I am very curious as to how the media is describing or discussing the latest bird flu fatalities in Asian countries.

I was able to see while traveling how different countries vastly differed in their reporting of different news stories. For one, I heard very little in the states about how Al Qaeda had nothing to do with the london bombings. But while in London I learned so much about the incident.

What has the news stations been reporting about the recent deaths due to Bird Flu?

Personally, this doesn't look good at all if the bird flu has become transmitable from person to person. Very scarey indeed.

Thank you!

Having an interest in epidemiology makes me realize that though there may be no current reports of the virus mutating, it is still possible.

I was just wondering if the press in Asian countries was reporting the story differently than in the states.

The press in Bangkok and Kaula Lumpur as of 10 days ago had no coverage.
If its coming to US as they want us to believe it may arrive in the next town to where one lives.

topping.

uh all I know is that all the KFC's are packed in bangkok.

I will keep my mouth shut about kfc.....

It looks like Fodors deleted my post quoting the NYT article... The gist of teh article is that despite the family cluster of cases in Indonesia, there is currently no data to indicate that the avian flu has mutated to become easily transmissible from person to person. The WHO is investigating the cluster, but the mode of transmission at this point appears to be no different from other previous clusters.

In the same period of time, more people have died of lightning strikes. So. . . keep an eye out for news about them to.

Is it the topic of our mortality, the denial of an eventual epidemic (didn't AIDS teach us enough?), or the media hype that has some so hostile to the possibility of bird flu mutating and becoming contagious amongst people?

I just wanted to know what the media slant from another country was. I learned on my trips from watching news in other countries how the reports differ so greatly from what I hear in the states.

Most newspapers have online versions - I know the Bangkok Post does, perhaps take a read of those

For the Thai newspapers the main report about the bird flu was about a year or two ago - when they first discovered that it had spread to Thailand. During that period there were so many articles on every aspect of the disease from the possibility of human to human transmission, bird to animal transmission(pigs if I recall correctly), wild birds vs domestic birds, singing pigeon, drugs to combat the disease(Tamiflu) and much more.