SemiConscious Dot Org

The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died. – Revelation 16:3

For many years now, it has been our firm conviction that the vessel which will deliver Jeebus’ Divine Vengeance upon the human race will not be War, or Terrorism, or Nuclear Weapons, or even Gay Marriage. Nope, it will be Disease; some horrific plague for which we have no immunity, or for which the proper vaccine cannot be made (or for which the vaccine can be made, but isn’t because the pharmaceutical industry decides there isn’t enough of a profit margin.)

Some early contenders for Human Slate Wiper were obviously non-starters. AIDS? Come on, that takes years to kill you. Ebola? Just the opposite problem; it kills you so fast you don’t have time to infect a lot of people. And, most importantly, neither of them is airborne.

No, the Big Answer came to us – as Big Answers usually do – when reading a horror novel. It’s all spelled out right there, kids: influenza. The good ol’ flu has killed more people than any disease in history, including halitosis. Particularly virulent strains can wipe out millions in a few months, most spectacularly in the 1918 Pandemic, when 40 million people died worldwide. Flu pandemics tend to occur once every 30 years or so, and scientists have been warning that we’re well overdue for the next one.

Well, gentlemen, we finally have a contender for “Flu of the Century”: say hello to H5N1, otherwise known as the Bird Flu. So far, this industrious little critter has crossed from birds to humans in 110 cases in Asia… and killed 55 of those people. That, folks, is a 50% fatality rate, or ten times that of the 1918 flu. That’s approaching Ebola-like levels of efficiency. Good job, little feller!

Needless to say, the scientists are scared shitless. They point out that, if the virus mutates into a form that can spread from person to person (which flu viruses do all the time) we would be facing

...a 20 percent mortality rate, with as many as 16 million deaths in the U.S. alone; billions lost in commerce as borders close, disrupting trade and travel; global insecurity due to the reduced strength of armed forces and police. In other words, global “viral carnage.”

But it gets better! There is at least some evidence that human-to-human spread may have already started! Officials in China, where the disease was first noticed, have been noticeably unhelpful in providing information on the outbreaks. (If anyone out there doesn’t think China would intentionally withhold information about a deadly disease outbreak in order to cover their own asses, we have one word for you: SARS. )

What we do know for sure is that H5N1 has hopped the Chinese border and begun to infect chickens in Siberia, which has prompted the Russkies to order mass killings of poultry. We also know that the disease has passed into ducks, which do not seem to get sick, thus enabling them to function nicely as carriers. (Hint: ducks are migratory birds.)

Oh, and did we mention that it would take a minimum of six months to begin producing vaccines in anything like the numbers we would need? Oh, yeah, and vaccines are normally grown in chicken eggs. Kind of inconvenient when the disease we’re trying to combat is killing those same chickens, eh? One British company claims to have invented a DNA-based method of producing vaccine, which would eliminate the need for eggs; however, this is still in the testing phase, and at least a year away.

Of course, even if an effective vaccine were available right now, do you think the US government, state governments, or pharmaceutical companies are going to foot the bill for the estimated 90 million doses it would take to treat the US in the case of a full-blown pandemic? For free? When no one knows for sure if it will even happen?

Nah, we don’t think so, either.