SCARY SHIT! or Bird flu fears

Scientists have thought for about a year and a half that cats were suseptible to the Avian Flu. Now there's proof. A dead cat found on an island in Germany had the H5N1 virus. If it can go to cats, between cats, it won't be long before it moves on to humans on the rough tongues of loving felines.

This flu wasn't much of a worry for me when it was confined to birds. I don't touch live birds, I don't associate with those that do - I am not a snob, we just don't move in the same circles. As it spreads across Asia and Europe and gets closer to my front door it worries me more, but the fact that a cat has died from this virus has raised my level of concern considerably. I go once a week to get allergy shots so that some day my son and I can have a cat. Now I'm not so sure.

Are we about to see another great influenza pandemic? Is it 1918 all over again? The statistics about that outbreak in the prologue of Gina Kolata’s 1999 book "Flu the Story of the Great Influenza pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It" are even more frightening as we may be on the verge of another pandemic.

"The 1918 flu epidemic puts every other epidemic of (the 20th) century to shame. It was a plague so deadly that if a similar virus were to strike today, it would kill more people in a single year that heart disease, cancers, strokes, chronic pulmonary disease, AIDS and Alzheimer’s combined. The epidemic affected the course of history and was a terrifying presence at the end of World War I, killing more Americans in a single year than died in battle in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War."

According to Kolata this flu was swift and nasty, killing in a matter days or even hours. The symptoms sound similar to Ebola and victims drown in their own fluids.

None of this is good news. I have asthma and without a shot I am highly suseptible to the flu, of course there is NO shot for the H5N1 virus. I have a 3 year old boy who is for the most part healthy (currently getting over an ear infection) but small children are also suseptible to the flu.

This latest revelation has me thinking twice about pets of any kind. It will be years before I will be able to have a cat, and a chicken is just out of the question.