A reason to be concerned about bird flu

Michael Fumento thinks there is nothing to worry about. Revere disagrees:

It isn't that what Fumento says is so outrageous one would have to be stupid or ignorant to believe it. It's that it would be folly (and stupid) to act as if you believed it. Fumento couldn't care less about public health nor does he care that what he writes makes it still more difficult to get government to make a puny investment in keeping us safe from disease at the same time he encourages it to sink more down the rat hole of the War in Iraq.

Fumento, of course, shows up in comments to insult not just Revere, but all of his readers:

No, but little things like that and my impeccable track record on disease hysteria dating back to "the heterosexual AIDS explosion," SARS, Gulf War Syndrome (ask the IOM about that), and even pandemic avian flu back in 1997 (Yes, you read right) count for nothing. You'd like people to forget all that, while remembering "false facts" that you provide. Fortunately, most people aren't as stupid as your readers.

Tags

More like this

I've debated (with myself) whether to post anything about disgraced columnist Michael Fumento's rantings that bird flu was a "Chicken Little" story (literally: it's entitled, "Chicken Littles were Wrong"). It was published in the far right rag, Weekly Standard, where Science is a dimunutive figure…
Revere, over at Effect Measure, has a solid critique of Michael Fumento's opinion piece about avian flu. What the piece shows is just how ignorant of public health Fumento really is: 1) Many of the necessary steps involved in preparing for a flu pandemic, such as surge production capacity, can be…
Michael Fumento is piqued because nobody paid any attention to his ludicrous and childish dare to us, DemFromCT at DailyKos and Tim Lambert and MadMike here at SciBlogs: Okay guys, put your bucks where your blogs are! Ten to one odds for each of you; each gets to pick the amount in question. I say…
Inspired by this excellent post by Revere about the evolution of influenza, I've delved deep into the archives of the Mad Biologist, and summoned up some evolutionary thoughts of my own about influenza: I meant to post something about evolution and influenza before my travels up north, but I was…

Why would anyone still be concerned about Bird Flu?

More hype from the end-of-the-world-is-nigh ninnies.

By Jack Lacton (not verified) on 21 Dec 2006 #permalink

Why be concerned? Well, I'm not, I pay people to be concerned about this stuff for me. The problem is that bird flu is an indeterminate threat, which could blow up and become a pandemic. But then again it might not. IT all depends. All the experts said that there was this dangerous possibility. Is the possibility done for now? For now yes, but it might return.

Yer, who cares if millions of people die ... they'll mostly be poor folks so it'll probably have a net positive economic benefit.

By Meyrick Kirby (not verified) on 21 Dec 2006 #permalink

"Why would anyone still be concerned about Bird Flu?"

After all, we have to keep looking for the WMD.

Still up there contending for blog commenter of the year z, good on you :)