Ah, to be a paranoid college student again.

box: For the price of a college course and a half ounce of weed, that dream can be yours again.

grouse: I wouldn't worry too much about the bird flu.
It's possible that you could catch it, but you're probably more likely to kidnapped by nuns and tortured to death by a man with three nipples.

Wow Sean, that is totally my sexual fantasy!

you're probably more likely to kidnapped by nuns and tortured to death by a man with three nipples.

Unfortunately, this is usually presaged by pigeons outside your room.

What a coincidence! I just saw some pigeons coughing up blood outside the window.

Unless you're doing some cross-species cloaca-to-cloaca action with the pigeons, grouse, there's not much to worry about.

The fear (yes, FEAR!) is that people who work closely with birds can get infected with H5N1 and that the virus:

a) either mutated in the bird to be dangerous to humans (low risk)
b) or H5N1 recombines with an influenza already inside the human into a dangerous hybrid (slightly less low risk, but still pretty low risk)
c) or H5N1 mutates in the human to be dangerous to humans (low risk)

If there *was* an epidemic, you're vastly far more likely to get infected with a dangerous influenza strain from a fellow human (?) than from a bird (since the human-dangerous strain may not do well in an avian host - and may very well become less dangerous to humans if it passages in avian hosts over time).

they don't carry it--it was on the news here...they're somehow immune to it i think (because they're full of too many other diseases?) ; >

also, all cooked dead chicken and turkey is safe to eat (except for the usual salmonella and whatever)--i've heard that butchers and supermarkets in France are actually giving birds away bec no one was buying.

if you want to be evil, you can tape down sandpaper or thumbtacks or something like that...

I don't know about your pigeons, but all NYC pigeons were once gringos and gringas who offended one of the Loisaida's many brujas with too many long culo stares and J-Lo comments. They sneeze from colds and dope shudders, not bird flu.

Seagulls and hawks are usually brujas en route to the library or a play.

I don't think you are likely to catch bird flu or anything else from them, as long as you cook them thoroughly.

Well actually I understand that it is human-human H5N1 transmission that is rare while bird-human transmission has happened several times.

Pigeons and bird flu.

posted by: grouse at: 17:23

There have been 16 cases of H5N1 in Italy since February 2006. H5N1 confirmed in 13 dead swans, a buzzard, a grouse and a wild duck found on the mainland and in Sicily.


Be afraid ... be very afraid ...

I apparently failed to consider the eponysterical aspects of this post.

OK I clearly have more important things to worry about. Thanks all.

I'm in Greece, where we've now had incidences of bird flu, both bird (swans) and human (poultry farm workers), as of at least four or five months ago, and I'm also in the middle of a big (relatively) seaside city with lots of gulls and pigeons (I've had two pigeons on my window ledge in the past three hours, and my window is always at least slightly open).

If there were sick pigeons, I would see them before they could be swept away. If it were the gulls, I would see them, or others I know would see them. I'm not saying there's nothing to worry about... I'm saying, "so far, so good".

My point is that right now H5N1 isn't a "killer" variant. The fear is that a strain that is readily transmissible and elicits a hyper-responsiveness may arise.