Beastly Birds

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
Revelation 6:8



According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Thursday, a case of human to human infection of the H5N1 bird flu virus was confirmed in Pakistan. The WHO confirmed the transmission of the virus through tests in special laboratories located in London and Cairo. Although H5N1 has been described in published reports as being 38 times more infectious than SARS, health officials stated that “there was no apparent risk of it spreading further.”
The most recent case in Pakistan offers perhaps the most blatant proof of human to human transmission of this most lethal virus. It involved an outbreak of up to nine people from late October through December, 2007. According to reports there, a veterinary doctor in the Peshawar region developed what was thought to be pneumonia. Shortly thereafter, three of his brothers developed similar symptoms. One died on November 23, however the cause of death was classified as “unknown.” On November 28, 2007, just five days after the first man died of “unknown causes,” another brother died. Medical tests on that man confirmed the presence of the H5N1 virus and ultimately verified the human to human transmission.
Despite the H5N1 virus not only having broken the species barrier but now confirmed by the World health Organization as being transmitted between humans, a WHO spokesman told Reuters on Thursday that all the evidence "suggests that the outbreak within this family does not pose a broader risk.”
It is difficult to understand how such a conclusion can be reached in the face of substantial evidence to the contrary.
Worst case scenario
On December 5, 2005, US Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt reported that U.S. federal authorities are preparing to handle a possible avian flu pandemic in the by contemplating a worst-case scenario. According to that scenario, more than 92 million people will become ill in the space of four months. The projections are based on the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic that killed about 50 million people around the world and emerged as the most serious pandemic of the 20th century.