Tuesday, February 14, 2006

AVIAN FLU LANDS: in a city near you

The Avian influenza seems to be slowly making its way through South East Asia and has surfaced on the African continent as well as in Europe. Maybe it will take the loss of the first American human victim before the world realizes the immediacy of this crisis. I have spoken before of the catastrophic effects that would result if the flu intersects with those already carrying the HIV virus. Entire economies would be destabilized if not crippled. Now I have receive a number of emails about this since writing the post and need to make known the following. I am not attempting to contribute to mass panic. Neither am I trying to let people remain in their comfort zone. My aim is mainly to create awareness.
We will begin to see the emergence of surveillance communities as a measure of controlling the spread of the influenza. These communities will be ideally be designed as temporal landscapes to be reused and alternative uses redeployed unto their terrain. As mentioned before, unless an effective vaccine is developed, we may easily witness the death of millions in a short space of time. The measures of containment will through habitable, humane yet non-permanent environments prove to be most effective in limiting the impacts of this pending pandemic.


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