Bird flu, migratory birds
Bad omens
February 18, 2005
( continuation of the page started in May 2005 )
Others say that the flu kills 500,000 people a year worldwide. The flu does kill, certainly, but in our country, it mainly affects the elderly, the vulnerable, with already fragile cardio-pulmonary systems. Outside of these extreme cases, it is a relatively mild illness. When a member of your family, a colleague, or you yourself get the flu, no one immediately equips themselves with a mask and rubber gloves. The places are not disinfected with all kinds of precautions. You just end up with a good fever, a little bed rest, and some aches, that's all.
Avian flu, when it affects a human being, is of another order. It is deadly within a few days. This has been proven. It does not only kill the elderly, but also children who have simply handled the birds or plucked them. Whether or not there is a mutation, the threat is therefore serious. In the affected regions, mass culling is carried out, and it is very likely that our country will not escape this rule.
Decisions should have been made many months ago, giving guidance so that farmers could take somewhat intelligent measures. But we remained in a state of expectation, as if this epidemic would spare our country. However, the appearance of avian flu in France on a large scale seems to be a certainty. We are on the route of migratory birds that will soon head north after a stay in Africa. And we know that Africa is already affected. Egypt, for example.
How does the disease spread? We have known since it was observed in China that the virus had reached migratory birds in an ornithological reserve. As usual, the initial event was minimized and hidden (to avoid scaring tourists). But the threat then became potentially global. I don't know if the readers have a vague idea of the distance that migratory birds can cover in a single day. They fly fast and straight. The Mediterranean is far from being an obstacle for them. They can cover thousands of kilometers in a few days.
It is not the largest birds that travel the greatest distances. There are small birds the size of sparrows that can cover five to seven thousand kilometers in a week. We have heard the usual nonsense from the media "intended to reassure." A journalist told us, "anyway, a sick bird can't go very far."
Oh really. Then how many kilometers had the dozens of swans found dead on the shores of the Baltic traveled?
We must face the problems realistically and stop saying nonsense, a common practice among journalists. Or also add that, as with many viral diseases, there are "healthy carriers," who carry the virus but do not contract the disease.
How does the disease spread? Through feces. We saw a sequence on television where a farmer from a farm where the poultry was raised outdoors said, "we take precautionary measures. After our hens have eaten, we close the feeders to prevent migratory birds from coming to feed."
Because migratory birds feed. It is necessary for them. You don't cover thousands of kilometers with an empty stomach. These birds also remember "the good spots" very well. Their navigation system is amazing. Not all of them fly only during the day, by the way. To protect farms, large or small, it would have been necessary to protect the outdoor areas from the droppings. Today, in the general panic, a general confinement is declared. On one hand, large-scale farmers will suffer considerable losses (in addition to losing their famous label "free-range chickens"). The birds will fight each other. On the other hand, small farmers simply don't have coops to confine their poultry. If they had been warned earlier, they could have taken minimal measures, build a shelter covered with a few square meters of corrugated iron, bordered on the sides with wire mesh. Sufficient to prevent migratory birds from doing their business among these domestic birds. But since nothing was said, nothing came from these "crisis cells" which are not exactly dominated by imagination, we find tens of thousands of small farmers, showing visibly too small shelters, exclaiming, "my hens, dear sir, where do you want me to put them!?"
*In Africa, don't even mention it. I don't know if, in a village, people know the meaning of the word "coop." *
If the virus mutated, it would be a global disaster, of which the Spanish flu gives us a ... weak idea. It's better ... not to think about it. Let's stay in the low hypothesis. No country could cope with such a deadly pandemic. It would be complete chaos. But even if the virus does not mutate, this outbreak of avian flu in European countries will create a dangerous situation, accompanied by considerable financial losses, mass culling. You will have to get used to not handling birds by hand, especially when hunting, risking a deadly risk. That's the way it is. It doesn't seem that hunters are really aware of this.
*- Hey, this duck looks very good! What are you telling me? *
Wild bird defenders get involved and claim that migratory birds are not to blame.
*- The spread of the virus does not follow the routes of migratory birds. We should think of another cause of spread. *
Phooey. Another reader informs me that birds defecate in flight, anywhere, anywhere. Indeed, I have never seen a WC for birds. If birds are infected and the virus is in their droppings, they can deposit their excrement on ... salads, simply by aerial bombardment.
No one has thought of this. So wash your salads and vegetables well (it's like being plunged into a Hitchcock film).
We have experienced similar situations, with the emergence of BSE, which could only be combated by mass culling. But, by chance, cows don't fly. We also identified the cause of this condition: feeding these animals meat, "animal meal," a danger signaled by Rudolf condemned on appeal. The laws that our elected officials have voted for, approved, allow the judicial system to support the rolling press of multinational corporations.
Either people like Lemaire, Bové and Mamère are fanatics, resistant to progress (a conception of progress to which Bernard Kutchner, a former leftist turned "left-wing caviar," fully adheres), who, through spectacular actions, only seek to draw attention. We have heard everything: Bové is a leftist, "a bourgeois son who pretends to be a peasant" who "knows very well what he is doing when he goes to prison, go on!"
I suppose that by having his property seized, he must also "find his interest."
Or these ecologists are sounding justified alarms, and I think, as a scientist, that they are. Then they are fighting for you and if you don't move, they will succumb "under the blows of the law."
What should be done is to support them, concretely, financially, instead of watching these things happen, in front of your small screens. Three hundred thousand euros is 100 euros each, for three thousand people. I am ready to put my hand in my pocket, and you? But isn't there 3000 people aware of the issue of GMOs in France?
Believe me, when people group together, not to face armed police but to pay a sum, important on an individual scale, but trivial on a limited group scale, it makes a difference. These heavy fines are made to break the movement. I myself have suffered a similar conviction, for 5000 euros in damages and interest, for defamation. If my readers had not immediately supported me, I would have given up. The fine seemed exorbitant, even for my lawyer, although a specialist in defamation. But a fine can be calculated. How much to silence a researcher at CNRS? How much to silence an ecologist, a deputy.
People are unaware of the power of solidarity as a defensive weapon. Instead of turning Bové's farm into a fortified position, a support committee should be set up. I'm launching the idea. I can't be on all fronts at once. Move, take care of yourself, defend those who take risks to preserve your future and that of your children.
There are pressures, but there are also threats and death threats. Four of my collaborators have been the target of death threats coming ... from the United States. I will not delay in talking about it. I will show you and also indicate the name of the Frenchman who will have to explain his connections with a company that seems to apply strange "methods." I have not received anything: it would have been on my site in the next minute.
Have you not noticed that everything is starting to go wrong more and more around the world? I believe it is becoming more and more visible and believe me, it will only grow and improve. What is "globalized" is stupidity, irresponsibility, the sense of pillage, selfishness, the taste for violence, spread by mimicry (thank you for our TV series). What is globalized is inequality, increasingly insane. Social gains, on the other hand, are eroding. The press dedicates pages to an Indian because he launches a well-structured takeover bid against a group of companies in the steel sector. They mention the fabulous sums he has spent for his son's wedding, while he comes from a country where with this money, you could feed hundreds of thousands of people for years. But which journalist would have noticed such a "detail"?
The press dedicates a dossier to the ski slope in Dubai. It was under construction when we went there, Christophe and I, in July 2005. On this artificial snow, sons of sheikhs ski with diamond-encrusted skis. A few kilometers away, they exploit immigrant workers, Indians, Indonesians, Chinese in an outrageous way. True slaves to whom their passports are confiscated upon arrival. Much more effective than putting chains on their feet. In the Emirates, an Indian commits suicide every week. But they film the ski slope, for ratings.
I'll tell you: while we would have had opportunities there to make money as engineering consultants, the very idea of returning there makes me sick, Christophe and me. I can't imagine, in these times, contributing at a high price to the improvement of pleasure submarines for bored billionaires.
I read that microchips are making their appearance. France has even allocated some frequencies to make these gadgets, as small as grains of sand, functional. I have already reported the consequences of such "nanotechnologies." Again, as with GMOs, the phenomenon is impossible to stop and extremely dangerous.
Man is digging his grave at high speed. Serious disorders are to be expected, on a global scale, in the few years to come. To list the causes, we have an embarrassment of choices. The number of prisoners is increasing, but our prisons are old. Never mind: a week ago, a guard from a penitentiary institution informed me by phone that he was attending a course on the use of the Taser.
Men are going mad, in different registers. The Iranian president thinks he is the Nasser of the 21st century. Islam must reveal its head, challenge the entire world, with its billion men. So our "suicide president" ignores the requests of the IAEA, ejects European negotiators, breaks the seals on his factories, restarts the nuclear arms race. Some say, "why shouldn't Iran also have nuclear weapons?" Yes, but what does this brave Mahmoud Ahmadinejad say? That Israel should be erased from the map, that Jews have no place in Palestine and "they should go back to their homes." Simply....
Sometimes, heads of state make huge mistakes. Nasser said the same thing, who with the help of the Soviets had built a very well-equipped army. And it was the Six-Day War, where the Palestinians lost, among other things, the West Bank.
Saddam Hussein also dreamed of nuclear power. The French (who are also the originators of the Iranian nuclear program) helped him build a reactor called Osirak. The Israelis first sabotaged the elements manufactured in France, in the port of Marseille. But France did it again, and this time the Jews bombed the reactor with bombs guided by a radio transmitter located in the reactor itself. There are precedents of actual actions.
Israel is too small a country, surrounded by too many nations that are violently hostile, to allow a nuclear threat to be installed within range of the missiles that the Russians have already equipped Iran with. If it weren't for the distance issue (for Israeli planes to reach Iran, they first have to cross a good part of Iraqi territory), destruction missions would have been launched long ago.
To top it off, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announces that he will restart paying for oil in euros, as if America was "a paper tiger." But, my dear, wars are made for that. Saddam Hussein knows something about it, who had also introduced this payment method until the Americans came down on him.
All analysts say: if we move from "petrodollars" to "eurodollars," the greenback could lose half its value.
I tell you, we live in a wonderful time.
I'm tired. In a next dossier, I will talk about the "Koogle" operation.
No, it's not the same name as the Jewish cake.
February 24, 2006
Bernard Vallat, Director General of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), estimates, in an interview published on Friday by the newspaper "Le Monde," that "the avian flu epizootic can now spread on a global scale." The North American continent could be particularly affected.
Only aquatic migratory birds seem to be affected.
Bernard Vallat, Director General of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), estimates, in an interview published on Friday by the newspaper "Le Monde," that "the avian flu epizootic can now spread on a global scale." The North American continent could be particularly affected.
Only aquatic migratory birds seem to be affected.
March 4, 2006
Russia
Avian flu can become a biological weapon
20:54 \
03/ 03/ 2006
MOSCOW, March 3 - RIA Novosti. The avian flu virus can be used as a biological weapon, says Evgeny Kuznetsov, from the Center for the Health of Wild Animals.
"The flu is in the fourth group of diseases that can be used as biological weapons," he said. It is easy to spread the avian flu virus: for this, dried bird droppings can be scattered anywhere. The H5N1 virus is very resilient: it remains for a long time in water and at low temperatures. According to the expert, a gram of droppings is enough to contaminate a million chickens.
However, Evgeny Kuznetsov added, the spread of the virus around the world and on the territory of Russia is not the result of its use as a biological weapon.
"I don't see any malicious intent in the spread of the virus because the danger is immense: if a mutation actually occurs, no one will be spared, as it is practically impossible to fight a pandemic," he explained. On the other hand, according to him, the virus can cause damage to the economy of any country. The Russian researcher recommended the population to follow hygiene rules, to cook the poultry well, and to wash the eggs with soap before eating them.
Caption: "The last terrorist threat"
Russia
Avian flu can become a biological weapon
20:54 \
03/ 03/ 2006
MOSCOW, March 3 - RIA Novosti. The avian flu virus can be used as a biological weapon, says Evgeny Kuznetsov, from the Center for the Health of Wild Animals.
"The flu is in the fourth group of diseases that can be used as biological weapons," he said. It is easy to spread the avian flu virus: for this, dried bird droppings can be scattered anywhere. The H5N1 virus is very resilient: it remains for a long time in water and at low temperatures. According to the expert, a gram of droppings is enough to contaminate a million chickens.
However, Evgeny Kuznetsov added, the spread of the virus around the world and on the territory of Russia is not the result of its use as a biological weapon.
"I don't see any malicious intent in the spread of the virus because the danger is immense: if a mutation actually occurs, no one will be spared, as it is practically impossible to fight a pandemic," he explained. On the other hand, according to him, the virus can cause damage to the economy of any country. The Russian researcher recommended the population to follow hygiene rules, to cook the poultry well, and to wash the eggs with soap before eating them.
Previous page, dedicated to avian flu, started in March 2005
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