Reply #1: There's nothing particularly new on that site, but

[SheilaT]

it does put just about everything about the avian flu in one place, which is helpful.

My local Unitarian church does a monthly movie, and last month it was the showing of "Influenza 1918" which was made in 1918 for PBS's "American Experience". It's an interesting film, and if you didn't catch it when it was originally shown on TV, which I had, it's worth buying, renting, or checking out of your library if they have it.

However, one of the things that comes out in that film, in case you're not particularly aware of it, is that ever since 1918 there's been a fear that there would be another such world-wide pandemic of a similar virulence and mortality. The question to ask is why has that never happened?

Here's what I think: There were circumstances unique to WWI which allowed the 1918 flu to become so virulent and to spread the way it did. Those conditions: farm boys with little immunity to disease of any kind being crammed together in unsanitary army camps and then shipped around the country and across the ocean are simply conditions not likely to be repeated. And to invoke the boogyman of airline travel which moves people around the world in a matter of hours overlooks the numbers involved in the troop movements of 1918.

More importantly, it may be in the best interests of government to keep people worried about a highly unlikely event such as bird flu making the jump from birds to people while convincing us that affordable health care for all is much to expensive although paying millions every day to invade and occupy other countries is affordable and in our best interest.