The general belief is that the worlds population of humans will top out at most 9 billion a few say 8. To put that into true perspective, at that level the whole world could live with a population density of manhattan in an area approximately the size of the former yugoslavia.


Approximate manhattan density 66,940 people per square mile

6,500,000,000 / 66,940 = ~97,101.9 sq miles

Yugoslavia area = 102,136 sq miles

Earths surface area 148,940,000 sq miles

% living area needed for human population - .0652 maxing out at .0903% of the earths surface area


Looks like we have plenty of space!

 

Oh yeah the real figure is an estimated 6,497,871,250

 

I think you may be right, seriously. The US gov't had a closed door meeting a while back and they indicated a billion people could die from H5N1. I've seen estimates of up to 1.6 billion - that's like 1 out of 4. H5N1 is all over Asia, Africa, and Europe at present. Will be in North America via the Eastern Atlantic Flyway bird migrating path soon enough (but won't matter if it goes sustained human transfer before then anyway). H5N1 is expanding its geography and its host range, giving it much more opportunities to recombine and mutate with the "right formulation" needed to generate a "sustained" and "efficient" transmission from human to human. Analysis of the genes indicates that the virus is getting better adapted for human cell receptor binding. The WHO/UN/world govts are downplaying this BIG TIME, because they don't want people to panic. But more importantly, there will be drastic economic/political repercussions as well if they sound an alarm. Unfortunately, health of the world's people isn't a high enough priority. I've been following this for awhile and the only way I see this not happening is via divine intervention or if there are some highly unlikely freakish turn of events in viral evolution. The big question is, how bad will this turn out?

 

SARS was going to kill us all too.

The flu has been around forever and new strains pop up consistanly, many die off before they are even identified. Those are typically the most deadly strains and they go right under the radar.

Anyone worried about this needs some antiparanoia medication or better grade pot.


Anyone want to bet that less than 10000 people die from this strain in the USA?


Typically ~64,000 people die from the flu in the US every year

 

Yea but SARS was contained and influenza is 38 times MORE contagious than SARS. H5N1 is beyond containment, it's spread over too large of an area - half the world is entrenched. This is a novel virus which has been identified, with a current human mortality rate of >50%. H5N1 is also capable of limited H2H currently, not the "sustained" and "efficient" transfer needed for pandemic yet. Recent analysis of the H5N1 genome indicates that gene markers necessary for human cell receptor binding are present - hence the larger human cluster chains in Turkey recently. WHO, that has been downplaying H5N1 (understandably) all this time, are now stating that a pandemic can't be stopped - big red flag. You notice H5N1 slowly trickling into the media as of late? The US govt has no choice now but to "slowly" make the public aware of this. No offense, but you should do some research and spend some time into the history of H5N1 from a scientific point of view before saying I'm paranoid. There is a chance it *might* not happen, but one would be beyond foolhardly to dismiss H5N1 at the current stage it's in.

 

There are what about 300 human deaths or less right now!

We don't have a clue about the mortality rate. Only the paranoid do, because only those that were really sick go for treatment. How many people have a cold right now and will ride it out? How many people had this strain and rode it out with few or even no symptoms at all? Do you know? Of course not and neither does anyone else. It would be foolish to baracade yourself in your home waiting for the H5N1 to pass so whats the point, if were all going to die from this 1 in 4 as you said, we might as all jump off a cliff now. This strain has been in china for what nearly six months or longer? I'm not sure because i don't pay much attention to the sensationalists. On top of the it is an uncontrolable situation so worry does no good. Get a flu shot if your paranoid, your chances of surviving both viral infections are very low so that should help a little but by most accounts >70% of people die within 3 days of contracting H5N1 : We're all as good as dead.

 

I just read corrected death rates just slightly more than 90 dead
The number of cases among humans is also rising, and by mid-February 2006, more than 90 people had died from bird flu - a mortality rate of just over 50%.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4531500.stm

Just to put this in perspective
you're 222.22 - 444.44 times more likely to die from the regular strains of flu

So you're not paranoid people are only making this strain out to be 222X - 444X more deadly than it is compaired to the other strains.

http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/f/flu/deaths.htm

Death rate extrapolations for USA for Flu: 63,729 per year, 5,310 per month, 1,225 per week, 174 per day, 7 per hour, 0 per minute, 0 per second.
Deaths information for Flu: An estimated 100,000 hospitalizations and about 20,000 deaths occur each year from the flu or its complications.1 ... average of 20,000 to 40,000 deaths per year.2 ... in the United States more than 100,000 people are hospitalized and more than 20,000 people die from the flu and its complications every year.3 ... In an average year, flu leads to about 20,000 deaths nationwide and many more hospitalizations.4

 

The reported human case fatality rate is greater than 50%. You're right in that there may be unknowns. However, birds, mice, and other animals in controlled environments have had similar alarming rates. I guess if it happens, you're right, nothing we can do about it. But that wasn't what we were arguing about before. That's a new topic altogether.

 

You're missing the point. At H5N1's current stage, that may be, but this is an entirely novel virus of which no human has immunity. Shall it recombine (and a good chance of it) to be a sustainable human spreader - that's the worry. H5N1 shares many similar characteristics as that as the bird flu which swept the world in 1918 killing 100 million.

 

Until that happens and we know for sure what it's impact on the human body trully is we might as well be talking about a huge metorite that may or may not destroy the whole world.