bird flu

You probably forgot about the bird flu. There is little visible evidence of it, especially here. It is no longer front page news, so why bother? Shouldn't we worry about the subprime meltdown and the stagnating economy? Just like it is hard to think about dire consequences of global warming during an ice-storm, it is hard to think about bird flu when there are no cases. These things may be invisible but they have not gone away. Both are increasingly likely as the population expands and becomes more mobile. And the "economy" plays a key role in the spread of both.

The US economy is driven by consumer spending. Fully two thirds of it depends on unnecessary and wasteful spending. Economists call this type of waste discretionary spending. It just sounds better. Discretionary spending spits out millions of metric tons of CO2 each year. It slowly accumulates, largely unnoticed. But it may turn our beloved planet into another Venus before long.

Discretionary spending in the US is crucial not just for US retailers, but for the millions of Chinese, Taiwanese, and other Asian widget manufacturers. It relies on global trade and shipping of goods. And since the great plague of 1499, we all know that such trade carries unwanted stowaways. But discretionary spending also feeds an even more efficient method to spread disease: airline travel. That next flight could be far more damaging than the ones that hit the world trade center.

Flying is not just bad for the environment, it will be the enabler and main conduit for a global pandemic. And when it comes to pandemics, all experts agree it is no longer a matter of "if," but "when." Sooner or later, a killer respiratory virus will emerge. It could be a variant of the current H5N1 that is quietly chugging along in bird stocks. But it need not be. H5N1 has almost all the needed properties, except one: it does not transmit efficiently from one person to another. You could say, so what, if you don't have that you are like a car without wheels. True, but while the car will never develop wheels to solve its problem, viruses do mutate and acquire new traits. And they do so very rapidly.

Ironically enough, one problem could "solve" another. Or at least delay it significantly. Because, unlike wars, diseases do kill large numbers of people. And unlike endemic flu, epidemics and pandemics kill the younger, more vigorous ones. The ones with the best consumptive and reproductive potential. The ones who can mount a serious immune response. Because, unlike what you may think, it is the immune response that kills in these cases.

What is especially bothersome is that a second killer wave due to bacterial super-infection could also re-appear. Bacterial super-infection played a big role in the flu of 1918, when no antibiotics were available. Even though we now have antibiotics, our over-exploitation of them has caused widespread resistance. We are quickly heading back to a pre-antibiotic condition.

Because, once again, we over-indulged ourselves. Driven mostly by the desire to make a quick profit, antibiotics were over-prescribed. And they weren't just over-prescribed to humans. Soon enough people discovered they could grow more and bigger cattle if they mixed antibiotics into the feed. But guess what? The bugs did not disappear, they just mutated and became resistant. It is called evolution. You may not believe in it, but you can see it every time you read a headline about MRSA, or "flesh-eating" strep.

But why worry? These are isolated cases happening in immune suppressed people, and they do not spread. So, it is a small price to pay for some extra beef. Or is it ? These superbugs don't matter much until you get a full blown pandemic. Only then are conditions ripe for the perfect storm. And only then is it time to pay the piper.