Bird Flu - Archives
Canada
Signs of the Times in Canada
I don't know if this is a big deal or not, but it's certainly a sign of the
times. The Greyhound bus company in Canada says it will
stop transporting live birds, animals and insects, due to the threat of
bird flu.
March 25th, 2006
Let Them Die
Tough talk from the Edmonton Sun:
To prevent the
collapse of health care during an influenza pandemic, doctors shouldn't
bother treating those seriously ill with the virus because they're going to
die anyway, says a local physician.
"I don't think health
care is ever going to be able to deliver the resources that are required ...
in the middle of a crisis," says Dr. Louis Francescutti, associate professor
at the University of Alberta's department of public health sciences.
"You can't build that
much capacity in the system to deal with (an influenza pandemic)," he told
me yesterday.
If 60% of those
infected with influenza are expected to die, health-care officials should
withhold treatment from those who aren't likely to survive, says
Francescutti.
"Don't try and do
anything heroic," he says. "Those people should be isolated and made
comfortable but let them die because they're going to die."
Perhaps it sounds
cold-hearted but Francescutti says he's just being realistic. "It's called
triage. You've got limited resources. You'd better use them as efficiently
as possible."
March 24th,
2006
Canada Gets Worried
The
economic costs
of a flu pandemic could rival the impact of the Great Depression, according
to Canada’s Health Minister.
Meanwhile, a Canadian
economist, Sherry Cooper, has
told CBC News that a major flu outbreak
"would lead
governments everywhere to shut down their borders, or, in effect, ground
airplanes, because people would not want to travel, and that would be the
end of the major trade in goods and services, at least for some period of
time….And, given our global supply chains, there would develop shortages in
many, many goods, many products, across the world very quickly." It would be
hard to maintain food supplies "even across provincial lines, let alone
across international lines," she added
She also said that she
did not want to “generate fear unnecessarily.”
The same
CBC News report said the Conference Board of Canada has warned that “a flu
pandemic on a large scale would throw the world into a sudden and possibly
dramatic global recession."
October 19th,
2005
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