Who believes that bird flu may cause as many as 50 million deaths? Ross Clark doesn’t, and here’s why
I don’t personally know anyone suffering from malaria or tuberculosis, but I imagine that if they have been following the Western media they must have found the past week somewhat surreal. Half a billion people are now suffering from malaria, of whom about one million will be dead by this time next year. Nine million are suffering from tuberculosis, two million of whom will die in the next 12 months. Both diseases, which many in the West may have assumed were well on their way to eradication (it would be no surprise if some GCSE biology candidates had never even heard of them), have been resurgent in recent years, as a result of complacency, poverty and, in the case of malaria, the total banning on environmental grounds of DDT, the pesticide which had a massive effect on the disease in the 1950s and 1960s.
Yet in spite of the appalling human cost of these disorders, it seems that most of the world would rather fret about a disease which doesn’t even yet exist. How contagious it will turn out to be when and if it ever does exist nobody can tell, but one thing is for sure — if a human strain of bird flu turns out to be as easy to catch as the fear of bird flu, there will barely be anyone left standing.
The Department of Health tells us it has stockpiled 15 million courses of anti-viral drugs, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has begun monitoring wild birds for signs of the flu. Australia has announced a plan to close all ports and airports.
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