United States Unveils New Category 1 To 5 Rating System For Flu Pandemics

The latest plan unveiled by the US government on how they plan to fight a full blown flu pandemic, bird flu and otherwise, reveals just how seriously the agencies concerned view the lack of concern expressed by the average American to a threat a thousand times greater than the worst terrorism scenario ever envisaged.

The Bush administration has decided to ramp up its 'marketing' campaign of raising awareness of the true threat posed by a bird flu pandemic amongst the human population through a series of new reports, and a dramatic new categorisation system, similar to that used to describe, in simple language, the danger posed by hurricanes.

In this case, the US govenrment's Centre For Disease Control and Prevention, has created a far more user-friendly (it's the right term, but it sounds so wrong) Category 1 to Category 5 system to describe the threat posed by flu pandemics.

From Y0ur New Reality :

A Category 1 or 2 hurricane is understood by virtually everyone to mean that you can still walk down the shops, but your hat might get blown away. While a Category Five hurricane announcement makes people go weak at the knees and sprint to the basement, with a child under one arm and the family pet under the other.

So along with the usual warnings about how businesses could grind to a halt, and how hospitals will become overwhelmed with the sick and the dying, if or when a flu pandemic hits (bird flu or something else altogether), we are now going to be hearing a lot more about Category One or Category pandemics.

The category 1 to 5 ratings will be based on the potential, and likely, lethality of the flu virus on the kill across the United States.

So hopefully the words "Category Five Pandemic" will never be heard. Because if you hear an official say "We've got a Category Five Pandemic breaking out," well, it's going to be like something out of Revelation. Armageddon, if you like.

It'll be interesting to see how quickly other countries already up on their bird flu pandemic preventions, like Australia and Indonesia, will adapt this categorisation system.

So here's the 'lethality' rundown.

Category 1 signifies around 90,000 Americans will die. That's only three times the number of people a normal American flu season wipes out.

But a Category 5 signifies that something beyond 1.8 million Americans will die, within months.

But here's the nightmare scenario : Spanish Flu in the US, killed about 2% of everyone it infected.

Whereas, the avian influenza virus in humans (or H5N1, or bird flu) is clocking up a death rate of more than 50% of those infected. In Indonesia, at least, that lethality rating can go as high as 70% or 80%.

So the World Health Organisation estimate of 2005 that claimed a worldwide bird flu pandemic in humans could kill 200 million might not be so far off the mark, after all.

Don't ever believe that humans rule this planet.

We don't.

Viruses do.

They always have.

And the king-killer of all viruses is the flu.

The worst virus yet seen was Spanish Flu.

But H5N1 bird flu may yet even top that decimation of humanity.

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