Dangerous Asian bird flu threat! Yet we live in bliss! Already hits 3 countries!
There are serious knowledge issues.Science only gives the students,more so the parents too,what is happening in the world.What is likely to happen in our own lives. We were happy to see that readers of the previous editorial in this place had taken note of what we said about an editorial in the New Scientist magazine. This is a remarkable magazine that every school worth its name should read and subscribe to.The editor of this magazine was recently in India and we had reported that too.
In the latest issue(February) there is this new editorial.It is about what science does to us.”Science is all about understanding the natural world.And the big part is to know how the natural world threatens us!So,we can protect us!”
Medical sciences had been protecting us from the diseases.Then comes the most dangerous news and warning! “For the past one year, New Scientist has warned that an epidemic of bird flu in east Asian poultry could turn into he next great human plague.12 months on,you might expect the scientists have given us the protection measures…no they haven’t” “The stakes are high”.
As we read these lines came the newspapers with the headlines. Datelined Ho Chi Minch city, Vietnam’s capital, the news reveals covering an international meet on bird flu.that a new case of bird flu on the previous week( a Friday) heightened the worry.The meet was to map out a strategy for the deadly virus that already killed some 60 or so people.”Delegates are to call for fighting the deadly virus with a swift strategy. The meet warns:the bird flu threatens to explode into a global epidemic. The very words used in the New Scientist magazine editorial!The 21 year old man who tested positive for the dealy H5N1 bird flu virus and admitted in hospital on Monday his and also his 14 year sister is being tested. The science magazine goes into the likely consequences.
The virus,first didn’t infect people, humans, now having caused deaths and still in the process of infecting new humans,the virus kills 75 per cent of the infected.Bird flu viruses when they spread, spread so fast as to infect 75 percent of the world population! Within months
“A third of the people on the planet, if caught by the virus, that is 1.5 billion people dead”
The magazine advocates some radical and urget measures. Understanding the science of the new viruses is one thing we all have to do.
The magazine quotes another more technical medical journal and points to the still unknown facts.Right now,the government don’t have a plan to combat this new pandemic. Every one has to be vaccinated. Not enough medicines yet.
The virus is like another deadly virus: HIV So,science is not just to know.