The world needs more leaders that do what is right instead of what is popular.

The density of population increases continuously. We face inevitable natural disasters and wars. The survivors are often forced to live in conditions that are cramped and unsanitary. It is the perfect breeding ground for disease. When we add to the equation the fact that people can travel from anywhere in the world to any other place on the planet in less than a day, we have the ingredients for pandemic of apocalyptic proportions. I can hardly wait.

I have to admit that the people mentioned in this article were probably the right people in the right place at the right moment. I would not have thought that people could be so efficient. Usually things get a lot worse, before they get better. Perhaps we are finally beginning to learn. Better late, than never, I guess.”[/quote]

This is a happy thing for me to look forward to too! I just can’t wait for us to get what’s coming to us. It will be fun dying of disease. And I don’t mean this sarcastically. I know it’s a strange thing to look forward to, but I am a strange person, so what can I say?

It turns out that there are a number of survivors still living, some of them living with ages in the triple digits, having been older children during the epidemic when they contracted the disease. Our astute and sophisticated medical establishment apparently was not particularly interested in this fact until very recently. A fact which fails to surprise me.

Now though, the interest is keen. These unusually healthy and robust elders in our midst are now the objects of considerable attention, and are being gleefully probed for their blood in the very real hope and prospect that antibodies can be mass produced that will afford real protection even before a new outbreak gets out of control.

But frankly, I wonder how good it is for these centenarians to be jabbed for these samples.

The current procedure throughout the world is, a chicken or two in an industrial chicken house is positive for the virus, wipe out the infected chicken and the whole damn chicken house, many thousands of apparently healthy chickens. Destroyed. Buried. Burned. Who takes these losses? The farmer. Sort of gives him some incentive to button his lip and hope for the best, doesn’t it?

I wonder if it would not be a good idea, the next time their is an outbreak, to let it run its’ course through a very, very, very quarantined chicken house. Actually take the very best care of those chickens! (No, I don’t mean to treat the stricken ones in any way.) I just mean, feed them excellent rations and very good water, remove all corpses promptly, and see how many survivors there are.

Let us say that out of 10,000 chickens, 100 survived. Now you have a hundred chickens you could poke with needles to get some samples to make a vaccine with which a pharmaceutical company could them make billions of dollars. Ah, the wonders of private enterprise!

OR, you could even breed those survivor chickens, ultimately producing tens of thousands, even eventually millions or even billions of chickens, which were totally immune, not only to the deadly virulent strain, but also to a great variety of other common influenza’s. Apparently these aged survivors have, more often than not , not subsequently been troubled by colds or flu that they noticed. In other words, the original infection seems to have made the survivors a LOT healthier. Would it not be nice if we could make the entire chicken population of the planet much, much hardier and less prone to disease in general.

Naw, couldn’t work. Otherwise, one of those experts with all that formal training, all those diplomas and honors,in cooperation with all the high ranking health organization bureaucrats with their unique expertize om writing protocols and edicts and regulations… they would have already thought of it. Certainly, no self-taught bumpkin from the middle of nowhere could ever come up with anything valuable. What would people think?

I don’t think this is what is meant by overpopulation. Its not about how many people there are per square mile but rather how many billions of people the earth’s natural resources can support. For example, biologists note that there is an overpopulation of rabbits in Australia. This doesn’t mean you can’t put a foot down on bare ground, it just means that the abundance is causing major problems like soil erosion and deforestation (from grazing). Also, I don’t think people have *necessarily chosen to live in cities. Historically and anthropologically speaking, cities formed out of the necessary centralization of resources and services (not to mention people to breed with, ha).

Also, (GigTaggart, I’m not directing this at you by the way)
I’ve noticed that quite a few people have a tendency to belittle others on this forum for their opinions or lack of knowledge (which we all have to some degree). This site should be a place for people to share information without fear of rebuke by those who only wish to masturbate their intellectual ego. So leave the hostile undertones behind, please. just sayin.