The birds

So, bird flu has finally reached Britain. The BBC are certainly making a big deal of it, but over here no-one is even batting an eyelid. The BBC seem really rather worried about it, and have a tendency to end all of their articles with something like:

"The H5N1 strain of the virus ... does not pose a large-scale threat to humans, as it cannot pass easily from one person to another. However, experts fear the virus could mutate to gain this ability, and in its new form trigger a flu pandemic, potentially putting millions of human lives at risk."

Experts. Well, if it's experts, then maybe we should all be worried. Get your Tamiflu quick.

I'm a little surprised by the lack of similar scare-mongering among the American media. Maybe it's because scaring people about an avian virus doesn't give the government an excuse to go and bomb a random Middle-Eastern country.