Ward Stone Spoke Tonight

East Greenbush Library
7PM Monday Night- tonight

Ward Stone spoke on the coming bird flu tonight. He was positive about the ability of science to face even pandemic and win the battle, but he did think it a very good idea if the virus mutated to a person to person virus that people pull their children out of school and just stay home for a while. He thought that time period between he diagnosis of the flu and the development of the vaccine would be a few months rather than a couple years. He also thought that the natural highway for the bird to bird disease to enter was up in Alaska with infected birds coming across the Berring Straight and moving South.

He was not very reassuring about the number of people who are trained and work for the State to handle these kinds of diseases. He is the only State Wildlife Pathologist. With him are 2 biologists and one secretary. Helping also are seasonal $10 an hour technicians. One of them has already indicated he will quit when the bird flu hits.

His perspective too was that power is put in the hands of administrators that are more concerned with power and money allocation than with actually getting to the problems of solving the bird flu. They make decisions but do not know anything about science, so they make them based on their political agendas.

On the positive side he thought that they would deal with this when it comes. He would work with the Health Department which he thought was very well prepared to meet the challenge and with the Cornell Labs. It took over a month to firm up a diagnosis for West Nile. He feels this flu needs to be diagnosed and that diagnosis confirmed in 24 hours. He felt the UK had dealt very well with the virus in its current form.
On the practical side he felt there was no need to kill wild birds unless an infection was identified, and that we would have plenty of warning when it was time to stop feeding. He recommended a 5% solution of household chorline to disinfect feces on my dock, raft, shoes, etc. Right now if bird feeders are disinfected with %5 solution of chlorine (soaked in it for a hlaf hour) , some redpoles and pine cisterns would escape a current epidemic of salmonella and it might be that he will look for a 2 week no feed session for that. so once the bird flu hits the country I'll do that disinfecting too as routine.

I did not get time to ask about repirators, but he did stress that this is a respiratory disease, most often entering the body by being breathed in. His staff have upgraded their equipment with new suits and fancy repirators with carbon filters and fans.

In the summer the virus should not have much time to live outside a host, perhaps a few hours as compared to a few months in the winter. Since he thought household pet birds would be fine if brought in and protected from outside sources of the virus, it seemed he did feel that we would be fine too if we were isolated and then finally vaccinated.
He does want to be informed of dead birds and is especially anxious about dead swans. We have none here but there are some regulars on Nassau Lake.
He did not think that it was very likely that Burden lake ducks and geese would be the first to have the flu in the state, but that the birds around New York City were vulnerable.

What practical decisions:

Quarantine is the solution I hear everywhere. Stay away from direct contact with birds and if it mutates with people until the vaccination comes. Drop out for a while.

Separate from contact with sources of infection. Respirators.

Disinfect with chlorine solution. I'll do the dock and the float and the stairs and the path of grass that we walk on every morning if this thing is in the area. The way I cut grass the ducks and geese do not poop on a wide area of lawn but it is good to stay away from the shoreline and no bare feet. I'll be wearing swimming shoes.

Resume life after the vacinations are possible. The flu may go through one season or go and then come back. The vaccine should help. New vaccines in future years might be necessary if the flu evolves so it can resist the current one, but we are most vulnerable the first time because our bodies have no natural defenses. Once we introduce them to the virus, they will move to protect us.




green@WAMC.org