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Good post over on metafilter about reports of brid flu in Qinghai. I think that people that totally dismiss birdflu are way off base. Flu pandemics are like big earthquakes. They are rare, but there is no way we can stop them and they can cause major problems if we goverments aren’t prepared. For one thing the Chinese goverment barely was able to control SARs (the american probably would have failed to control it), so there is no way anybody is going to be able to control an easily cummunicable birdflu. The only hope is to have enough Vaccine around.
That being said I’m not to worried about the news coming out of Qinghai. Even if there was some bird to human transmission, it dosn’t appear to be a lot of human to human cases, or else there would be a lot more deaths. Also Qinghai is not your typical flu incubator. Very sparesly populated, not that much contact between people and animals, (well they have yaks, so maybe we have to worry about yakflu) and not a lot of connection to the outside world. If Birdful pops up my bet would be Guangdong.