Err, what’s with everybody cacking themselves about a dead parrot? This is one dead parrot. One that died in quarrantine.

I am obviously not an expert in avian flu. But from what I’ve read and heard on the news in the past couple of weeks, this is what I understand:

The real moment to start shitting yourself is when (and if) the virus mutates and human–human transmission begins to happen. And that is still most likely to begin in Asia, where people live closer to birds. H5N1 has killed sixty humans, but there’s not been a single case of human–human transmission. H5N1 was first spotted in 1997. So it’s had eight years to mutate in Asia, and it hasn’t happened yet.

That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, but the danger is no greater now that birds in Romania are keeling over, or one parrot that shared a cage with Taiwanese birds has died in quarrantine. The fact that avian flu has arrived in Europe is bad news for birds in Europe, but means nothing for humans. We are in precisely as much danger today as we were two months ago, when nobody gave a shit about avian flu.