FT.com / World / Asia-Pacific - Virus presents doctors with nightmare scenario

In Indonesia a taxi driver develops a fever and dies, the latest victim of the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu. His wife grows ill and also dies. So do his children. And within 10 days so do many of his passengers, victims of a newly mutated virus that has finally found an efficient way to leap among humans.

One of those unlucky passengers is a businessman heading to Jakarta's airport to fly home to Munich. On the first leg to Singapore he passes the virus on to an Australian grandmother sitting next to him and an Indian motorcycle magnate across the aisle.

All make it home. All die within days. Before they do though, they each pass it on to dozens of people in the beginning of a frightening chain of infections. Welcome to the global flu pandemic.

The scenario is, for the time being, fictional. It highlights, however, why there are increasing worries in Europe and the US about a recent surge of human cases in bird flu in south-east Asia, with Indonesia the latest battleground.

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On Change, Power, and Locus of Control

Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the  creatures of men. - Benjamin Disraeli  

In every passing moment is the chance to turn it all around.

We will either find a way, or make a way. - Hannibal

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. - Helen Keller

Your decisions, not your conditions, determine your destiny.

Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy.

All changes are created in a moment.

Things do not change, we change.

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Now facing forced removal from the city, I anticipate 10,000 residents who will publicly bite the hand that feeds them.

We need to focus our efforts on rebuilding lives, instead of pointing fingers and trying to incite drama to further self-interest and pufferey. There are those guised as heros who will continue to victimize our people when they are most vulnerable.

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