Cats are going to be in for a hard time when flu strikes

[Saint James 10]

Pigs indeed. Bramall Lane beware.

 

Stupid football jokes aside, be honest - did you really read the article?

 

My point was that the article specifically mentions felines, not canines. I suspect that sooner or later it will jump into canines and primates and the report does mention that the virus is "...expanding its range of mammalian susceptible species."

 

The more people that get it (from birds, or pigs, or cats - it's irrelevant where it comes from) then "...the likelihood also increases for the emergence of a novel subtype with sufficient human genes to be easily transmitted from person to person. Such an event would mark the start of an influenza pandemic."

 

You slightly dilute your argument by using over-specific examples and ridiculous conditional statements:

 

like eating chicken blood, or handling birds for long periods of time

really? did you really read the article?

 

unless anyone's into drinking cats' blood

what on earth are you talking about?

 

dogs will kill and eat them too, particularly gun dogs who instinctively fetch birds, particularly dead ones

I have never in my life seen or even heard of a dog bringing its owner a 'present'

 

he will investigate and probably have a bite of it

'probably' is a nonsensical word in this context

[medusa 16]

Not only is a multiple mutation necessary for the 'bird-cat-human' infection scenario to take place, but as JoeP says, the likelihod of that happening for domesticated house cats is not necessarily more likely than for any other mammal. It just happens to be cats that have been used in this research.

 

I also have to point out that there are hundreds of bird flu viruses in existence (just as the same applies for humans), and the odds are that any bird dropping dead with flu has one of the however many other flu viruses that are around, not H5N1.

 

Personally speaking, we have so many cats in our area we really don't have a bird population. Bats- yes, dawn chorus- no. Out of my 4 cats, none of them have ever caught anything bigger than a dragonfly, so I think that steam cleaning anything that holds still long enough will probably be sufficient.

 

BTW, my first degree is biochemistry too, followed up with education.

[Cliff Clavin 10]

To be honest normal Flu itself is deadly, anyone who claims to have gone to work with Flu have mearly had a heavy cold, when you got Flu you dont go anywere, your in bed and thats it, its even an acheivement to make the bathroom.

 

Now for me this Bird Flu is yes a deadly virus, but the whole thing is hyped up to "Fear Control" us, our goverments are getting good at this, also take a look at the shares in the company who's gonna be making the vaccine, theyv'e shot up. Makes me wander if if some influential people had bought their shares earlier.

[Mathom 10]

Originally posted by Saint James

You slightly dilute your argument by using over-specific examples and ridiculous conditional statements:

 

 

Those examples are drawn from the news stories about those in SE Asia who have actually had Avian Flu; strange as it may seem, eating a 'fowl' equivalent of black pudding has caused a couple of men to contract the disease.

 

In most cases (and there have been very few) it seems the disease has been contracted from prolonged contact with fowl or through eating raw/undercooked meat. Ergo, it would be incredibly difficult to catch avian flu from a cat, and you probably would have to do something as extreme as drink cats' blood (or alternatively eat cat or keep the cat stuffed down your jumper all day to maintain lenghty contact, whatever takes your fancy in the analogy) to get into a 'high-risk' 'cat'-egory.

 

But this is all conjecture anyway. As has already been said, they only chose to experiment on cats - they did not experiment on all animals, so it does not prove that cats are (or more correctly, possibly, just might, maybe, could be) any more of a danger than any other meat eating animal.

 

And gun dogs do bring you presents. I know, I've had to bury the evidence.

[Greybeard 10]

Originally posted by Mathom

The really interesting thing in that article was that it said that as it stands, avian flu also infects pigs?

 

Presumably they mean flying pigs ? Not many of those about these days

[Halibut 12]

Am I missing something?

Who gives a monkeys about the cats? It's our children and old folk we want to be worried about.

[medusa 16]

Originally posted by Halibut

Am I missing something?

Who gives a monkeys about the cats? It's our children and old folk we want to be worried about.

 

Agree entirely- this thread was just using cats as they were mentioned in some research. There are other threads about flu vs humans.

[Cliff Clavin 10]

I think we should worrry about everyone and everything, thats what makes us human, selfishness keeps the annimal in us.

[Mo 10]

Now that a positive identification of the deadly bird flu virus has been identified in a dead cat in Germany what happens next?

 

While humans can limit/reduce or avoid contact with birds and poultry the fact that the virus has spread to the feline population surely gives us even greater cause for concern.

 

Should cats be confined to the house so as to stop them attacking the wild bird population? Any thoughts?

[Saint James 10]

BBC story

 

Told you...

 

German cat gets deadly bird flu

 

A domestic cat in Germany has become the first European Union mammal to die of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

[JoeP 11]

The cat in Germany had spent quite a bit of time on a lakeside with the dead birds, so it's not really surprising.

 

In teh Far East wild cats and tigers have been infected already, so I guess that keeping the moggies in when and if the time comes might be useful.

 

It makes sense that the cats might get it - it's the same route as humans - from the carcasses of dead birds or their droppings....

 

Scarey though.

 

Joe

[madowl 10]

flu virus... from birds to cats.... do you ever get that feeling that you dont know something, or thats somethings gonna happen... Scarey....

Are we in the need to know?