<p>ok, this may be a silly topic but it's a serious matter (to me at least)</p>
<p>So I've grown up with the fear of birds. I cannot stand it if a pigeon is even five feet away. Well I guess birds isn't an issue for me in NYC because when i lived there for a month, and visited for a week this year i did not come in close contact with birds. (however, if any current students can comment on how close birds get or their experiences with it, I would appreciate it also).</p>
<p>My real concern is the bird flu. I know its been on the news for awhile but it's getting really serious now and the government (or bush) is devising some plan (probably useless) to try to prevent it (or just slow it down). Now going to NYC for school initially scared me already. I would be terribly homesick and I'm very close with my family. So in a situation like the bird-flu...I'm really scared, especially in such a populous and dense area such as NYC. Is anyone else concerned? And is the school planning on taking any measures or have any plans if it hits?</p>
<p>2) Bird flu is completely out of your control. Since you can't do anything about it, don't worry so much. It'd be far more productive for you to look both ways when crossing the street and eat healthily, because getting hit by cars and managing your health are things you have far more control over (although not complete control).</p>
<p>3) Bird flu is also beyond the scope of NYU's control. It is a state-wide and national issue. Should it or any other epidemic become an issue, I'm sure NYU will take all state- and national-mandates very seriously. Honestly, NYU has more relevant, productive things to worry about - working on the endowment, promoting student mental health, making sure all fire paperwork is filed properly, etc.</p>
<p>4) Calm down. :) Worry about the things you can change, and don't worry about those you can't. You can't worry about your grades, your friends' grades, your weight, cancer patients, starving children in Africa, electrified manhole covers, your professor's terrible combover, and your social life all at once.</p>
<p>I agree; calm down. You need to feed the ducks when you get to NYC- they're actually very loveable. How you can you fear a little fuzzy duckling?</p>
<p>Second, there has been very little record of human to human transmission, and only a few strains of the virus are potentially harmful to humans. Take proper precautions (i.e. don't touch a dead bird, etc.), and you should be ok. Birds migrate, especially in the fall when you're headed to NYU. I don't think you'll be in more danger there than elsewhere.</p>
<p>Wait, is the bird flu supposed to be more rampant in NYC or something? And I didn't know it was getting worse, I thought the worst was like a year or two ago?</p>
<p><em>shrugs</em> oh well. We all gotta die somehow =]</p>
<p>There are lots of birds in NYC, pigeons and other kinds. I'm not sure how you expect to live in the city and never come close to pigeons. They're everywhere.</p>
<p>There is no H151 anywhere in the US, I believe. There are bird flus in the US - there was an outbreak in New Jersey or Delaware, but it's not the kind that'll kill us humans.</p>
<p>Until the Bird Flu merges with an actual human harming flue, there's little to no chance that you'll contrat it. All the procautions are being taken in case some person's wound (which just conveniently HAPPENED to still be open and bleeding) HAPPENED to come into contact with a dead bird that HAPPENED to have the Bird Flu, and then HAPPENED to contract the regular flu. Even then, that person still needs to pass on that monster hybrid to another human. </p>
<p>So. All of these things have to happen pretty much around the same time....and the chances of that happening? Slim to none.</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>Just so you know--I'm deathly afraid of animals in general, dogs in particular. If a dog barks, my heart beats HARD. And those beaks that birds have.......eeek!</p>
<p>Bird Flu has so far not crossed the Atlantic Ocean.
It is transmitted through wild birds (only evident really once they seem to randomly die), and domestic poultry (who get it from the abovementioned birds)
You're in NYC, not on a rural poultry farm in Vietnam. Therefore, people should worry and take precautions, but not panic.
They are working on vaccines, so by the time H5N1 does become easily transmittable from humans to humans (right now it has not, the death rate is only ~200. out of the billions of people in the world- check <a href="http://www.who.int%5B/url%5D">www.who.int</a> if you want actual stats) hopefully it can be prevented with a vaccine. There have also been discoveries of a few cases of non-severe bird flu, which gives hope that perhaps over time it will not be as deadly.</p>
<p>Look, if birdflu does hit, it <em>will</em> hit hard and yes it will hit harder in densely populated places like dorm rooms, let alone in the middle of New York City.</p>
<p>But this is not to say that you should live in a bubble and eat canned food. As of the present, the chances of you being involved in ANYTHING related to birdfllu are VERY VERY small.</p>
<p>The danger is in the future when a strain mutates, allowing for human to human contamination. Birdflu isn't a guy walking around Manhattan who gets too close to a pigeon and starts getting violently ill. Birdflu is some impoverished farmer who in some impoverished nation coming into contact with the excrement of a sick bird or something to that effect. In some cases, sadly, the farmer will die, but we will not have pandemic conditions. Now if there's some unique set of circumstances, like the farmer already has regular flu, and the birdflu strain starts mutating, than things get very messy.</p>
<p>In most if not all scenerios though, the origins of any pandemic are going to be far far away from American soil. This is not to say we will be unaffected, but their will be a span of weeks of which we will see the virus spread like wildfire in other parts of the world before it gets to us. At least we will have a buffer period to take necessary precautions.</p>
<p>LOLL YOUR QUESTION IS SO CUTE :]
It is sooo amazingly unlikely that you will get the bird flu. Maybe if you were in China the percentage would be higher.</p>
<p>ok, so thanks guys for making me feel a LITTLE better because i've been reading a lot about it and watching the news and it's just scary. i mean the way they talk about it, it sounds like the pandemic is going to occur in a couple months or something. So how long if it mutates and all will a pandemic outbreak occur? five years? ten years? a summer?</p>
<p>well...moving on to some more realistic things (although the aforementioned is pretty realistic):</p>
<p>How close do birds (pigeons) really get in NYC? assuming that I dont hang out at Wash. Square Park everyday?</p>
<p>The general idea is that a pandemic will almost definitely occur.
The question is how severe it will be (if it's contained, it might die out quickly, if it mutates, it may not be any more harmful than the common flu, etc.)</p>
<p>Interesting topic! Here is some information about the internationally recognized center on our campus that would handle preparedness for something like a flu outbreak:</p>
<p>Thanks, NYU! I'm not afraid of the bird flu, but I'm still not keen on NYC's 'flying rats'. Couldn't Bloomberg spring for flamingos or something?</p>
<p>Flying rats? I grew up in the village and we didn't have flying rats! NYC rats are too fat and massive to fly. Now, here in Southern California rats fly from trees to rooftops with abandon.</p>