary mortality rates, but of these 213 cases, not one (that we know of) has mutated into a version of flu that can pass from human to human. Not that I don't think it can happen; by all accounts all that is required for human to human spread is a bird flu virus that has made the leap to a human already infected with flu, with the two viruses mutating and then going on their merry way to kill the rest of us. Of 213 cases - that we know of, and this is important; how many small time farmers with little else to their name have declined to alert authorities after a death in the family? We've all seen the news reports of birds being culled en masse in villages where an outbreak is suspected. If your birds are your livelihood and one of your kids carks it of a disease that may have been caused by the birds, but may just as easily have been caused by his/her poor nutrition, the deplorable sanitary conditions in your shack, some horrible childhood disease or even toxic chemicals from a foreign factory up the road, why would you tell the authorities, knowing that the destruction of your livelihood would result? It's always sad when a kid dies, but it's even worse when you have nine more of them and a wife and the government kills the only means you have to keep the 11 of you fed and housed. So let's say there are more than 213 cases, out of all of these there has been no case of the flu mutating into a human to human disease.
Maybe it's not possible. Maybe it is possible and conditions just aren't right at the moment. Maybe they'll never be. Maybe they'll be right tomorrow and by next month I'll be dead. Even if a mutation does occur, the same fast moving world that will ensure a swift transmission of the virus will also (hopefully) ensure swift eradication of it. With western interests poking their heads about in third world shitholes, handing out expired medicines and Bibles, someone's bound to notice a hideous outbreak that kills disproportionate numbers of the young and healthy; the WHO even has people on the ground to do it. If need be some thoughtful young soldier will machine gun the carriers of the virus out in the jungle, keeping a test case or two for CDC researchers to study and dissect. No one misses the very poor. The problem is that in the meantime others will have gotten away to infect the rest of the population. Maybe. Poor people travel, sure, they've got to get their birds to market, but it may be that these poor people are just too sick to travel. Maybe the ones heading off to market are the few who, for some reason, aren't infected with the disease. Maybe the quarantine area set up by the local authorities and WHO - and the large quantity of ammunition - will ensure that despite the flu's best efforts, it doesn't go beyond some shithole village in a country no one cares about.
On the other hand, maybe we're all fucked.
What's really been eating me up is the thought of all the suffering to potentially be endured, not just by the dying (at least their pain is over after a few agonising last days) but by those who survive. People in the third world will, as always, bury their dead, weep and get on with it; in larger numbers, sure, but it'll be business as usual for those who really know suffering. We in the West haven't been exposed to death on a large scale, at least not those of us in our 40s, 30s, 20s, teens. We all read _Anne Frank's Diary_ in school, we heard about the tragedy of Hiroshima, we studied Vietnam. Those of us lucky enough to have been educated by the progressives will also be acquainted with various third world struggles, the plight of the Aborigines, possibly America's slaves, the vicious destroyer of souls that is the Zionist Entity, and more. But we don't know the kind of suffering that our grandparents experienced during the WW1 and 2. We don't know what it is to lose our friends, our family to outbreaks of diseases that don't have vaccines because medical science hasn't yet discovered them. We don't worry about losing our younger sister to dysentry because our family can't afford the 20c for whatever the hell it is that will keep her alive. Yeah, sure we all "lost our innocence" during 9/11, and the attacks since. Columbine was a real wakeup, a few dozen young lives tragically lost, the pain, the pain, the pain! But the number of people dead in these incidents is never enough to affect a great number of the population. Sure, we mourn, but not for people close to us; the media ensures that we'll cry, we'll pretend to care, we'll wonder why we're on this earth at all. And then we'll get bored and go play a video game.
So maybe this is our chance to finally feel loss. That scares me. I don't think I believe in God, or any higher power, but I can't help but feel that maybe we've had it too good for too long; maybe it's finally our generation's turn to feel the pain that most people in the world feel on a regular basis, that our grandparents felt. Which is silly, I know. I should probably go to sleep, but I know that while I'm trying to sleep I'll be thinking about privilege and death and pain. That should make for some excellent dreams.
I watched the BBC documentary on bird flu on SBS a few hours ago and have been thinking about the possibility of an outbreak ever since. Yes, two hours thinking about bird flu; I lead an exciting life. Subject matter aside, the use of faux drama interspersed with current statistics and prognoses was rather clever, in my opinion. Instead of just being a frightening, but dry (given the science involved) look at what could possibly happen, we were treated to an emotional view of Everyman's experience, from a Cambodian mother old enough to have experienced the brutality of the Khmer Rouge who wouldn't cooperate with authorities (government fear dies hard) and her infected son to upper middle class American deaths and a British backpacker who'd just been after some cheap sun and sand and her mother's reactions after the proposed epidemic. Very effective.
I admit, I'm sceptical of an epidemic approaching the level suggested in the film. While we have far more effective methods of human (and virus) transportation in a world that's easy to navigate over the course of a day or two in the air, we also have tens of thousands of people (at least - possibly more?) who are working to ensure that potential pandemics are caught before they shut down the entire world. Remember SARS? So it wasn't flu, but the predictions of a SARS outbreak were, if I recall correctly, almost as terrible as they are of a H5N5 outbreak. SARS died in the arse sometime back in the early '00s. Sure there have been numerous cases of infected birds in all sorts of exotic locations; from Indonesia to Romania, even the UK. There have been hundreds of cases of bird to human infection. I believe the numbers quoted in the film were 213, of which something like 150 died. Scary mortality rates, but of these 213 cases, not one (that we know of) has mutated into a version of flu that can pass from human to human. Not that I don't think it can happen; by all accounts all that is required for human to human spread is a bird flu virus that has made the leap to a human already infected with flu, with the two viruses mutating and then going on their merry way to kill the rest of us. Of 213 cases - that we know of, and this is important; how many small time farmers with little else to their name have declined to alert authorities after a death in the family? We've all seen the news reports of birds being culled en masse in villages where an outbreak is suspected. If your birds are your livelihood and one of your kids carks it of a disease that may have been caused by the birds, but may just as easily have been caused by his/her poor nutrition, the deplorable sanitary conditions in your shack, some horrible childhood disease or even toxic chemicals from a foreign factory up the road, why would you tell the authorities, knowing that the destruction of your livelihood would result? It's always sad when a kid dies, but it's even worse when you have nine more of them and a wife and the government kills the only means you have to keep the 11 of you fed and housed. So let's say there are more than 213 cases, out of all of these there has been no case of the flu mutating into a human to human disease.
Maybe it's not possible. Maybe it is possible and conditions just aren't right at the moment. Maybe they'll never be. Maybe they'll be right tomorrow and by next month I'll be dead. Even if a mutation does occur, the same fast moving world that will ensure a swift transmission of the virus will also (hopefully) ensure swift eradication of it. With western interests poking their heads about in third world shitholes, handing out expired medicines and Bibles, someone's bound to notice a hideous outbreak that kills disproportionate numbers of the young and healthy; the WHO even has people on the ground to do it. If need be some thoughtful young soldier will machine gun the carriers of the virus out in the jungle, keeping a test case or two for CDC researchers to study and dissect. No one misses the very poor. The problem is that in the meantime others will have gotten away to infect the rest of the population. Maybe. Poor people travel, sure, they've got to get their birds to market, but it may be that these poor people are just too sick to travel. Maybe the ones heading off to market are the few who, for some reason, aren't infected with the disease. Maybe the quarantine area set up by the local authorities and WHO - and the large quantity of ammunition - will ensure that despite the flu's best efforts, it doesn't go beyond some shithole village in a country no one cares about.
On the other hand, maybe we're all fucked.
What's really been eating me up is the thought of all the suffering to potentially be endured, not just by the dying (at least their pain is over after a few agonising last days) but by those who survive. People in the third world will, as always, bury their dead, weep and get on with it; in larger numbers, sure, but it'll be business as usual for those who really know suffering. We in the West haven't been exposed to death on a large scale, at least not those of us in our 40s, 30s, 20s, teens. We all read _Anne Frank's Diary_ in school, we heard about the tragedy of Hiroshima, we studied Vietnam. Those of us lucky enough to have been educated by the progressives will also be acquainted with various third world struggles, the plight of the Aborigines, possibly America's slaves, the vicious destroyer of souls that is the Zionist Entity, and more. But we don't know the kind of suffering that our grandparents experienced during the WW1 and 2. We don't know what it is to lose our friends, our family to outbreaks of diseases that don't have vaccines because medical science hasn't yet discovered them. We don't worry about losing our younger sister to dysentry because our family can't afford the 20c for whatever the hell it is that will keep her alive. Yeah, sure we all "lost our innocence" during 9/11, and the attacks since. Columbine was a real wakeup, a few dozen young lives tragically lost, the pain, the pain, the pain! But the number of people dead in these incidents is never enough to affect a great number of the population. Sure, we mourn, but not for people close to us; the media ensures that we'll cry, we'll pretend to care, we'll wonder why we're on this earth at all. And then we'll get bored and go play a video game.
So maybe this is our chance to finally feel loss. That scares me. I don't think I believe in God, or any higher power, but I can't help but feel that maybe we've had it too good for too long; maybe it's finally our generation's turn to feel the pain that most people in the world feel on a regular basis, that our grandparents felt. Which is silly, I know. I should probably go to sleep, but I know that while I'm trying to sleep I'll be thinking about privilege and death and pain. That should make for some excellent dreams.
posted by Today Tonight at 7:39 PM
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