160 Die Because of the Bird Flu

Dialogue provided by the discussion thread of a Yahoo! News story.

An unseen voice : The UN healthy agency on Tuesday raised to 160 its officail tally of people worldwide who have been infected with the deadly H5N1 straing of bird flu virus after laboratory tests in London confirmed that at least 12 people in Turkey have been infected with the disease.

Wellwellwellhum : Ouch. Based on this and other current events it appears the Grim Reaper is gonna have a busy schedule this century. Not Funny.

Medlady : Great news for our troops! They have also identified a case in Iraq.

Medlady frowns.

Medlady : Now they have to worry about this crap too?

User6244 : Pandemic equals one-sixty? There have been a number of significant pandemics in human history, generally zoonoses that came about with domestication of animals such as influenza and tuberculosis. There have a number of particularly significant epidemics that deserve mention above the mere destruction of cities. The Peloponnesian War, 430 BCE. An unknown agent killed a quarter of the Athenian troops and a quarter of the population over four years. This disease fatally weakened the dominance of Athens, but the sheer virulence of the disease prevented its wider spread; i.e. it killed off its hosts at a rate faster than they could spread it-

Sashimi Sweetie : You have done some research I see-

User6244: Antonine Plague, 165-180. Possibly smallpox brought back from the Near East; killed a quarter of those infected and up to five million in all. At the height of a second outbreak (251-266) 5,000 people a day were said to be dying in Rome -

Barfutchild : And AIDS killed how many? And diabetes? And heart disease? Lukemia? Failure to wear seatbelts-

User6244 : Plague of Justinian, started 541. The first recorded outbreak of the bubonic plague. It started in Egypt and reached Constantinople the following spring, killing (according to the Byzantine chronicler Procopius) 10,000 a day at its height and perhaps 40 percent of the city's inhabitants. It went on to destroy up to a quarter of the human population of the eastern Mediterranean. -

Californicated Coloradoan : So an Iraqi girl died of Bird Flu?

User6244 : The Black Death, started 1300s. Eight hundred years after the last outbreak, the bubonic plague returned to Europe. Starting in Asia, the disease reached Mediterranean and western Europe in 1348 (possibly from Italian merchants fleeing fighting in the Crimea), and killed twenty million Europeans in six years, a quarter of the total population and up to a half in the worst-affected urban areas.

Plumber Bill : Real, or fake? Struck me, watching the spread? Of this "pandemic" that is too restrictive. Tend to think as a general observation this is a manufactured disease either in its conception or in its publicity or in its spread or all three. I think there may be at least three manufactured diseases around.

There is a long, confused, uncomfortable pause.

Angry Bitey Attorney : I'm shaking Big Bird in Anger. And Snuffy.

Hole Flow : I'm choking my chicken in anger. I hope it doesn't give me Bird Flu.

Angry Bitey Attorney : No but it'll give you a hairy palm and make you go blind. But Steve Wonder did ok with that, as did Ray Charles, so I wouldn't worry to much.

Cindy Bin : Did you hear my response to you? I said, Oh for heaven's sake, Atkins died from a fall. He had a heart condition which was not related to his diet, and the medication he was on caused weight gain and swelling. Really, if you want to lose weight, read my homepage, it's all right there. Somersize works great for most people, especially men. And the food is delicious. You never feel deprived, get to eat as much as you want, and it reprograms your metabolism.

Angry Bitey Attorney : Yes. I know humpty had his great fall. Point was, for all his allegedly great shape, he was a supposedly fat pig when the reaper swung through.

Hole Flow : The burning question is, what was his cholesterol level at the time he died.

Cindy Bin : As I said, Atkins experience wieght gain due to medication he was on for a heart condition unrelated to his diet. I'm not on Atkins, anyway. I'm on Somersizer, a controlled carb plan with no induction period. Lots of good, healthy food. I really think it's the best program out there. Feel free to visit my homepage for tips, recipes and my weight loss story.

Angry Bitey Attorney : No thanks, but I will visit www.cindybin.com. Great website. It really is.

Cindy Bin : Ok, then continue to eat your chemical-laden, refined cab noodles. But my website is there if you come to your senses.

Pause.

User 6244 : The first Cholera pandemic, 1816-1826. Previously restricted to the Indian subcontinent, the pandemic began in Bengal, then spread across India by 1820. It extended as far as China and the Caspian Sea before receding.

Danais : This is outrageous, I'm beating butterballs in anger!

Angry Bitey Attorney : That doesn't count toward your balls collection, does it?

Danais : No. That's strictly for Yahoo posters! I'm leaving.

Danais is gone.

Angry Bitey Attorney : Where are you going?

User6244 : There are also a number of unknown diseases that were extremely serious but have now vanished, so the etiology of these diseases cannot be established. Examples include the previously mentioned plague in 430 BCE Greece and the English Sweat in 16th-century England, which struck people down in an instant and was more greatly feared even than the bubonic plague.

Cluckie : I suck the farts from dead chickens.

Everyone leaves.