Korea considers the real threat

The South Koreans have been upset this week about restoring beef imports from the US despite fears of bringing mad cow disease into the country. Chosun Ilbo has published a very thoughtful editorial that puts those fears in perspective: The real threat is bird flu. Excerpt:

So far, 6.5 million chickens and ducks have been culled, a lot more than the 5.2 million that were destroyed during the last bird flu epidemic in 2003-2004.

The cases of bird flu detected in Chuncheon, Yeongcheon and Seoul were passed on from a small handful of chickens and pheasants that were bought in open-air markets.

The fact that infected chickens and ducks are being sold in open-air markets signifies that bird flu has penetrated deep into our midst. There are even experts who fear that bird flu might spread to common city-dwelling pigeons.

Until now, the disease erupted only during the cold winter months, but this year it’s happening in temperatures above 25 degrees Celsius. Nor did past outbreaks kill ducks en masse, but that is what is happening now. Experts are not ruling out that the strain this time is a mutated version of the virus that is becoming endemic to Korea.

If that is true, then human infections are a real threat. Already, one soldier who took part in the cull showed signs of possible infection.

If avian influenza does spread to humans, the damage it would cause would be horrific. Since 2003, 379 humans have been infected with bird flu in 14 countries, mainly in Southeast Asia, and 63 percent of them or 239 have died.

Even the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned back in 2005 that a million people could be hospitalized and 30,000 of them die if bird flu becomes transmissible from human to human here.

Out of the 300 million Americans who have consumed U.S. beef, not a single one has contracted Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human variant of mad cow disease.

But out of the people who took part in prevention and culling efforts during the 2003-2004 avian influenza epidemic, four contracted bird flu. This was revealed belatedly in 2005 since the four had taken medication and shown no symptoms.

Right now, the entire country is in uproar due to exaggerated mad cow disease fears. But the real threat we face is bird flu, which has crawled up right next to us. The government and the public must wake up.