Prudence

I found this article, just a viewpoint from someone, rather perplexing. The author holds out against blaming wild birds for spreading the new strain of bird flu and turns and puts the attention on farming methods instead.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/1/sci/tech/4721598.stm

I'd've thought that care should be taken with both points of view as assessment is still in its infancy. The holdings that have been affected in the main are small and rural, generally the poultry that belongs to one family. One child became sick from cuddling an ill chicken from the family flock. From this I'd presume that the birds have the run of the area outdoors.

So, are domestic birds are catching the virus from wild sources

or

Are wild birds are catching it from coming into contact with domestic birds.

So, in the above case had the family recently been anywhere where there was contact with other infected poultry or had the chicken become infected through contact with other birds around where it lived.

Had there been any way that chicken could've become infected through contact with domestic birds. Chickens die quickly from the disease.

There have been a number of instances now where the virus has been found in wild birds. So for now we know that it is being spread to them and this has to be taken into account. Changing farming methods is not going to happen overnight.


People can only go on what is being found to happen. From what I know the best way of looking at it is to try and confine the virus to wild birds by keeping wild and domestic birds apart from each other if that is how it is spreading. It seems no one is sure yet so care as to be taken about all possibilities. It's thought if the virus is kept away from people and is left in the bird population it will just mutate and burn itself out as human flu does in humans, becoming less and less virulent with time.

I'm not quite sure what was being suggested here over all. Is it that the new virus is mutating in domestic situations from an old strain and is just showing up here and there. Or that the spread is because of crowded contact in markets.

Regardless, wild birds are picking it up and are living long enough with it to spread it. Ducks are asymptomatic. I'd've thought caution would be the way to go here.