I’ve been thinking of posting this for a while. Sometimes you’ll get discriminated against for something you can’t help, and some people will tell you that you have to live with it, because..
‘Terrorism is the greatest twenty-first century threat.’ – British Prime Minister Tony Blair, May 2003
‘Terrorism is the greatest threat facing free democracies in the twenty-first century.’ – German Chancellor Angela Merkel, May 2006
‘The greatest threat this world faces is the danger of extremists and terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction.’ – US President George W. Bush, September 2005
‘No challenge is greater than the threat of terrorism.’ – Australian Prime Minister John Howard, May 2006
‘Terrorism is the greatest threat to world peace.’ – Russian President Vladimir Putin, September 2000
If they’re right, maybe I really should get checked every now and then, because you know.. You’d expect the greatest threat to humanity to be so devious in nature that you’d never even be aware that you’re an active part of it. (“Oh thank you for giving me a background search, I was actually worrying the other day that I might be a terrorist!”)
But are they really right?
Let’s see, anyone up for some statistics? Let’s look at some annual death tolls in Germany, listed by reason, approximate number of victims, and the year taken into account (Taken and translated from here):
Heart and cirulatory diseases: 350′000 [2004]
Legal Drugs: 210′000 [2005]
Cancer: 200′000 [2004]
Fine Dust: 75′000 [2005]
Blood poisoning: 55′000 [2004]
Injuries and poisonings: 35′000 [2004]
Medical Malpractice: 30′000 [2005]
Wrong medical prescriptions: 24′000 [2005]
Car exhaust gas: 20′000 [20,000]
Influenza: 20′000 [2005]
Medicament side-effects: 16′000 [2004]
Suicide: 11′000 [2005]
Care shortcomings at foster homes: 10′000 [2004]
Traffic victims: 6000 [2004]
Illegal drugs: 1500 [2004]
Hepatitis: 1200 [2004]
Asbestos: 1000 [2003]
Murder and manslaughter: 750 [2004]
Malaria: 700 [2004]
Swimming accidents: 650 [2003]
Psychotropic drugs: 500 [2002]
HIV: 500 [2004]
Tuberculosis: 400 [2005]
Mad cow disease/Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease: 140 [2004]
Hunting accidents: 40 [2004]
Floods: 10 [2002]
Deadly Police shootings: 10 [2004]
Lightning strikes: 3 [2002]And finally…
Terrorist attacks: ZERO [Since 1993]
Alrighty then, as for my provocative question of the day: Isn’t it about high time people actually start worrying about other stuff as well? And shouldn’t they call something “The greatest threat” when it really is the greatest threat?
The Sphinx
Officially declared by wingnuts. Click 
Well, I hate to be a fly in the proverbial ointment, but I didn’t teach myself viral genetics just for kicks. I know that after the newer strains of influenza failed to go pandemic (and realistically, why would they without further evolution?) people have started treating particularly some of the H5N1 (commonly known as “bird flu”) as a non-threat and those keeping an eye on them as paranoids of the “Y2K” variety. Some even charge that the pharmaceutical companies as well as certain scientists are using the threat as a tactic to get more money and are charlatans.
The facts remain that in the last 3 centuries alone we average 3 influenza pandemics, with one of these much more virulent and deadly than the others. The 20th century alone saw 3 pandemics, beginning with the H1N1 1918 pandemic (though now research is showing that sporadic outbreaks in years leading up to 1918 which did not easily spread, described by baffled doctors handling the patients describing the symptoms as some sort of ‘new pneumonia’, though similar also to influenza.) The research published in 2005 by the team of Jeffrey Taubenberger, Ann Reid et al. based on the recreation in lab conditions and experiments on mice from actual samples of the 1918 virus proved that this was in fact a “species jumper”, or rather a strain of flu that had mutated just enough from its natural reservoir in migratory birds into a strain which probably hit sporadically (anecdotal evidence) at first and then mutated enough to create the extremely deadly pandemic seen in 1918 in it’s three waves.
Considering that the 1918 pandemic was a real event (and one which followed a pandemic in the 1890s) that killed millions worldwide, anyone willing to list terrorism above influenza is basically sticking by an obsessive belief that being struck by lightning is more likely than experiencing a car accident.
A strain of MRSA is currently only responding to only one antibiotic (vancomycin) out of all of the antibiotics developed by humans in the history of antibiotic use, and in some situations has not responded even to that drug. We are seeing the emergence of both new viruses as well as bacterial infections which have developed immunity to the one thing we thought made us so very different from our human counterparts in the past, antibiotics.
If H5N1 does continue to mutate along the same lines as H1N1 1918 (and it is, mutating in the exact places which make it not only deadlier and easier to spread, but also in the same positions predicted by scientists who have studied the differences between H1N1 1918 and the various H1s which circulate now annually), and if a viable strain infects the human population, it will be almost impossible to contain. The research into an effective vaccine is one of the only hopes. If there is another pandemic of a species jumper, then most of these people still obsessed with “terrorism as the greatest threat” to humans will be quite miserably disappointed.
Sorry to be such a downer here, I just keep track of this virus even though the news has for the most part stopped covering the outbreaks.
No please don’t apologize, you brought up a very important point that might be significant to us all sooner than we think.
You’ll probably have to keep me updated on this stuff, as the media doesn’t seem to care anymore.
Thanks for passing by!
No problem. People generally do ignore this, and the bloody thing is mutating as we speak as fast as the virologists are discovering which key mutations caused the 1918 virus to differ just enough from its avian source to become a deadly contagion in certain mammals, including us. Also mice though, which in the lab have the same deadly reaction to the 1918 virus as did people at the time, though not to the H1 “descendants”, which go around the world as seasonal influenza every year.
The media dropped it when most of Indonesia didn’t drop dead a few years (and several outbreaks ago). I even found a book written by a doctor who is just a family practice doctor claiming that this is just a scam for more research money. However, just in Indonesia there have been 126 cases, out of which 103 died. That’s a very high mortality rate, and that is merely confirmed cases. It isn’t known how many how many have gotten ill and not had as severe cases, so that knowledge would help in hopes that this virus isn’t as deadly.
Even this month though, the state of Illinois had to issue a health alert regarding seasonal flu and the resistance to the strongest anti-viral drug in our arsenal, Tamiflu (oseltimavir). I’m not trying to be a scare-monger, I’m just being realistic and this is right under our noses. On the positive side, most affected nations in which the virus is being seen so far in only the avian population are doing a much better job now than a few years ago. The risk to Saudi Arabia (especially with the Hajj about to happen) was kept down due to that country taking this very seriously, culling the affected bird populations, allowing no poultry imports from other nearby affected countries, and allowing nothing into Mecca during the Hajj. Indonesia has stopped being stingy about compensating farmers for their domestic birds, and has started education programs.
As always, action based on actual knowledge may save the day and hold off the threat until a vaccine can be developed. Humans simply have no resistance or antibodies to the H5 aspect of the virus, much as they did not to H1 90 years ago.
I must admit though, there have been deaths due to terrorism, certainly since ‘93, simply not in Germany. Not to downplay your accurate critique of those rating terrorism as “the greatest threat”, but these attacks cannot be ignored or swept under the carpet either. IMHO it is the duty of all good an decent people to continue to denounce any terrorism until the desire to use such tactics is gone and not a desirable road for the disgruntled in certain groups to take. I am not an expert on the IRA, but their bombings in Britain made them certainly rather hated except by others as extreme as them and helped change that agenda due to the disgust that it was met with. This is a good road to start on now, I think, derision instead of hatred.
Turn back time 30 years and replace “Islamism” with “Communism” … it’s the same old, same old.. If you confessed to being socialist, you would have to defend the Soviet Union.
Regimes need enemies, some Arab regimes are going surreal about Zionist plots, and Western regimes use Bin-Laden as a bogey-man.
Only this time it’s you being caught on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. And this time around, we can talk to each other.
Who do you reckon it’ll be in 20 years time? Chinese? Inuits? Indians?
Klingons, maybe… I dunno.
Halal–or just look at this movement of the mid-1800s in America, yet another response to immigrants, largely German and Irish Catholics. Oh, heaven forbid….LOL. Sadly, even this movement is rearing its ugly head again against Roman Catholics due in many ways to the newer Mexican immigrants and expanding to anyone Hispanic (or who could even pass for Hispanic it seems). I live in a part of the country where most of these German Catholics moved to, an area which was almost overwhelmingly Catholic until recently. Even so, thanks to large and influential groups like Young Life (lots of them have grown up….lol) and other Christian fundamentalist movements, some people have decided to start fighting the Reformation all over again. Honestly, some of these people believe that Catholics do things that they did in the Middle Ages! Meanwhile, they seem rather determined to take us back to that era themselves…but alas, blame the Muslims too.
These people have encroached on the part of town to the extent that I yesterday decided that we are going to move, regardless of the housing market.
One other note, I saw a report on a mobile group originally formed for medical care to 3rd world countries, RAM, which is now operating here in the U.S. due to the state of medical care here. They get by on small donations and a shoestring budget of less than $300,000. Please note the comparative donations listed at the Young Life page for just ‘07. $159 billion I believe it was?