'Bird Flu: Real Risk, Or Y2K-Like Hysteria?'
Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Pop stars the world over have their causes: human rights, poverty, illegal drugs, the environment -- you name it. But cockfighting?
Odd as it sounds, Thai star Ad Carabao had a hit this year singing about the merits of roosters stepping into a ring to claw and gouge each other -- and the rights of the common Thai to partake of a national pastime. The catchy tune's lyrics implore this nation's 65 million people to ``give the roosters a shot'' and ``protest'' against the government.
On a recent Friday night, the song is blaring out of loudspeakers in front of a suburban Bangkok sports arena packed with 300 fans. Feathers fly as the birds clash on center stage. Blood dripping from scratched eyes, legs and throats enlivens the crowd, which lunges forward for a closer look. Spectators yell out wagers with each blow.
It's this proximity to blood, feces and other bodily fluids that in July prompted the Thai government to outlaw cock fighting. The reason: the effluvia are implicated in the increasingly global fight against bird flu.
Public outrage at the ban forced the government to relent weeks later. The compromise involved issuing passports to roosters, which owners ferry from match to match around the nation. After being checked for symptoms of the lethal flu that's killed at least 60 people in Southeast Asia, fighting cocks are issued identity cards with pictures of their heads and legs.
Pandemic Risks
This is but one example of the continuation of practices that may put large swaths of Asia's population -- if not the world's -- at risk. Equally troubling is that the belated response from western powers raises new questions about the world's preparedness to deal with a pandemic.
``True, humans will ultimately contain any pandemic, as they always have done before,'' said Christopher Wood, CLSA Ltd.'s global strategist. ``The issue will be at what cost. What is beyond doubt is that there will be extreme adverse consequences for regional stock markets in the short term. For a pandemic in this cyberspace age will precipitate the purest of panics. Moreover, there is every risk it will be a global panic, not just a regional one.''
Densely populated Asia, where humans, birds, pigs and other animals live in close proximity, is a breeding ground for infectious viruses. The world became aware of that in 2003, when severe acute respiratory syndrome, or Sars, shook the global economy.
Dwarfing Sars
Bird flu could make Sars look like a negligible blip on the radar screen of science.
``The economic consequence of Sars was more than $30 billion, but less than 1,000 people died,'' Jong Woo Lee, director general of the World Health Organization, said in Bangkok last week. ``We cannot imagine what would be the economic impact'' of a bird flu pandemic on humans.
This is where investors in New York, London or Tokyo, who rarely factor health trends into their portfolios, could be in for a brutal surprise. It's troubling that Jong says he believes ``there will be'' another human influenza pandemic. The WHO is warning that the risk bird flu could kill as many as 7.4 million people is at its highest since a 1968 outbreak killed about 3 million.
Hence all the attention on Asia, which WHO officials see as the genesis of the next global pandemic. That became more clear with last week's visit to Asia by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt. It was the first bird-flu-related fact- finding mission by a senior U.S. official.
Missteps Already?
Trouble is, the U.S. and others may already be making a couple of blunders. For one thing, there's too much focus on stockpiling anti-viral drugs and vaccines and not enough on creating an infrastructure to halt the spread of the underlying flu. For another, more pressure should be put on corporate executives to devise bird-flu disaster plans.
Still, Leavitt's visit helped underscore the call for greater urgency on bird flu. Ditto for news that the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain, which has killed humans in Asia, had made it to poultry in Romania and Turkey, right on Western Europe's doorstep.
Chatting up everyone from businesspeople to taxi drivers in Asia, one senses some trepidation about a media-created hysteria. ``This is Y2K all over again,'' complains Bangkok taxi driver Wichai Yongchaiyudh. ``The press is making a mountain out of a tiny little hill, just like they did in 1999 with the Year 2000 bug.''
More Action Needed
Perhaps, yet every human infection is an opportunity for bird flu to mutate and spread more broadly and rapidly. Once that process begins, it could get out of control in some nations before international authorities now it, and could advance unimpeded across borders.
The best that can be said about bird flu is that the world is slowly realizing its risk. Yet that's hardly enough.
``Like nuclear conflicts on the Korean peninsula or an earthquake in Tokyo, the more focus on the issue and safeguards taken to prevent it, the better the chance that the worst fears are not realized,'' said CLSA's Wood. ``Still, this isn't a reason to dismiss the subject out of hand.''
'Is Tamiflu A Prescription For Survival?'
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Further down this page, you'll also find a comprehensive selection of the finest books on Urban Survival and Survival in the City. You can also click on the Amazon.com button under each of these titles to read extracts from, or reviews of them, or to place an order.
This expertly-written book on Survival Skills in the City, by John Wiseman, author of the bestselling 'SAS SURVIVAL HANDBOOK' and survival skills instructor for the famed British SAS Regiment, will equipt you for survival in the toughest environment of all - the urban jungle!
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This is the finest survival instruction and reference guide available. These techniques were taught to elite commando troops who were trained to carry out isolated, arduous operations all over the world; resupply was frequently impossible, requiring them to live off the land.
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This book will give you expert instruction in the complete spectrum of wilderness skills, and could save your life! Ideal for hunters, fishermen, canoeists, campers, climbers, prospectors, wilderness travellers, military, militia and rescue personnel etc., and for those who wish to learn how to stay alive in the wilderness, and in rough country, and to survive under any conceivable set of circumstances. "
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Whether you want to learn useful rural, homesteader or "back-to-the-land" survival skills, acquire invaluable money-saving or food-raising and preserving techniques, or to use and enjoy the astonishing wealth of over 1,000 recipes and hundreds of proven tips for cutting your personal living costs or becoming more self-reliant, or you just want regular access to Carla Emery's unparalleled storehouse of experience and advice on everything related to self-sufficient living, this is a book that you must have!
This amazing 864 page volume, now in its ninth printing, is the result of an extraordinary fusion of Carla Henry's vast experience in every area of self-reliant living with the feedback and comments [many of which are reproduced in the book] of her more than thirty thousand readers around the world. The book, in consequence, is an invaluable treasure-trove of well-tested, practical and ingenious recipes, formulas, ideas and advice. Whether you live in the city or the country, you'll find yourself consulting Carla Henry's 'Encyclopedia Of Country Living' frequently and profiting by it - or just sitting down and reading it for sheer pleasure! It is perhaps the most comprehensive resource available on the topics it covers.
You'll learn:
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We couldn't agree more, and we urge you to add this one-of-a-kind telephone book-sized treasury of earthy, folksy and wise country wisdom to your own library, while you still can! You'll save a lot, you'll learn a lot, end you'll be endlessly informed, intrigued, amused and edified by its seemingly-inexaustible and ever-useful contents.
Outsize paperback; 864 pages
And it seems that we're not alone in our high opinion of this superb modern classic!
What reviewers across America thought of this superb reference and instructional resource book:
"It is a superb reference book, better than any number of those that pretend to teach you survival skills by concentrating on just a few crafts." - Survival Tomorrow
"This is really an encylopedia and, like a good encyclopedia, the narrative is clear and complete, the illustrations are plentiful and the whole thing is thoroughly indexed. You can spend a fortune on a library of neo-pioneer books or you can buy "BACK TO BASICS" - Times & World News, Roanoke, Va.
"If you're going to go back to the good old days you'll need some the good old days didn't have...an instruction manual." - Cincinnati Enquirer
"Open the book at any page and there's something of interest." - Chicago Sun-Times
"...it would be an asset to anyone's personal library at home. We recommend it highly." - Kansas City TimesFrom the Introduction:
"'Back To Basics' is a book about the simple life. It is about old-fashioned ways of doing things, and old-fashioned craftsmanship, and old-fashioned food, and old-fashioned fun. It is also about independence - the kind of down-home self-reliance that our grandparents and great grandparents took for granted, and that we moderns often think has vanished forever, along with supermarket tomatoes that taste good, packaged bread that does not have additives, and holidays that are not commercialized.In a period of terrorism, war, and increasing oil and gasoline prices, with the disruptions, shortages, and inflation which are likely to result, that last paragraph reminds us that we may all have an increasing need for improved personal survival, budgetary, and independent-living skills over the next few years! This is an essential book that anyone concerned with saving money and with deveoping practical living-skills must have.At its heart 'Back To Basics' is a how-to book packed with hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, charts, tables, diagrams, and illustrations to help you and your family reestablish control over your day-to-day lives. The book is organized into six main sections. The first deals with shelter, the second with energy, the third with raising food, the forth with preserving food, the fifth with home crafts, and the sixth with recreation.The subjects presented lead in logical sequence along the way stations on the road to self-sufficiency. An added feature, "Sources and Resources," lists suggestions for further reading plus names of suppliers of hard-to-find equipment.
Practical, useful information is provided on just about every skill and handicraft under the sun. You will learn how to make your own cheese, raise your own chickens, harvest your own honey, generate your own electricity, and brew your own applejack. You will be able to try your hand at blacksmithing, broom-making, and stone masonry. You will discover how to make soap, tan a hide, build an igloo, heat with wood, smoke a salmon, and create your own cosmetics. Some projects are difficult and demanding - building a log cabin or installing a solar water heating system are tasks for someone with experience, skill, and a strong back. But most of the jobs are well within the capabilities of the average person, and many are suited for family participation, especially for the kids.
While 'Back To Basics' is a book for doing, it is also a book for dreaming. There is no need to run out and start baking adobe bricks in order to enjoy learning the ins and outs of adobe construction. [It might even set you thinking about putting up your own adobe home someday]. Similarly, your imagination is apt to be fired by the interviews with folks around the country who are already practicing the skills and crafts described in 'Back To Basics'. Among others, you will hear from a husband-and-wife team who built a log cabin in Alaska, some suburban kids who raise goats and pigs in their backyard, a city worker who specializes in urban gardening, and a New Hampshire artisan who is keeping alive the Indian art of building birchbark canoes. There are also descriptions of by-gone ways of doing things: the technique of pitsawing, the Indian way of smoking a deer hide and making jerky, the inner workings of a water-powered gristmill. These - along with the historical background of each skill and charming old prints that illustrate many of them - make for fascinating reading.
Americans are a contradictory people. No nation has ever moved further from the harsh realities of wilderness existence. Yet. paradoxically, no nation has clung more tenaciously to its early ideals - to the concept of personal independence, to the mystique of the frontier, to the early pioneers' sense of rugged self-reliance. It is as if somewhere, deep in the American spirit, there has always lurked a distrust of the very technology that we, more than any other people, have spawned. Perhaps this distrust was an accident, but perhaps it was fate; for in the light of recent events that have called into question our easy dependence on modern technology, it seems to have been prophetic. Americans have long yearned for a return to basics; now, suddenly, it has become a necessity. 'Back To Basics' can do much to guide the way."
This is an absolutely essential book if you wish to increase your self-reliance and personal survival skills, as well as provide yourself with an essential reference and how-to resource in preparation for any future food or energy disruptions and shortages. We urge you to order your own copy quickly to be sure of obtaining one! This is an ideal companion to the equally-essential, bestselling 'ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COUNTRY LIVING' [see above].
Take this opportunity to add the superb, comprehensive, and invaluable 'BACK TO BASICS' to your survival, independent-living, or home library!"
Large hardback; 456 pages pages
