What makes you happy ?

According to the Daily Mail, Nearly 10,000 chickens have been slaughtered as part of a Bird Flu trial. What ? What ? Which Ministry official woke up in a bad mood that day then ? What’d he do ? Try to kick the cat, missed and thought it would be a laugh to kill thousands of chickens instead ? What was the frigging point of this ? had they killed wild birds, yes, okay – I can see that what with logistics, the wild birds being the carriers and the threat of migration – yes, killing wild birds as part of a trial I could see (not condone, just sort of understand some reasoning) but then the RSPB would rightly be annoyed. But chickens ? read the report !! The chickens were killed in their cages – WHY ? What’s the bloody point ? It’s hardly challenging to kill anything caged is it ? What did they need to do – calibrate the damn gas ? like hell – they’ll have just pumped the whole building full and kept it that way til tea-break.

This was a stupid, pointless exercise that has no excuse at all. None. Whoever dreamt that up should be ashamed of themselves.

“depopulate” – that’s spelt K I L L

It’s killed another person in Indonesia, the Italians are creating new laws in readiness, the French and Americans are getting worried (Even GWB knows what it is!), and the US are spending $100 Million on vaccines while global corporations are making plans to stay in business, and here in the UK …, well. Hmmmmm…. yeah. Hey, I’m sure Tony has it all sorted :) Yup. He must have – even the BBC aren’t reporting this stuff. Can’t possibly be important.

Edit: Found: http://www.fluwikie.com

Progress of bird flu across Russia tracked by European scientists
GPs briefed on bird flu pandemic
Dutch to shield poultry from flu
Poultry ban ‘not needed for UK’
Britain lets poultry run free despite the threat of bird flu
High cost outbreak also took a vet’s life
Europe steps up attempt to halt lethal pandemic
and then today we have
Flight H5N1 is approaching Britain. Brace for impact
Scary stuff. I obviously have no idea what great plans are in place for the protection and caring of the population, but I rest easier knowing that Tony Blair, his family and colleagues are no doubt fully protected. Let’s face it – His Tonyness (great stuff there Clarkson!) is pretty much quarantined from Real Life anyway.
Bird Flu. Very very scary indeed. Nowhere would be safe.

Edit: I just realised my use of that title is odd. IF this bird flu does pass to humans – as it has done – and IF it then mutates to human-to-human transmission, it could kill tens of millions of people. It’s in Europe. And that list is all the news ? What IS being done and why are we not being told more ? It may be the case that as individuals that we can do little, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be told does it ? Or are the authorities afraid of .. something ? Some reaction ?

There could be 50,000 deaths in the UK due to bird flu. And according to that same page, the pandemic is not a ‘maybe’ or ‘possible’ or ‘if we get unlucky’ it’s inevitable. Fifty thousand deaths. That’s a HUGE number. A Google search for bird +flu +pandemic grabs 316,000 results … “An influenza pandemic will spare nobody. …” Don’t you find this seriously scary ?
Short of living in a cave and seeing no-one, how can you protect you and yours ? It’s nigh on impossible. Sure the Govt will lay on two million vaccine doses to protect their asses and those of a few emergency workers, but how can it cope with that number of deaths ? They’ll ban graves and insist on cremations, they can’t stop international travel (and where are you off to this summer ?) and no doubt we’ll have the rise of the “It’s because of Man’s sins!” brigade – and who knows, they could even be right. And even if they do buy all that vaccine, just one tiny change in how the virus is structured renders it useless. Two million vaccines + one mutation = ………

50,000 dead though – I can’t comprehend that. It’s too large a number. And that’s what they are predicting for the UK alone.

This is wierd. Go to the Reuters.com / World Crises page. No mention of bird flu. Click on the ‘by region’ option and Asia has a single story: “…but experts say they will need many more than the few million doses now on hand.. So that news article, that single news article, concerns the deaths of millions of people, yet it does not warrant even the front page. Why ? Are some govts hoping that voters for the opposition will the ones wiped out ? Are they hoping it will hit other countries but spare them ? Are they trying to get it into other countries ? (Would you put it past them to do so ?) or is it just that this thing is going to be so huge, so fast and so deadly that they really are powerless ?
Searching on the New York Times for Bird Flu. First number is how many days covered in the search, second is how many stories: 365/1400, 90/277, 30/101, 7/39 – the numbers are going UP. From that first search to the last represents a 50% increase in the coverage.

Here’s a prediction: Shares in drug companies will rocket, shares in airlines and other mass transportation will fail. Aircon doesn’t sound as good either does it ? One person in a plane / on a train / on a bus / in the office block ….. that’s all it would take. Would ? According to what I’m reading, it’s ‘will’.

Who will be our Randall Flagg ?