interesting article, but the person who wrote it showed a few misunderstandings about the virus that I would like to clarify.

First of all, he says that the poor and elderly and those with a weak immune system will be the most hardest hit. However, those who have died until now are the very young, or in the 20's or early 30's. Why? Because the virus itself does not kill, but the body's exaggerated immune response kills. The virus causes something called a "cytokine storm". Cytokines are a part of your immune system that help fend off viruses. When they work too well then the process gets out of hand. That can kill. Those who have died are those who have very healthy immune systems and the cytokine response works too well.

Those with HIV may be hard hit, but not because their immune system is weak. In HIV part of the immune system does not work and another part is overactive. Sometimes in HIV patients the cytokine response is exaggerated.

The second misunderstanding I want to point out is that the author says that officials are not innoculating the general public because the virus has not mutated yet to a form that can be passed from human to human.

An innoculation against the bird flu virus for humans does not exist yet. There is a trial on now, I've heard, but officially and for the rest of us such a vaccine does not exist. What does exist is a vaccine against other types of flu, not the bird flu.

So, one may ask, what good does it do to get a vaccine against other types of flu if it wont help you against the bird flu?

The answer is simple: it wont help you at all. But it may help the rest of us.

If a person contracts bird flu and has had a vaccine against other types of flu, there is less of a chance that the flu will mutate in that persons body and the genetic material of the bird flu will swap genes DNA with the genetic material of other flus in that persons body. Therefore, there is less of a chance that the bird flu will mutate. Maybe. There are other viruses that can mutate with the bird flu, also.

So the statement that innoculations have not happened here because the bird flu has not mutated yet makes no sense at all.

By the way, there are natural things that are cytokine inhibitors, they may be able to slow down the cytokine response in a body. They are:tumeric, frankincense, and cod liver oil.