Thanks for the view. Interesting.
Correct assessment of risk, as your handle indicates, is an important part of reading the news.
my patients seemed more nervous than usual.
btw, I am not a medical authority of any kind. I like to think I can assess and balance risks at times though. Doctors are sometimes wrong. An example: I was diagnosed with arthritis when I considered it to be a pulled hip ligament about two years ago. I had climbed over a high fence, didn't have a problem one side of it, I did on the other. Since then I have made a full recovery and performed heavy manual labor for about a year after that. "Arthritis" gone!
Now sure, hypochondriacs will all over react to a medical scare, but they will always find something to over react too. They are not part of the story to be considered. That pressure on the health system will always be there. A placebo administered by the patients doctor could possibly be the best solution. However, requesting a prescription "in case it occurs" is not a hypochondria type of condition imho. That is called "forward planning" in case there is an outbreak. I think Elroy's reply to your same question on another thread is appropriate.
mad cow disease weren't learned by our leaders — that potential health threats are more effectively examined in the laboratory than at a news conference.
Sorry. The good doctor Marc Siegel made a slight BLUNDER there imho. -LOL- As if ALL scientists paid by whoever can be expected to tell the truth. It was only the outcry by concerned scientists and PLUS the outcry by the popular press that started to reverse the BSE debacle in the UK.
Marc Siegel does not sound concerned by crisis type health threats by those remarks. Foolish even.
Mad Cow disease (also the "Foot and Mouth" outbreak which forced many animal culls), were very much real in the UK. We were under siege for some considerable period of time. Those risks have been properly dealt with now after many initial mistakes. I do not think many other countries deal with those problems as well as we do now. [i.e. read:- I am real concerned if my sirloin steak was not bred and grown locally in the UK these days. I have scientific training and saw the tricks played in supressing news etc by those with influence or power wrt the BSE crisis. The guys who could lose money and so forth]
Very prominent during the UK's "bad period" BSE crisis, the mid 1990's, was the relentless official government press saying there was no problem. Playing down the risks all the time without a thought.
There was real definite risk. People started to die and the deaths could have gone off the chart unless something was done. Governments and officials do the daftest things (usually) in times of real crisis, you have to be prepared (as best you can), against that for a start.
During the mid 1990's, even thge UK's cats and dogs were better protected against infection by BSE then humans protected against the human equivalent; Jakob-Creutzfeldt disease.
onto the Avian flu issue..
The fact that a large portion of the wild bird population are now infected with H5N1 is a consideration here.
because millions of birds throughout Asia have been infected
When the UK government and local councils started to buy protection for their employees, I decided it was time to start taking protective action myself. Government experts and decisions are usually nearly always wrong, maybe "nearly right" lots of times, they might get a course of action right one day though. I doubt it though.
My protective action will probably be not needed, or maybe even ineffective if there is an outbreak, but the assessment of the risks involved made the decision clear for me.
What the good doctor Marc Siegel writes makes no difference to my analysis. He reinforces my conclusions if anything. |
