Turkey says dead boy had bird flu — and so it begins.
We’re doomed! We’re all gonna neglect the most basic personal hygiene practices and sneeze and cough on each other and not wash our hands after going to the toilet, hell, we won’t even use loo roll, and we’re all going to get sick and perish aaaaaauuuuggggghhhhhh!
And now we hear an allegation of 300 bird flu deaths in China, where seven cases were caused by human-to-human transmission:
But Masato Tashiro, head of virology at Tokyo’s National Institute of Infectious Disease – a WHO-collaborating centre for bird flu – told the meeting of virologists in Marburg, Germany, on 19 November that “we have been systematically deceived”. His comments were reported in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
He told the stunned meeting, called to mark the retirement of a senior German virologist, that there have been “several dozen” outbreaks in people, 300 confirmed deaths and 3000 people placed in isolation with suspected cases.
Seeing what happened with SARS doesn’t, sadly, make this completely implausible.
“These rumours have been investigated, and we’ve been told by the Chinese Ministry of Health that there’s no foundation to them,” Dick Thompson, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, told New Scientist.
Once again, SARS! We were systematically deceived only 2.5 years ago!! Has the WHO not learned that China has not learned??!!
Virologists consider the relative absence of human cases of bird flu in China unusual, given its widespread infection in birds. China has reported poultry outbreaks in twenty counties all across the country since mid-October, the latest being on Thursday.
AAAAUUUUGGGHHHH!!!!! We are, like, totally doomed.
Update: a comment from Will worth promoting to the front page — a post on ESWN tackling the story with a little more research: The Masato Tashiro Statement.
After pledging openness about SARS to prevent another mass outbreak a couple of years ago, Beijing is now pledging renewed openness about H5N1 infections:
Bird flu outbreaks have to be reported to the State Council, or cabinet, within four hours of being discovered by regional governments, and fines of up to 5,000 yuan ($620) can be levied for obstructing prevention work or refusing to comply.
Expect more candid reports and discussions of politically-sensitive topics as the Chinese government opens up.
(I jest, of course.)
And in the ‘No shit, Sherlock’ category, Sian Griffiths, director of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health at the Chinese University, dispenses common sense advice to those panicking and stockpiling Tamiflu: cover your nose and mouth when you sneeze, and remember to wash your hands thoroughly. It’s called hygiene, people.