The Birds

The lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu has hit Romania; the disease is knocking on Europe's door. This latest piece of news should jolt developed nations in the North out of their can't-happen-to-me complacency and serve as a reminder that disease, like everything else in this shrinking world, recognises no borders.

Given that human collective memory is agonisingly short (evidenced, for instance, by how quickly the terror of WWI was forgotten by those who launched WWII, viz. within a generation) our consciousness of a global flu pandemic is nonexistent, except as mere possibility and conjecture. Horror, and its attendent lessons, is something we do not desire to live through vicariously hence we as a collective human community have no sense of scale when it comes to dealing with the 'next big one.' One can only hope that the measures taken now are adequate to avert disaster.

Another key point to recognise in combatting bird flu is that bird migratory routes become very important to the epidemiologist. Here, the naturalist and the bird watcher become important albeit unexpected partners in public health. What is usually dismissed as an arcane hobby for antisocial boffins (birdwatching) is an important contributor to our knowledge of the movement of birds, which correspondingly has something to tell us about the movement of avian disease. Even in this era of high-technology white-coated biology, simple empirical natural history has value, in this case value that can contribute to saving lives. Hence it is wise not to dismiss the work of field biologists offhand.

Singaporeans may also have cause for worry. Lethal bird flu has hit Indonesia, Indochina, China, and Russia, countries that bound the Malay Peninsula to the South and the North. Singapore itself is an important pitstop on the migratory flyway between East Asia and Australasia, hence infected birds could possibly find their way here from regions which have had outbreaks. More worryingly yet, we're now entering into the appropriate season for migratory bird sightings. Unfortunately, our knowledge of human-bird interactions, as well as of interactions between migrant populations and resident populations of birds, is not enough for us to know with much certainty to what extent a disease like bird flu can spread from a few infected migrants to the human population.

Enjoy your holidays, people.