Focus: avian flu
The killer at the door

As the deadly bird flu makes its appearance in Europe, should we stay calm or start panicking?

Anushka Asthana, Jo Revill, Alex Duval Smith in Paris and Dan McLaughlan in Lunca, Romania
Sunday October 16, 2005
The Observer

'There's a lot of looting going on in pharmacies, but to no avail.The drugs are being distributed in convoys, with military jeeps in front and behind. Masks costing a dollar are being sold on street corners for $20. E-mailed ads for counterfeit drugs are filling up my inbox.'
Nature magazine, May 2005, predicting what may happen during an outbreak of avian flu
It sounds the stuff of science fiction; to even describe such a breakdown of society is to invite accusations of alarmist hype and scaremongering. But this imaginary account of an American woman in the middle of a deadly flu pandemic was published last spring in the highly respected scientific journal Nature, as part of a special edition it produced on the threat. It wanted to look at how a nation would cope from the very first outbreak to the peak of the disease.

See complete article at, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1593221,00.html

Professor Curson

Thank you for your timely and informative article. Much appreciated.
I particularly enjoyed your last paragraph. Avian flu or not, an absolute necessity.

Wally, I do not have sufficient knowledge to dispute anything that you have to say. Even so, I wonder why you seem to be "revving things up"? Are you trying to create hysteria? To what gain?

Cheers
Kay