So, bird flu has hit Britain. My mate reckons that's a good thing. We haven't had a decent food scare in ages. As always, it's not as if these things are actually scary. It's not like bird flu is easy to catch. Any idiot can tell you that there's a vast difference between a disease birds catch and a disease humans catch.
So, there's no danger. Unless, of course, British people are vastly more likely to eat bird shit than people, in which case we've got a disaster on our hands. My mate isn't too fussed by this possibility. Of course, if he owned a chicken farm, he'd probably be terrified by now.
A friend of a friend says that the world is overdue a real killer flu. My mate still wants him to explain what on Earth "overdue" means.
October 11, 2006 at 3:43 am
I was going to explain what your mate’s friend of a friend meant by ‘overdue’, and then I went to check my facts and found that despite reading that we were ‘overdue’ for an influenza pandemic every day for six-months in my job as newsmonkey, ‘overdue’ really has no meaning here. There were influenza pandemics in 1889, 1918, 1957 and 1968, intervals of 29, 39, 11 and (so far) 38 years. But unlike earthquakes, which do occur with some measure of regularity, there is no reason to believe that pandemics do the same .
We are, however, currently in Phase 3 of a pandemic, as currently defined by the World Health Organisation. And while media reporting on avian influenza/H5N1 was alarmist and poorly researched, it did one thing well – raised awareness of the possibility of a future pandemic, which may mean that people will be prepared for it and react sensibly, thus decreasing contagion and the final death toll.
There will be another influenza pandemic, and millions of people will die from it, but to say it is overdue is a widespread fallacy.
The whole ‘my mate says’ gimmick is great, by the way.
October 17, 2006 at 1:21 pm
Thanks for an informative contribution. It looks “overdue” in this context is a word that’s mostly useful for producing decent copy for newspapers. People see patterns in randomness the whole, it’s the way we’re built.
My mate isn’t worried about a killer flu pandemic. On the other hand, my mate Dave has the sniffles today…
And thanks for the compliment.