Mapping the Death of Birds

There has been much discussion of bird flu lately. Anne Applebaum provides an interesting op ed on the hoarding of tamiflu. Indeed, the demands is so great that Roche will license other firms to manufacture the drug. But it’s a tricky process. Quality control is needed not simply to insure the drug’s safety and efficacy but also because, as Roche’s CEO puts it, “The third step [in a ten step process] is potentially highly explosive, and only very small quantities can be safely processed in each batch.”

How big a threat is it? This article in The Week magazine reminds us that the threat of a widespread epidemic remains a potential threat, not an imminent one. The problem is that the transition from potential to imminent can be sudden, so we need to be prepared. But a quick and wrong reaction might just make things worse.

Despite the concerns, let’s try to remember just how amazing this all is. When the SARS epidemic threatened, it was remarkable at how quickly scientists learned to detect it and how this knowledge made possible restricting its spread and so avoiding a pandemic. This time we are a step ahead of that. We are monitoring animal vectors to make sure that a mutation does not wreak havoc.

Maybe the virus will mutate into a danger, maybe not. Maybe the response will be adequate, maybe not. But no time in the history of the world has the world’s community been better informed about the potential for an epidemic than we are today. Given all that’s wrong out there, this is worth a bit of celebrating.