Apocalypse Now (ish)
Well, at the moment it looks as though we're all going to die of bird flu. The headlines have been pretty consistent all winter: the scientists say it will be when, not if: and some people have already stopped feeding the birds in their gardens and started throwing rocks at them instead, reading between the lines in the RSPB's newsletter.
However, although the threat is clearly real, sometimes we are lucky and don't all die of the things we are promised by the media. A few years ago it was going to be the Millennium Bug that finished us all off:
"We are staring down the barrel of a national emergency" - Tony Blair, March 1998 - and apparently one kind of train did stop working somewhere in Sweden.
Before that, we were all going to be savaged by killer rottweillers: and remember the flesh-eating bug (necrotising fascitis) that was all over the newspapers one month?
Oh yes, we like a bit of drama, so dull things like lots of patients getting MRSA because of dirty hospitals swiftly drop out of the headlines. The scare about the MMR vaccine has led to the first person dying of measles for over a decade. Both of these are things we should be worrying about, and doing something about, right now.
And of course the flu epidemic may come: and it may be as horrific as the 1918 flu epidemic. But we don't need to stop feeding the birds - or, worse, start killing them - yet.
We should keep a sense of proportion. Once upon a time a huge asteroid crashed into the Earth and killed almost all the dinosaurs. Statistically, we are well overdue for another one.
Meanwhile, blackbirds like apples, robins like mealworms and lots of birds like a mixture of seeds. It's cheaper to buy seed mix in bulk from the pet shop than in little bags from the supermarket.
However, although the threat is clearly real, sometimes we are lucky and don't all die of the things we are promised by the media. A few years ago it was going to be the Millennium Bug that finished us all off:
"We are staring down the barrel of a national emergency" - Tony Blair, March 1998 - and apparently one kind of train did stop working somewhere in Sweden.
Before that, we were all going to be savaged by killer rottweillers: and remember the flesh-eating bug (necrotising fascitis) that was all over the newspapers one month?
Oh yes, we like a bit of drama, so dull things like lots of patients getting MRSA because of dirty hospitals swiftly drop out of the headlines. The scare about the MMR vaccine has led to the first person dying of measles for over a decade. Both of these are things we should be worrying about, and doing something about, right now.
And of course the flu epidemic may come: and it may be as horrific as the 1918 flu epidemic. But we don't need to stop feeding the birds - or, worse, start killing them - yet.
We should keep a sense of proportion. Once upon a time a huge asteroid crashed into the Earth and killed almost all the dinosaurs. Statistically, we are well overdue for another one.
Meanwhile, blackbirds like apples, robins like mealworms and lots of birds like a mixture of seeds. It's cheaper to buy seed mix in bulk from the pet shop than in little bags from the supermarket.
posted by Daphne at 8:15 pm
6 Comments:
a firghtened population is easy to govern
that'll be: frightened then, oops
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Ah yes, good point!
Now we all want to know: What did the comment deleted say? I suspect a cover-up...
My darling fella called me this morning and told me with much delight how he had rescued an injured woodcock which had suffered after flying into a stained glass window at Liverpool Cathedral.I fought against using the b.f. words but eventually felt I should ask..'Did you call DEFRA' No he said 'The RSPB....Oh bugger I see what you mean...'It's probably me just being BBCNewsroom paranoid but I can't help wondering...Oh and the on dit from the BBC higher echelons is that nail polish allows germs to gather in the cracks(ugggh!)and therefore should be avoided when visiting bird flu sites.So now you know.
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