Zoloft and Bird Flu

It's been interesting times.

I've been without Zoloft for about 5 days as of yesterday. Then last night I took 100mg of it (instead of the usual 150mg) after I refilled my prescription at the pharmacy. I'm going to start experimenting with dosages. Nothing crazy of course. I just noticed that emotionally I felt more connected and energetic without Zoloft than with. I'm jittery without it, and I eventually get stomach/head aches, but I am also more sociable in some ways ironically enough. I think it's possible that Zoloft has done its work and now I can "peel the band aid off" a little bit and see how I fair on a lower dosage.

This week, as of today I will take 100mg a day (at night -unlike usual at morning). The week after I'll take 50mg a day and so on. We'll see how it goeth.

Saw an article today. There's a deadly strain of bird flu coming up that people can get from contact with chickens and other types of birds. Now unlike the Spanish influenza of the 1900s that most people reference to show how deadly flus can be, this one has shown a far greater mortality rate.

The Spanish flu killed about 20 million people (0.5% of the people infected) worldwide. The normal flu people get these days kills about 0.001% of people. This new bird flu has killed about 300 of the 500 people infected.

Now you'd have to do further analysis to make sure what the conditions of those people who were killed was. Were they poor and lacking access to medical facilities? In other words, could people in America overcome this illness unlike people in lesser developed regions who would suffer from almost any type of illness due to the fact that they lack finances to pay for health care. If these sorts of concerns turn out to be unfounded and the people infected who died were capable of receiving standard medical attention -then we are in big trouble.

The issue they are having with the bird flu at the moment though is the fact that the government wants to shut down research on it because they are afraid bioterrorists could get ahold of the studies and use them to make airborne diseases. So then it becomes somewhat of a debate as to whether there is more risk in not studying and monitoring this flu that is killing birds and has shown signs of being possibly fatal to humans -or do we ignore it so that we don't develop research terrorists could use to attack people with?

Given the fact that every once in a while there are reports of hundreds of thousands of birds falling out of the sky dead for "no apparent reason" all over the U.S. -I'd say it's worth looking into. As the world gets more populated and the conditions for human quality of life continue to decrease, more and more people will be at risk for contracting and spreading diseases and plagues. It's not an if but a when.