Prophecies of doom
By Andrea Malcolm
Normally I would have done my best to ignore the media coverage on the avian flu (remember the prophecies of doom around Y2K – I do, I was one of the journalists hyping it) but having a baby has rendered me particularly susceptible to it.
I’ve always fancied myself as fit, healthy and fairly disease resistant so (foolishly or not) I’m not worried about myself but I sometimes wonder how I could keep my little guy out of harm’s way if the H5N1 virus should mutate and start spreading among humans. Because, despite assurances from the Ministry of Health that we could close our borders, I don’t see how we can keep it out.
A couple of years ago I was down visiting my uncle at Putiki Pa in Wanganui and we went for a walk down to the urupara (cemetery). I was looking at the headstones and noticed that about six people in what is a small family cemetery had died in 1918, all within days of each other. It was the Spanish Flu epidemic and I wondered how the disease could have made it to such an out-of-the-way corner of the world, especially during a time when the only way to get to New Zealand was by ship.
So now I find myself compelled to read, watch or listen to every article and item about H5N1 that I come across – which happens almost daily - and wonder whether I should’ve stocked up on Tamiflu (but it’s probably way too late to get any now).
It seems I’m not the only one lapping up all this stuff. TVNZ’s Breakfast was inundated with inquiries when it featured a site that aggregates avian flu coverage from around the world.
Pandemic News is updated daily and pulls in articles from the mainstream media, so it’s interesting if only to see what the rest of the world is being told. It also has links to various sites such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In case you’re wondering who is behind Pandemic News, it’s a colleague of mine, Roger Smith, who’s in charge of Auckland University of Technology’s web site. Roger isn’t a medical man but he does know how to build a site that looks good and with great content.
Last year he won an award from the global museum curators’ community for GlobalMuseum and he also has DinosaurNews.
Normally I would have done my best to ignore the media coverage on the avian flu (remember the prophecies of doom around Y2K – I do, I was one of the journalists hyping it) but having a baby has rendered me particularly susceptible to it.
I’ve always fancied myself as fit, healthy and fairly disease resistant so (foolishly or not) I’m not worried about myself but I sometimes wonder how I could keep my little guy out of harm’s way if the H5N1 virus should mutate and start spreading among humans. Because, despite assurances from the Ministry of Health that we could close our borders, I don’t see how we can keep it out.
A couple of years ago I was down visiting my uncle at Putiki Pa in Wanganui and we went for a walk down to the urupara (cemetery). I was looking at the headstones and noticed that about six people in what is a small family cemetery had died in 1918, all within days of each other. It was the Spanish Flu epidemic and I wondered how the disease could have made it to such an out-of-the-way corner of the world, especially during a time when the only way to get to New Zealand was by ship.
So now I find myself compelled to read, watch or listen to every article and item about H5N1 that I come across – which happens almost daily - and wonder whether I should’ve stocked up on Tamiflu (but it’s probably way too late to get any now).
It seems I’m not the only one lapping up all this stuff. TVNZ’s Breakfast was inundated with inquiries when it featured a site that aggregates avian flu coverage from around the world.
Pandemic News is updated daily and pulls in articles from the mainstream media, so it’s interesting if only to see what the rest of the world is being told. It also has links to various sites such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In case you’re wondering who is behind Pandemic News, it’s a colleague of mine, Roger Smith, who’s in charge of Auckland University of Technology’s web site. Roger isn’t a medical man but he does know how to build a site that looks good and with great content.
Last year he won an award from the global museum curators’ community for GlobalMuseum and he also has DinosaurNews.
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