Deal or No Deal?
The bird flu virus – also known as H5N1 – appears to have already made the jump from birds to computers.
This new virus is called Naiva.A. Disguised as a Word document, it arrives attached to e-mails that have frightening subject lines about bird flu. Clever. There’s no bird flu pandemic, but hackers exploit the current pandemic of fear to get people to open attachments from unknown sources.
When the Naiva.A “document” is opened, it deletes and modifies files, while installing a program that hackers can use to access infected computers. An infected computer will still be usable, but it will have a new secret life as a “zombie,” which can be manipulated by hackers known as “herdmasters.”
Now THAT’S scary.
In fact, it’s actually scarier than actual bird flu, because the chance that your computer will pick up Naiva.A is far greater than the chance that you’ll ever be infected by H5N1.
Brought to ground
In October 2005, natural medical physician Dr. Joseph Mercola called the bird flu a hoax. Questioning the science behind official pandemic predictions, he wrote: “Research like this would typically be thrown in the trash if it did not strongly support some ulterior purpose.”
And what could that ulterior purpose be? I’ll get to that in a moment. But first, I’ll share some details – both reassuring and enraging – from an excellent article by Mark Tier that appeared in The Daily Reckoning e-letter last month.
Here are five reasons why you will never get the bird flu:
1) Compared to 1918 (the year of the Spanish flu pandemic) we live in a completely different world. Tier notes that in 1918 “scientists didn’t even know what a virus was.” In 2006, we can see viruses coming from miles away. In 1918 they didn’t know what hit them until the pandemic was in full swing.
2) The H5N1 virus isn’t new. In fact, it was first identified about 50 years ago. Tier writes: “For all we know, it’s been infecting people for hundreds – if not thousands – of years. And in all that time, it has not caused a human pandemic. But only in 1997 did scientists actually discover it had infected humans.”
3) The H5N1 virus isn’t easily transmitted – Part 1: Tier cites an article published last month in the journal Nature in which researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka notes that H5N1 infects the bottom area of the lungs. Other flu strains tend to infect the upper lungs, making transmission by coughing and breathing much more likely.
4) The H5N1 virus isn’t easily transmitted – Part 2: Tier offers this quote from an October 2006 issue of the British Medical Journal: “The lack of sustained human-to-human transmission suggested that this H5N1 virus does not currently have the capacity to cause a human pandemic.” The BMJ article calls the current warnings of a pandemic “entirely a theoretical speculation.”
5) It appears that only a small percentage of people infected with H5N1 suffer extreme reactions. In a recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers surveyed more than 45,000 residents in an area of rural Vietnam where outbreaks of bird flu have been widespread. About 25 percent of the respondents reported direct contact with sick or dying birds. About 18 percent reported flu-like symptoms. The researchers concluded that, “transmission could be more common than anticipated, though close contact seems required.” In other words, it’s highly likely that we don’t hear about the large majority of bird flu cases, which are mild. We hear about the deaths. Furthermore, you literally have to LIVE with infected birds to pick up H5N1.
Follow the money
Given all the evidence that we won’t see a H5N1 pandemic, why is bird flu fear so widespread? Because it generates a ton of money.
Governments and health organization worldwide are devoting billions of dollars to H5N1 research, which includes a variety of prevention and treatment strategies. The U.S. alone has earmarked more than $7 billion toward this effort.
Mark Tier: “This means we have an entirely new scientific establishment funded by inexhaustible government money whose sole reason for existence is to find something that hasn’t happened yet – and may never happen. To justify their existence and to get more of that lovely government green stuff, you can be sure that this new ‘government program’ will do everything in its power to keep the bird flu scare alive.”
And you can also be sure that international drug companies are lining up to take their cut. Dr. Mercola noted last October that the U.S. government has devoted $2 billion to purchase 20 million doses of the flu medication Tamiflu, even though it’s only marginally effective against the seasonal flu, and there’s no indication whatsoever that it would be effective against H5N1.
The only thing certain about bird flu is that the market-driven pandemic of fear will be with us for a long time.
Sources:
“The Real Bird Flu Danger” Mark Tier, The Daily Reckoning, 3/30/06, dailyreckoning.com
“Rumsfeld to Profit from Bird Flu Hoax” Dr. Joseph Mercola, mercola.com
