“At the moment it is all enormously speculative.”

Search for "bird flu" on Google News today and you get 17,700 hits.

The background story is that millions of birds in Asia have died of this virus. In Vietnam, 60 people have died of it. If you refine the Google search with the addition of "human fatalities", and put to one side the frightening predictions of hundreds of millions of deaths, you see that there have been several deaths in each of the south east Asian countries affected.

There have been no reported cases of human to human infection.

IF the virus mutates so that it can pass between people, then the situation might be very serious indeed. If.

All of this has practical implications for us Pig Sty Avenue people. We keep chickens for eggs, and I'm down there every evening to give them a feed and close their hen house door to keep the foxes out. And we've a brand new baby who would naturally be susceptible to infection, and less able than a grown up to fight it off.

If our chickens are to get it, then wild fowl migrating across Jarrow would have to land or shite amongst them. If I was very unlucky, I might get it, but calculate the odds by looking at the millions of infected birds in Asia against the dozens of human fatalities. And then we'd have to break all records by being responsible for the first ever human to human infection.

Hmm. The fact is, there is bird flu, and it's appearing in eastern Europe now. The other fact is, statistically, the world is due for another big flu pandemic sometime soon. But the press have tried to put these two facts together, and they don't necessarily fit.

Meanwhile, these reports make us all more afraid, more biddable to the dictates of those in power. And it knocks Iraq off the front pages.

So the Pig Sty Avenue chickens' necks are safe for now. Hooray!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leech or flatworm? Ants and Swiss Chard

Image
For the 2nd time in a week or so, (1st time regarding dwarf beans ), I'm following Alys Fowler's advice, this time with regard to Swiss chard .  Long story short, after midsummer plants which often bolt if planted in spring will resist the impulse to do so, probably because of shortening days; (I say shortening, but in Glasgow, in July, we're still getting 18 hours of daylight).   I got a packet of Bright Lights , at a good price, (another reason to wait until July before sowing, lots of bargains, I've noticed). But where to sow them? Most of the 2nd bed is under a tarpaulin, but it wasn't quite big enough to cover the whole bed, so the last 5ft or so went under a sheet of plastic, (in the background of the photo in this post, here .) Transparent plastic was a foolish idea, weeds were growing underneath it, so I covered most of it with sheets of metal from the old shed. I decided to leave the tarp, but use the area beneath the plastic for the chard. Who-ah there
Read more

LTPTP XXV: We Shall Overcome

Image
We shall indeed.  It's a lovely wee tune to learn.  I've almost memorized it this morning, the idea being, when I encounter a piano, I want something to sit down and play on the bugger.  I've a feeling that my keyboard's keys are lighter than a proper piano's, and there'll be a bit of effort transferring the skills I've gotten so far.  Probably, at some point this year, I'll be in workplace with a piano.  I'll print off some simple music and scales, and work at it, but it's likely to be in a public place so I want something to avoid making a twat of myself initially. It feels right that this should be the first tune I learn by heart.
Read more

"Chevy Chase. Fuck ever happen to him?"

Image
As Paulie Walnuts said in The Sopranos. It got me thinking. As it happens, he's been working steadily , but you can see what Paulie means. It's like that with film and television actors: you don't see them in anything for a year or two, and you wonder if they're dead or perhaps on a lengthy charlie and booze session. Or maybe doing proper acting on the stage? Only appearing on the telly gives them meaning to us. That video with Paul Simon was on one of the cable music channels the other day. It always makes me smile. As for Paulie and the rest of the crew, the clock's ticking. Of course, America already knows how things finish, but we don't. My mate Ian was telling me about a friend of his, visiting the States a few weeks ago, flicking through the channels in his hotel bedroom, he hit on a repeat of THE final episode, just beginning. What a quandry! He watched it, as it goes, but kept shtum when he came home.
Read more