
Bird Flu!
I had to ask myself, is this Bird Flu something that I should be worried about? Over this past weekend I thought about some things. Being a black man from the South, I know from an early age, my meat diet was mostly chicken. Can you imagine if this thing hits the United States, what it will do to chicken industry, let alone the "black community"? Two out of the four Sunday's of the month, chicken was apart of my Sunday dinner. Hell, if we ate dinner at church, nine out of ten times the meat was chicken. In the Boys Scouts, we sold chicken dinners. At my family reunions, there were at least six kinds of chicken you had to choose from. At lunch or dinner, to pick the lazy way out, I sometimes go to KFC's or Popeye's. At the grocery store, you can always find a good deal on chicken. And now so many of my brothers and sisters don't even eat red meat, but depend on fish or chicken to eat. So again I ask myself, what will happen if we had to stop eating chicken.
I did a little studying to answer some of my questions and this is what I found out.
1. Is there a cure for bird flu?
"No. There's no cure for any kind of flu. However, antiviral drugs taken very soon after symptoms -- such as a sudden fever -- appear make the illness less severe. The H5N1 bird flu is resistant to an older class of flu drugs, but remains sensitive to Tamiflu and Relenza".
I should have known this answer, because of the common cold can't be cured.
2. Should individuals stock up on flu drugs?
"No. Several flu experts tell WebMD that they are not stocking up on flu drugs, and they strongly recommend that individuals follow their lead.
Why? First of all, the drugs are in short supply. In the event of a pandemic, public health workers will need all the flu drugs they can get in order to treat people actually exposed to the virus. The drugs won't do nearly as much good sitting in people's medicine cabinets".
My thing is even if we had the drugs on hand, when would we take them? Without a flu test, it's hard to know whether your symptoms are the flu or another respiratory infection. And the pills only work against the flu.
3. Can you get bird flu from eating chicken or other poultry?
"No -- if the meat is fully cooked. Cooking kills flu viruses in poultry, meat, and eggs".
Now come on, you think I'm going to trust eatting chicken that has "bird flu" by making sure its cooked well done? That's like not washing the fresh cut greens they sell in the bag, because it says they were "pre-wash", it's not going to happen.
4. How do you catch bird flu?
"People have caught bird flu from handling infected poultry and from surfaces contaminated with poultry feces. There are a few suspected cases of human-to-human bird flu transmission. This happened only after prolonged face-to-face contact. But bird flu has not learned how to spread easily from person to person".
The bottom line is that bird flu virus can survive on raw meat from infected poultry, so they want you to use hygiene -- hand washing and the disinfecting of all surfaces that come in contact with the meat -- is essential. But I don't think all this will be necessary, cause when the first out break happens here in the states, no more eatting chicken for me. And years of tradition of black people eatting chicken will come to a HAULT!
Sometimes, I sit back and wonder. You know what I mean?
9 Comments:
YOU CRAZY! LOL.
[I want some chicken now]
man let me tell u how crazy it is now ... i have a mini-cold that i contracted maybe the other day and my father is all panicky talking about i need a flu shot with all these diseases going around, etc etc.
come on man!
i am sick of the bird flu, west nile and everything else. its like the black plague almost.
i do not know whether to be worried and take this all serious or be like whatevah, moving on ...
too much going on!
I stopped eating chicken when I started feeding it to the PUGLETS... otherwise known as my two pug dogs.... No, I am not some NEUROTIC NUTCASE, it's just that the dogs seem to be allergic to everything but brown rice and chicken. NOW, I have to worry about the damned dogs getting bird flu! LIFE SUCKS........
omg
what wuld i do???
i'm a chicken eattin somebody..lol
lawdddddddddddd - i dont know what i do w.out chicken - it is in the blood!
hmmm... i think i'll stop eating chicken now!
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I almost dont eat chicken.. YES YES YES !!!! ok sorry for that... what is it about chicken that people like so much ?
Don't worry about no bird flu man. I think it's just a disease white people get. Like skin cancer and ebola. You never saw a black person on TV talkin about the mad Cow epidemic, did u?
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