H5N1

Dead birds are in the news lately.

No, I don’t mean the quarry of Vice President Cheney’s hunting party. I’m talking about the chickens, swans, magpies, and various other flu-infested feathered friends that are perishing in the millions—both from infection as well as through intentional eradication.

In last summer’s movie “War of the Worlds,” loosely based on the H. G. Wells science-fiction classic, no weapon had any effect on the invaders. But all of a sudden, the war was over, the enemy dead. They caught a virus. They were susceptible to a terran disease, had no immunity against it, and perished. Hooray for the world and its germs!

World War I was known as “The Great War” until a worse one was inflicted on the world by tyrants. The first modern war utilized weaponry that caused horrific casualty counts on all sides—the machine gun, the tank, mustard gas, the airplane, the submarine, to name a few. What many do not know is that more American soldiers died from the flu than died at the hands of the enemy. Read this informative article. Here is an excerpt:

In the fall of 1918 the Great War in Europe was winding down and peace was on the horizon. The Americans had joined in the fight, bringing the Allies closer to victory against the Germans. Deep within the trenches these men lived through some of the most brutal conditions of life, which it seemed could not be any worse. Then, in pockets across the globe, something erupted that seemed as benign as the common cold. The influenza of that season, however, was far more than a cold. In the two years that this scourge ravaged the earth, a fifth of the world's population was infected. The flu was most deadly for people ages 20 to 40. This pattern of morbidity was unusual for influenza which is usually a killer of the elderly and young children. It infected 28% of all Americans (Tice). An estimated 675,000 Americans died of influenza during the pandemic, ten times as many as in the world war. Of the U.S. soldiers who died in Europe, half of them fell to the influenza virus and not to the enemy (Deseret News). An estimated 43,000 servicemen mobilized for WWI died of influenza (Crosby). 1918 would go down as unforgettable year of suffering and death and yet of peace. As noted in the Journal of the American Medical Association final edition of 1918:


"The 1918 has gone: a year momentous as the termination of the most cruel war in the annals of the human race; a year which marked, the end at least for a time, of man's destruction of man; unfortunately a year in which developed a most fatal infectious disease causing the death of hundreds of thousands of human beings. Medical science for four and one-half years devoted itself to putting men on the firing line and keeping them there. Now it must turn with its whole might to combating the greatest enemy of all--infectious disease," (12/28/1918).

There is great concern that a new strain of bird flue—the H5N1 virus—is making its way from Asia into the Western world, and fears that this virus will mutate and become able to be transmitted from human to human have posited a worst-case scenario that 2% of the world’s population (hundreds of millions) may perish. Here is a link to a Yahoo news aggregator of all recent news stories about the flu’s spread. As I write this, just this morning some swans were found dead in Hungary, victims of the flu virus. The Center for Disease Control has a very useful web site which provides up-to-date and accurate information as to the spread of the virus and the potential for pandemic infection associate with it. Nature magazine has an informative selection of articles as well. It would be good to become familiar with some details here, both to alleviate unnecessary fears, as well as to exercise some wise precaution.

Already in November, President Bush authorized the expenditure of some 7 billion dollars in federal funds in order to provided for research and development, for production and distribution of a vaccine to be made available if and when the virus mutates and threatens catastrophic human casualties. Some question the wisdom of this use of money, because they remember the swine flu scare of 1976. At that time, one soldier at Fort Dix died of a flu strain, and the forced inoculation of American citizens caused hundreds of deaths from the vaccine. Epidemiologists still debate whether President Ford overreacted or whether his actions prevented a major outbreak of the swine flu. But because many people remember it as a mountain made out of a molehill, they are reluctant to hit the panic button regarding the H5N1 avian flu virus.

Despite the possible news of a major pandemic comparable in scope to the scourge of the bubonic plague, we rejoice in a Savior who “heals all our diseases,” and who reminds us in his word that not even death can “separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” If the Lord allows this flu virus to so infect humanity, then let us demonstrate eager compassion to the victims and pray that God use the suffering and premature deaths to bring people salvation. Far better to die of the flu at age 30 than to perish in hell forever.