Bad News On The Bird Flu Front....

Bloomberg recently reported...

All seven people infected with bird flu in a cluster of Indonesian cases can be linked to other patients, according to disease trackers investigating possible human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 virus.

A team of international experts has been unable to find animals that might have infected the people, the World Health Organization said in a statement today. In one case, a 10-year- old boy who caught the virus from his aunt may have passed it to his father, the first time officials have seen evidence of a three-person chain of infection, an agency spokeswoman said. Six of the seven people have died.

Wow, six of the seven. But if it has in fact become human transmissible, then many more have been exposed without symptoms. It would be interesting to test those with casual contact for antibodies.