Other countries

It seems like many of the other countries that probably have serious problems are busy either denying or hiding the facts. 

What bothers me almost as much as the impending pandemic is the lack of timely information and honest reporting.  So much money being spent to track, study and prepare, yet the people who provided that money by paying taxes are kept in the dark. 

The majority will not be provided Tamiflu or masks or medical care when the crap hits here and most will be unprepared because they trust the media and government to adequately warn them if there is a genuine threat.  Even folks that I thought knew better are waiting for official announcements before getting concerned or prepping. 

They think I'm crazy - I hope they're right.

 

Let face it, there isnt a full coverup because we are being told about some deaths. What exactly do you want the WHO to tell us about Indonesia? I though the number of deaths and potential infections/sick people was being reported in a timely fashion. Not instantly, but not months later.

And 95% of the information which people republish here every day comes from governments, organisations & the media.

We are being warned, again and again and again. People are told not to panic, but they arent told to ignore the threat. They are told it will happen, we just dont know exactly when. How much more of a warning do people want?

Why are you expecting one human death for every bird death, or some other fixed ratio between bird deaths and human deaths? It can kill a lot of birds because it clearly spreads between birds quite easily. Its also clear that it cant spead so easily between humans, or we would of already had a pandemic.

There are cases that were probably bird flu but havent been counted, because for various reasons they havent been able to confirm bird flu. If the official figure is showing confirmed cases, how can they count cases that cannt be confirmed? Its fine to have an alternative total of 'possible bird flu cases' but without the right scientific evidence you cant blame the official 'definately bird flu' figures for being low. Do you want them to fake th evidence if they suspect bird flu but have no definate proof?

The key thing is how well it can spread between humans once a human has caught it. Now there may well be some instances where it has started to spread more efficiently, and when the health authorities have interviened, theyve managed to stamp on the outbreak and play down the story. Maybe this never happened, maybe its happened 10 times. Dunno. But clearly whatever has been happening, hasnt resulted in a pandemic yet.

Yeah but the problem is you cant just start believing all alternative numbers from any source, jsut because you dont believe the official ones.

Nobody here can show me a definate case where 300 or 1000 people have disappeared. There are a few stories that include such numbers, but not enough detail. So I say dunno, maybe they happened, but Ive seen no proof, nothing that has more credibility than the stuff we hear from official sources.

Im not blaming anybody for lacking trust towards governemnts and institutions. The way they give re-assurances, the entire nature of truth, public information campaigns, spin, in todays world makes things far less than ideal.

But the problem is finding credible alternative sources of information. Its fine to speculate, but over atime a lot of speculation seems to turn into fact in peoples minds. Would anybody here gladly bet their life that there have been hundreds or thousands of deaths covered up in china? Would anybody bet their life that there hasnt? Its a guessing game, and I refuse to moan continuously at the WHO just because they wont join int he guessing game. If an individual wats to do that, its fine. WHO have other responsibilities, if they join in with guessing and specualtion, then it has consequences. Those who always believe that WHO downplay things, will think things are even worse than the WHO suggest, so when the WHO go to level 4 I bet some people will think were really at level 5 now. Well I dont think we can make those assumptions.

Some countries are probably covering up some things, but we dont know to what extent. So whilst I agree that there have been some coverups, I do not think there is one giant overall coverup, that means we are being totally lied to by everyone about the scale. Maybe when the pandemic starts, such a coverup will happen, but it may not. I expect that as soon as the situation is serious enough for us to need to know about it, there will be too many dead people to be able to hide this. And as we are all aware of bird flu well before the pandemic starts, our lives are not relying on being passed all important information as soon as it happens. What will matter when the pandemic comes is real information on a local level. When we are at that stage, rumours and speculation will do just as much harm as being over-cautious before declaring things confirmed true.

I dont know how anybody can claim that theres already a human pandemic of influenza.

If there is already a pandemic and its been raging for months then its great news, because its hardly killed anybody. Its a dud, Hoorah, we can all relax.

Well, it all depends what you mean by 'pandemic mode' I suppose, Care to clarify? Because I find no credibility in claims that a full blown pandemic has begun, a pandemic is not something that will rage on without us noticing.

Its true that theoretically that if the pandemic started very slowly, and took quite a long time to travel, then news of it could be supressed for a while. But people seem to think it will travel quickly, in weeks, so I dont see how WHO could cover it up for 6 months. Other stuff, such as if some European countries found a small amount of bird flu in wild birds but didnt admit it, could be covered up for longer periods of time, in theory. But not the arrival of the pandemic in humans, not for 6 months.

swine flu + avianflu = pandemic

won't take much if one mutates with the other then we're in very big trouble

It seems to me we have three possibly four hot spots in the world right now (Human Infections).

Indonesia-over 20 official deaths and a health care system that is completely inept. They have not even tackled the polio virus yet much less H5N1. Government clearly has not and does not have control of the situation.

China- Who knows whats going on there, Official government refusing to share almost any data and with new alogations of massive cover-ups. With fresh reports of cases weekly and reports of widespread poultry infections across the southern portions of the country (1in every 100 birds in market infected). It is hard to tell exactly what is really going on here. 

Caspian sea area-New outbreaks of human cases but little information and when information comes out its usually old and very generalized.

 

Mahshadin wrote: More bad news from Indonesia______________________________ Two more admitted to hospital and a Doctor is experiencing bird flu symtoms.     http://news.antara.co.id/en/seenws/?id=9979

The way I read the article the doctor is reporting symptoms of the patient not symptoms for himself/herself.  I could be wrong so here is the quote.

Iis Suryani, a sponsor of migrant workers, was taken to the Hasan Sadikin hospital which is a reference hospital for birdflu patients in West Java, after a doctor at the Cianjur General Hospital declared she was suffering from suspected birdflu.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200603/11/eng20060311_2496 68.html