On the Fear of a Pandemic

As much as I would like to be optimistic about preparedness over the issue of this Avain flu which is supposed to get genetically modified and decimate world populations, the impact is not as great as some doomsday callers are trumpeting. Like any flu or widespread epidemic it is going to hit the aged and the very young harder. On the grand scale of things that is part of the selective process of population control in the first case. That sounds cold but it's the hard truth; populations are not just controlled through natural death, wars, car accidents or a localized hurricane. In fact, ironically recent statiastics show most of the control has been through these pandemics that make a larger dent in world population levels compared to the other other causes combined.
It seems trivial for Quebec to work out a political solution to the problem especially when it can't even resolve the more immediate problem of building a super-hospital. Canada has a pandemic plan but it also had a plan to restrict mad cow disease and that reoccured recently out westdidn't it? Who knows how many other incidents of mad cow occurred and were never reported. Most of us sre still living, right?
Extending that agruement to an expected pandemic, birds are going to respect borders even less than cattle do and whether we have the politics in place or not there is always going to be other factors that will favor the spread of the virus. That said there is still no need to alarm people about a possible spread when the chances of direct contact with carrier birds is so low, it takes time for genetic modification to occur and the media just loves a juicy story, so why not something about mass deaths on a global scale.