Chicken Little! Chicken Little! 

On November 1, the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners held an avian flu readiness meeting to discuss North Carolina's plan to handle a pandemic. The list of prevention and protection activities includes a variety of monitoring and surveillance devices and states that no fewer than 12 epidemiologists are within state borders. Mecklenburg County is concerned. The state is concerned. The media is concerned. President Bush is concerned. But what level of terror should you be feeling in your heart -- a benign green or something a little more flushed?

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The avian flu virus first crossed the chicken/human threshold in 2003 but hasn't increased its virility since then and is not considered an efficient disease. Nothing has changed in two years, except avian flu's continual spread in some chicken populations, which can be expected. What's different now is the attention avian flu has gotten from the major players, particularly from The One Who Leads the Free World.

Thus far, direct contact with an infected bird has been the only way humans have contracted the avian flu virus, mainly by handling infected chicken feces. But chicken owners: feces contact isn't the only way you can get the crazy chicken flu. You must resist all forms of chicken love, from swapping spit to becoming blood brothers with your favorite poultry. Domestic ducks are now showing signs of being silent carriers -- not harmed by the disease, but having the potential to pass it along to other species of birds. Although it hasn't been recommended yet, slaughtering any and all birds you come across is not a bad precaution. If other birds have the potential to spread it to other birds, who's to say they haven't already?

Killing all things with feathers might not be enough. Already, humans in Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand have surfaced with the disease. That leaves Laos and Burma as possible Southeast Asian tourist destinations in case we decide to blow up the others. Nothing defeats a virus like gunpowder. Thankfully, humans have yet to contract the low pathogenic form of the virus which causes ruffled feathers and a drop in egg production.

Perhaps the avian flu virus is payback for the Spanish flu we unleashed on the world in 1918. Despite the name, the Spanish flu broke out in Camp Funston, Kansas. It reached Europe via American ships, and then got its name by killing eight million Spaniards in a month. An estimated 30 million people died worldwide, just over a half-million in the US.

In Charlotte, half the population was infected and 3 percent (or 1,200 people) died. At the local railroad station, coffins were stacked to the ceiling waiting for trains to take the bodies away. Dreary funeral processions marched down Trade Street every day. Children jumped rope in the streets singing:

I had a little bird,

Its name was enza.

I opened the window,

And influenza.

At the peak of the outbreak, the local board of commissioners, all wearing flu masks, held a meeting and decided to quarantine Charlotte between Oct. 4 and Oct. 15, 1918. A lot has changed since then. In response to that flu pandemic, one extra ambulance was loaned to the city. A director of the Mother Christian Science Church wrote, "The mind is the source of the contagion. The ailment can contaminate only as diseased images are paraded before excited imaginations." OK, so Christian Science hasn't changed much in 87 years, but regular science has.

Jennifer Morcone, a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control, said that while there is some cause for concern, scientists are more knowledgeable and better equipped to handle an influenza outbreak today than in 1918 or 1957. "Many experts consider obesity to be the greatest threat to American health," she said.

Since the president and our other media buddies seem to be having such a good time scaring the public, the CL staff figured we'd join in on the fun. Here are 10 diseases we fully expect to become pandemics. No, really! And with so many possibilities, you will surely die from at least one of them. Soon, probably.*

Flesh Eating Bacteria

A Wilmington man who stopped to help another motorist was inadvertently lashed with a cable lying across the road after a passing truck ran over it. The wounds weren't fatal, but the flesh-eating bacteria he somehow contracted was, and it literally ate him alive.

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A semi-drug-resistant strain of the common staph bacteria that causes most skin infections is popping up more frequently in hospitals and alarming doctors, but this one doesn't play around. It's capable of destroying large chunks of flesh within a week of infection and is often misdiagnosed. By the time doctors figure out what is going on, they often have to amputate limbs to stop its spread. The strain, which causes necrotizing fasciitis, once was extremely rare outside hospitals. But over a 14-month period last year, 14 people in Los Angeles contracted it, which means it is working its way into the general population, a fact that scares medical experts.

"We are seeing the emergence of a new strain of the bacteria that is the most common cause of skin infections in the country," CDC epidemiologist Daniel Jernigan told the Atlanta Constitution Journal. "It has developed resistance to standard antibiotic therapy and appears to be spreading rapidly."

Those who survive it often are left horribly deformed and need reconstructive surgery. There is no end to the ways you can contract it. People have developed NF from a rug burn, a routine blood draw at the doctor's office or a skinned knee.

Dropsy

Nature's cruelest disease. Victims suffer from a severely parched throat, but the water they desire to soothe their cottonmouth only makes the condition worse. Dropsy most famously got a shout-out from Descartes. In his Meditations on First Philosophy, while exploring the nature of reality and God, Descartes grapples with the notion of error. Why would God try to trick us? How can our bodies accept yummy food that has poison in it? And how can the dropsical patient seek a remedy that is actually an irritant? Descartes concluded that the human body is like a clock; despite a well-designed construction, sometimes internal flaws will arise.

The real dilemma, assuming you have dropsy because God hates you, is not with your initial death but with the fate of your soul. If you wanted more proof that God is enjoying your misfortune, dropsy causes you to look awfully silly before your death. Your legs swell up to overblown proportions, and in the worst cases, your face will look like a balloon with a nose.

The most common way to get dropsy these days is by ingesting adulterated mustard oil. In August 1998, bad mustard oil resulted in an outbreak of dropsy in the town of Gurgaon, India. The Inter Press Service reported, "Few can resist the aroma of fish fried in pungent mustard oil. But no one smelt anything fishy about toxic mustard oil supplies in the capital until hundreds fell violently ill with dropsy -- 50 of whom died by Sunday." In the Gurgaon aftermath, oil samples were taken from shops in the surrounding areas and ones found to be affected were summarily destroyed. Officials also cracked down on border patrol to snuff out adulterated mustard oil smugglers.

Fortunately, not everyone is at risk of contracting dropsy. Breast fed babies have shown to be immune. So should black market mustard oil penetrate the streets of Charlotte, find the nearest lactating teat and suckle, suckle, suckle.

Steatopygia

Fat-ass. Lard-butt. Dumpy-rump. Steatopygia has as many unofficial names as capacity for storage. Technically speaking, it's a high degree of fat accumulation in and around the buttocks. A racial characteristic most often associated with the Khoisan people of South Africa -- notably, 19th century "freak" Saartjie Bartmann, the "Hottentot Venus" who was ruthlessly exploited and exhibited naked in Europe -- this rare feature seems to have overtaken the American public. And not just black, inner city "welfare queens." The Obesity Epidemic that's mired the nation in dis-ease means millions of folk in the vanilla suburbs should be staying away from the Hooters buffet and stop "running for the border" at 2am. Any soccer mom with an Oprah addiction who's watched the uber-hostess' war with weight over the years knows this country is being steamrollered by Fat Ass, putting the populace at risk for diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and even breast cancer. Of course, steatopygia's worst side effect is the classist and/or racist stuff you hear from those you-can-never-be-too-rich-or-too-thin types who jabber endlessly about encountering overweight citizens at public events. A nation full of fat butts would be hard pressed to get off those cushioned heinies in the case of an attack. Look for a more in-shape peoples to capitalize on our sloth. The Kenyans have endurance. Or, if they make a comeback, the Vikings are a burly bunch.

Brain Worms

If you're like US Rep. Sue Myrick, you spend a lot of time worrying about illegal immigrants cruising Charlotte streets with a case of Corona coursing through their bloodstreams. Myrick and other red, white, and blue-blooded Charlotte wackos raised their anti-illegal alien voices after an illegal Mexican killed a Gaston County schoolteacher while driving drunk. But if you're sane and rational, that might not be enough of a reason to fire up your xenophobic rage. So consider this disease that hails from south of the border and beyond:

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In 2001, a California teacher fell gravely ill upon her return from Mexico. A malignant pork taco she'd ingested gave her a worm that wiggled its way to her skull. Her disease, neurocysticercosis, has plagued Latin America, Asia and Africa in the past and has become more prevalent in the US since the 1980s. Neurocysticercosis has proven the theorem that brain plus worm equals bad. It causes the not-fun shakes (seizures), and oftentimes, death. Is it likely that all of our pork will acquire microscopic larvae that want to eat our brains? Probably not, but if push comes to shove, can you really see the South giving up bacon?

It would be naïve to assume there is just one disease in this great big world of pathogens looking to infect you, so why would you think there's just one larvae worm? One of the more disgusting (as well as one of the most stubborn) diseases is Guinea worm disease. It begins as larvae before growing into worms inside the body. Eventually, the worms emerge after boring holes through the skin, most commonly the tops of the victim's feet. Sudanese with the disease sometimes tie twigs to the worm, hoping that will speed its exit, or at least keep the worm from going back in to look for another exit. There are no drugs to treat Guinea worm disease, just prayer and not living in a third world country.

Lockjaw

Your mom was right. If you make that face, it will get stuck that way. Well, she was sort of right, because if you make that face without having lockjaw, you'll be fine, and you've probably just made a hilarious face that has entertained all your friends, rewarding you with instant popularity.

The toxin that causes lockjaw prevents muscles from relaxing, and once a muscle has been stimulated to contract, it cannot return to its original relaxed state. Most of us are treated for lockjaw preventatively every few years or so in the form of a tetanus shot. Tetanus is the less fun, modern name for the microbe Clostridium tetani. You can get lockjaw from cutting yourself on a rusty fence or from an untreated puncture wound. Thus, prison escapees and veterans of the Franco-Prussian War should beware.

Other than a deformed, hideous jaw, untreated tetanus will give you a stiff gait and rigid extremities (Frankensteinism), and oddly, a sensitivity to noise. Inability to eat food is also listed as a symptom, but that much should be obvious because you can't open your mouth, traditionally the hole food goes into. Humans are one of two species most prone to contract lockjaw. So if you are thinking about switching species because of lockjaw fear, do not pick the horse. It is the only organism on the planet more likely to have it than us. Our gravest threat to a lockjaw pandemic is if in our next war we decide to go retro, trading in bombs and rockets for lances, pikes, and halbeards.

Consumption

Unlike these other foreboding diseases, the danger of consumption lies not in the pathology, but in the synonymity. Ordinary bacterium has taken the credit far too long when it comes to mutation, trudging along the road to adaptation while taking millions of generations before a mutant strain finally develops. So pop all the antibiotics you can find; you don't have to worry about evolving bacteria and viruses killing us anymore. We'll be gone before then. But consumption can mutate faster than you can say streptococcus.

Old-timey consumption (a.k.a. tuberculosis) is named for how it appears to consume a person from the inside. In the olden days, it also consumed the urban poor, causing one in every four deaths in England in the early 19th century. In the US, the disease led to a ban on public spitting, which was permitted only in spittoons.

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It was once commonly believed the first person in a community who came down with the disease was a vampire, having contracted the illness preying on the blood of relatives. A consumptive had vampire-like symptoms: swollen eyes sensitive to light, exceptionally pale skin and a bloody cough. After coughing up the blood, it was believed the consumptive/vampire had to seek more blood. As a preventative measure against the spread of vampirism, the community often dug up the deceased's body, opened the chest and burned the heart or the whole body. Vampires or not, consumption inflects one-third of the world's population, claiming two million lives per year.

That's before it mutates into over-consumption. Take alcohol consumption: it can lead to drunk driving, drunk walking, stabbings and dreadful, crippling cases of the room spinnies. Sixty-eight percent of manslaughters, 48 percent of robberies, and 42 percent of rapes are alcohol-consumption related. Even worse, boozing has historically been linked to cussing, and in some extreme cases has lowered inhibitions, leading to excessive jigging and stolen smooches.

Over-consumption can kill on the micro or macro level. You can drink yourself to death, drug yourself to death, eat yourself to death, and in some tragic cases with over-zealous marathoners, you can even hydrate yourself to death. On the macro level, we consume so much that our planet is becoming a withered prune while our ozone is so screwed, you might as well switch back to spray deodorant. Who really wants to wipe their pits with the same stick that absorbed yesterday's stinky pheromones?

Elephantiasis

The disease that in all likelihood inspired male enhancement supplements is commonly found in Africa and, less frequently, in the West Indies. Previously, the disease was believed to be spread by mosquito bites only, but is now thought also to derive from walking barefoot on soil, usually red soil (sound familiar?), from which certain small chemical particles enter the skin. You can also get elephantiasis if you first contract lymphogranuloma venereum, a sexually transmitted disease. Whichever way you get it, here's what happens: a parasite blocks the lymph nodes that drain into the lower extremities, creating grotesque enlargement and deformity of the legs and genitalia. Legs and feet swell up to enormous sizes (think Popeye's forearms times three, below your knees); the skin usually develops a thick, pebbly appearance and is often ulcerated and darkened. And don't forget the fever and chills and the possibility of gangrene setting in.

WARNING: DON'T CONTINUE READING IF YOU ARE AFRAID OF GROSS THINGS HAPPENING TO CERTAIN BODY PARTS. Men who contract the disease may suffer a startling enlargement of the scrotum (put it this way, they don't make pants big enough for it), while the penis retracts under skin that becomes thickened, inflexible, hot and painful. Women's vulvas can be affected by elephantiasis, with a long, tumorous mass covered by thickened and ulcerated skin developing between the thighs. It is estimated that about 40 million people are currently seriously infected with elephantiasis, leading medical officials to fear that one day, the increasing popularity of world travel will bring the disease to the US and then -- pandemic time. Elephantiasis is treatable only by chemotherapy or medicines with potentially toxic side effects. A vaccine is not yet available. Depending on your chosen profession, elephantiasis doesn't have to be so devastating. A notorious male prostitute in Atlanta stands on the corner of Ponce De Leon in biker shorts promoting his elephantiatic goods.

Marburg Virus

All that's known about the Marburg virus is that animals likely carry it and that once humans catch it, they can spread it among each other. The virus is a member of the same family as the dreaded Ebola virus. Infection starts with fever, chills and a rash, and in fatal cases ends with liver failure and massive bleeding from all of the body's orifices. Today, more than 80 percent of those who contract the virus die.

Medical experts used to encounter isolated cases, but in recent years they have seen larger outbreaks they've so far managed to contain. There was an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1998, when 154 people came down with the virus and 128 died from it. Another one in Angola last year infected 313 people, 89 percent of whom died. And then the virus vanished. Because health officials aren't sure how many different kinds of animals can carry it, no one knows how to stop its jump from animals to humans. The scary thing about the virus is how easily it makes that jump -- and how virulent recent strains have been. In the 60s, only 22 percent of those who contracted Marburg died. Brace yourself for the 2000s version.

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Giardiasis

If you need something to dread, then consider the possibility of giardiasis spreading throughout your community. It's already been found worldwide, including right here in the US. Giardiasis is a severe diarrheal illness like dysentery caused by a one-celled, microscopic parasite, Giardia intestinalis. Victims come down with symptoms that include a particularly greasy version of severe diarrhea, extremely painful stomach cramps, weight loss and, eventually, life-threatening levels of dehydration. Many people with giardiasis assume they merely have a bad case of diarrhea and do not seek medical help (several prescription drugs have proved effective) until they're in serious condition.

The Giardia parasite can be found in food, water, soil or surfaces that have been contaminated with the feces from infected humans or animals. Every time a victim of giardiasis takes a dump (and that's really often), millions of germs are released. The disease can then be spread by eating uncooked food contaminated with Giardia; accidentally putting something into your mouth that has come into contact with feces of an infected creature; swallowing water from a pool, hot tub, Jacuzzi, river, pond or water fountain that has been contaminated; accidentally swallowing Giardia picked up from contaminated bathroom surfaces (fixtures, changing tables, diaper pails); drinking contaminated unfiltered water during camping trips; or drinking from shallow wells (and you thought they were safer than deep wells). People most likely to become infected include children in day care centers, childcare workers, parents of infected children, backpackers, swimmers and thirsty international travelers.

Our very own reporter Jared Neumark thought he had giardiasis after camping through New Zealand. It was only diarrhea but the experience earned him the nickname "Giardia Jared" from his friends. According to him, "getting tested for giardia is no picnic."

The Blues or "Da Blooz" (a.k.a. depression)

Fear and foreboding, despair, worry, deep sadness -- these all have been common enough human emotions throughout mankind's story. However, post 9/11, America has been rife with all kinds of new and dire forms of the Blues, which are afflicting our organs, nervous systems and almighty pocketbooks: "The Giuliani Fading Limelight Blues," "The Down Low Blues (My Man is a Punk)," "Tom Cruise's Body Thetan Blues" and -- everywhere in this land -- the "Why Ain't the War Made Gas Cheaper Blues."

The decimation of New Orleans by Katrina was some serious blues. And if the current "Karl Rove Indictment Blues" doesn't result in a hurricane-like cleansing of the corrupt government and public air of apathy afoot in the U.S. of A., soon we all may be beggars on a sinking ship singing the "Where's My Refuge in Norway Blues."

* Disclaimer: As Kurt Cobain once pointed out, do we have to tattoo "satire" across our foreheads for you folks to realize this stuff isn't really imminent?