IS THE SKY FALLING?
Posted: 27 May 2026, 01:11
IS THE SKY FALLING?
7 April 2006
Isn’t it strange how things stick in your mind. I remember seeing a cartoon once where a bird runs into an office where there is a crow sat behind the desk smoking a cigar. “Boss! Boss! The sky’s falling! What shall we do?” The crow takes out his cigar and says “Buy sky.”
A dead swan was found floating in a small harbour in Fife, Scotland. It has been tested and found to be carrying the H5N1 strain of Avian Flu. A massive biological security operation has swung into action and 2,500 square kilometres has been put under quarantine. Not surprising then that the consequence is an equally massive assault by the media endlessly re-hashing the bald facts and going into creativity hyper-drive to find ‘fresh angles’. The only facet they seem to have missed at the moment is that it could have been deliberately planted by the government to divert public attention from the present chaotic state of politics!
My own view is that the present risk to humans from infection is so slight as to be negligible. I base this on the fact that there is no evidence that there is any mutation which enables the virus to transmit itself from human to human and compared to other viruses that we are vulnerable to, it is very weak and easily killed. Ordinary standards of hygiene, cooking to at least 75C and our natural defences are quite capable of defending us even if we had direct contact with the gut or faeces of an infected bird which is the most likely route of infection.
So what’s bothering me? If my memory serves me correctly there was a charge in Queen’s Regulations for the armed forces which made it an offence to ‘spread alarm and despondency amongst the ranks’. Given the desperately low level of understanding amongst the public at large on even the simplest aspects of biological security I fear there will be consequences. Can any of you remember what happened when Edwina Curry stated (quite accurately) that a high proportion of eggs were infected with Salmonella? Egg sales declined immediately and heads rolled. One certain consequence of the over-enthusiastic media coverage is that sales of poultry and eggs will fall placing more pressure on our hard-pressed agricultural industry.
It would be helpful if some of the energy going into covering a minor event in Scotland could be diverted to getting some simple messages across: We are under attack daily from far more virulent organisms than H5N1 but the reason we don’t fall like flies is that our immune system is very efficient and protects us. Thorough cooking of poultry and eggs completely destroys the pathogen, all that is needed is a temperature of 75 degrees centigrade. Our digestive tract is lethal to the virus, it cannot stand acidity or alkalinity and we have both in our guts. As far as the scientists are aware, the only human casualties from H5N1 have been caused by intimate contact with infected birds over a long period and infected faeces or blood spray getting into the respiratory system.
Our present danger comes not from the virus, but in ourselves that we are ignorant and gullible. This is the syndrome that needs to be attacked by education and I would be a lot more impressed by the government and media if they hammered this message home. This is not the start of a pandemic, it is a relatively minor incidence of a disease fatal to birds. As such it is important to agriculture and should be attacked with vigour. The worst thing the general public can do is withdraw support from the industry by needless fears about the safety of eating poultry and eggs.
I saw a parallel piece of news the other day in the Yorkshire Post. A hospital that is fighting an outbreak of Diarrhoea in elderly patients did some simple tests to ascertain which cleaning agent was most efficient at killing the infective organisms. They found that the best results came from using bleach (Hypochlorite) based cleansers. The modern high-tech agents based on more benign substances were less efficient and in some cases actually promoted growth. So, the message is clear, remember what your mother told you, cook food thoroughly, wash your hands and disinfect surfaces with an efficient germicide. A weak solution of common bleach is as good as anything and cheapest.
One final thought. During the Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak in the 1960s I was on the cattle wagons and sales of disinfectants soared. It was almost at the end of the emergency when the MAFF discovered that the best killer of the virus was a solution of washing soda. Dirt cheap, effective and easy to use. H5N1 doesn’t like alkali either so it might be time for them to go back and read the files.
7 April 2006
7 April 2006
Isn’t it strange how things stick in your mind. I remember seeing a cartoon once where a bird runs into an office where there is a crow sat behind the desk smoking a cigar. “Boss! Boss! The sky’s falling! What shall we do?” The crow takes out his cigar and says “Buy sky.”
A dead swan was found floating in a small harbour in Fife, Scotland. It has been tested and found to be carrying the H5N1 strain of Avian Flu. A massive biological security operation has swung into action and 2,500 square kilometres has been put under quarantine. Not surprising then that the consequence is an equally massive assault by the media endlessly re-hashing the bald facts and going into creativity hyper-drive to find ‘fresh angles’. The only facet they seem to have missed at the moment is that it could have been deliberately planted by the government to divert public attention from the present chaotic state of politics!
My own view is that the present risk to humans from infection is so slight as to be negligible. I base this on the fact that there is no evidence that there is any mutation which enables the virus to transmit itself from human to human and compared to other viruses that we are vulnerable to, it is very weak and easily killed. Ordinary standards of hygiene, cooking to at least 75C and our natural defences are quite capable of defending us even if we had direct contact with the gut or faeces of an infected bird which is the most likely route of infection.
So what’s bothering me? If my memory serves me correctly there was a charge in Queen’s Regulations for the armed forces which made it an offence to ‘spread alarm and despondency amongst the ranks’. Given the desperately low level of understanding amongst the public at large on even the simplest aspects of biological security I fear there will be consequences. Can any of you remember what happened when Edwina Curry stated (quite accurately) that a high proportion of eggs were infected with Salmonella? Egg sales declined immediately and heads rolled. One certain consequence of the over-enthusiastic media coverage is that sales of poultry and eggs will fall placing more pressure on our hard-pressed agricultural industry.
It would be helpful if some of the energy going into covering a minor event in Scotland could be diverted to getting some simple messages across: We are under attack daily from far more virulent organisms than H5N1 but the reason we don’t fall like flies is that our immune system is very efficient and protects us. Thorough cooking of poultry and eggs completely destroys the pathogen, all that is needed is a temperature of 75 degrees centigrade. Our digestive tract is lethal to the virus, it cannot stand acidity or alkalinity and we have both in our guts. As far as the scientists are aware, the only human casualties from H5N1 have been caused by intimate contact with infected birds over a long period and infected faeces or blood spray getting into the respiratory system.
Our present danger comes not from the virus, but in ourselves that we are ignorant and gullible. This is the syndrome that needs to be attacked by education and I would be a lot more impressed by the government and media if they hammered this message home. This is not the start of a pandemic, it is a relatively minor incidence of a disease fatal to birds. As such it is important to agriculture and should be attacked with vigour. The worst thing the general public can do is withdraw support from the industry by needless fears about the safety of eating poultry and eggs.
I saw a parallel piece of news the other day in the Yorkshire Post. A hospital that is fighting an outbreak of Diarrhoea in elderly patients did some simple tests to ascertain which cleaning agent was most efficient at killing the infective organisms. They found that the best results came from using bleach (Hypochlorite) based cleansers. The modern high-tech agents based on more benign substances were less efficient and in some cases actually promoted growth. So, the message is clear, remember what your mother told you, cook food thoroughly, wash your hands and disinfect surfaces with an efficient germicide. A weak solution of common bleach is as good as anything and cheapest.
One final thought. During the Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak in the 1960s I was on the cattle wagons and sales of disinfectants soared. It was almost at the end of the emergency when the MAFF discovered that the best killer of the virus was a solution of washing soda. Dirt cheap, effective and easy to use. H5N1 doesn’t like alkali either so it might be time for them to go back and read the files.
7 April 2006