N.Y. BIRDBRAINS KEEP FEAR OF FLU AFLIGHT
By MARSHA KRANES

March 13, 2006 -- The bird flu hasn't hit the city yet - but doctors say fear of it certainly has.

"It's a scary concept - it's easy to believe it can happen to you," said Dr. Marc Siegel, who's been getting 10 calls a week from patients worried their achy muscles and sniffles are symptoms of the virus.

"The fact is that not even a single bird in the U.S. has it, no less a single person. And in its current form, they won't get it," said Siegel, an internist and author of "Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic."

"I tell them not to worry, that the virus is transmitted through close bird handling and they can't become infected by eating poultry or walking down the street near fowl.''

Dr. Anne Moscona also sees "a constant undercurrent of worry."

"I tell them that right now there's a pandemic among birds . . . Occasionally, it has spread to humans, but we're not seeing a human-to-human spread yet," said Moscona, a pediatrician and professor of microbiology and immunology at New York Presbyterian Hospital.