I just read an excellent post on why a Bird Flu Pandemic will kill newspapers.

Xarker says:

In the midst of a pandemic, you’re going to turn to the web — and increasingly to topic-expert bloggers, not journalists — for the important information. Newspapers? Hell, who wants to pick up a potentially germ-covered physical object that some stranger just threw at your porch?

Xark is making several predictions in this post. Here is another one.

Once the pandemic comes to call, once the schools shut down and the travel restrictions pop up and the stores close and the recession begins, you’re going to see the same people who can’t be bothered to read about “some flu in Asia” today transformed into H5N1 experts.

So why is the Bird Flu Pandemic now hitting the news with intense fury?
Bird Flu samples found in Romanian Duck turd
Indonesian teenager cleared of bird flu dies
Australia Giving 10million to Jakarta

Kevin Sites better stay away from the Bird Flu zones.

USAToday has something to say on this:

Katrina hit just days after Bush finished John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History during his August vacation on his ranch, White House spokesman Scott McClellan says.

Apparently motivated by the frightening tale of the 1918 epidemic, which killed an estimated 150,000 people in the USA and 50 million worldwide, Bush said last week that the military might be needed to enforce quarantines.

Sounds like it was homework assigned by Mr Cheney :).

Scientific reports released on the heels of Bush’s statement increased the nation’s anxiety. In one, Jeffery Taubenberger of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and his team said in the journal Nature that the 1918 pandemic began when the virus leapt from birds to humans, a scenario that mirrors what is happening in Asia today.

In a bid to contain the current epidemic, officials in Southeast Asia have slaughtered 140 million birds. That has not stopped the virus from spreading.

Bush met last week with the chief executives of four vaccine companies to determine how he can help them boost production enough to safeguard the population. The State Department on Friday convened a meeting of health officials from 80 countries to map out plans to arrest the flu’s spread.

The predictions for disaster of A/H5N1 are very dire. The death rate for the bird flu mutation that has jumped to humans is 50%. 117 infected worldwide with 60 deaths.

Do you want an author account? Let me know either PM or contact me.

You will have freedom to post, however, if you get screwy I’ll have to moderate your posts. You don’t want that. Why you ask? The voice inside your head says. Well, I’m lazy, and if you goto moderation its likely to stay there or get deleted. So don’t get screwy–yeh I said it twice.

I predict I will have to create at least 1 author account for someone.

I’m at Defcon 4.