This was written for Parallel Worlds, the 2006 annual edition of Planet Waves. I believe and thought at the time that the “bird flu” issue was a scare tactic to distract us from the crimes of the Bush administration and to jack up the price of Don Rumsfeld’s stock in Tamiflu. However, I talked to enough public health officials who were concerned, Ward Stone among them, that I thought the issue was worth taking seriously.
If you want to know why public health officials are so concerned about the possibility of an Avian Influenza outbreak, just learn a little about the 1918-1919 worldwide flu pandemic, called the Spanish Flu. But as you do, notice your fear level and your other responses.
By one estimate, 5 percent of the world population was lost to this disease, which had the power to kill people from within six hours of the first onset of symptoms. Nearly one in five people suffered from the disease worldwide to some extent, according to Wikipedia (link below). In the United States, some 28 percent of the population suffered from Spanish Flu, and more than 500,000 died from it. There were reports of people falling off their horses dead, or dying walking down the street.
And it was a disease over which the traditional medical profession had no power whatsoever. But homeopathy, a branch of medicine founded by Samuel Hahnemann in the late 18th century, had close to complete success dealing with this disease. Homeopathy is uniquely suited to handle large outbreaks of virulent diseases in the population, both preventively, and on a wide scale once an outbreak has occurred.
This one sounds man-made so you are probably still on target. Could it be environmental terrorism?