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Today a six year old Egyptian boy died of the bird flu which is Egypt’s 24th bird flu death. A second boy who is four years old is also in the hospital and is being treated with Tamiflu which would have been effective if it had been given immediately when he first had symptoms. Tamiflu is reported to be ineffective if given after the flu is full-blown and may even be counter productive. The best therapy seems to be maintaining the victim’s breathing with supportive oxygen and to protect the victim from getting any secondary infections and maintaining their bodily temperature below some destructive level. Letting the temperature rise a couple of degrees may be helpful because all mammals and even cold blooded animals such as lizards are known to raise their body temperature when they are sick.

I had an 800 word post finished and proofread but when I hit PUBLISH this WordPress program destroyed it. Usually I SAVE fairly routinely but this time I hadn’t. Therefore whenever you use this dangerous program be sure to do a Control-A, Control-S before you hit WordPress publish button. Also hit SAVE within the WordPress program before you hit PUBLISH. Hitting publish seems like saving but if you are not logged onto the Internet and sometimes the Internet is momentarily disconnected, perhaps for only a millisecond, then the publish command might destroy your work. What was destroyed in this case were a list of obvious suggestions on how to prepare for the coming flu pandemic. Most of it had been covered earlier in:

The Berkeley Avian Influenza Confrence,

A cure for the common cold using 105°F baths,

Temperature triggers biological responses,

There were some things which were not covered before such as before the flu hits your community stock up on storable food supplies so you won’t have to go out in public so often. And pre-purchase some good quality face masks as they don’t cost much and may be more difficult to obtain after a flu hits. Another easy thing for public officials to do is to encourage everyone to replace all public doorknobs with copper ones because copper kills viruses and doorknobs are a common way for a virus to get from one person’s nose to another. I reemphasized my flu prevention mantra:

When you are sick avoid sick birds!!! and sick people!