AP PHOTO
INFOAPA worker disposes of dead chickens believed to be infected with the H7 strain of the bird flu virus at a farm on the outskirts of North Tuddenham, England. Concerns are rising that the virus is headed west — to the U.S. — sooner than anticipated.
Those ducks at the park could turn deadly
As a wary world waits to see if the notorious bird flu virus will explode in a deadly pandemic, scientists are keeping their eyes on the skies. Why? Migrating birds.
“The 1918 pandemic was wholesale destruction, and yet the mortality rate was only 2 percent. (With this flu) the mortality rate is 50 percent. That‘s what‘s suddenly grabbed people's attention.”
Dr. Greg Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic Vaccine Reserach Group and a member of the advisory committee on vaccines for the federal Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.
