Avian Flu Redux

While Natalie may have inadvertently conflated West Nile with Avian Flu (see comments, last post), my time since I got back from Philadelphia and genealogical interludes has pretty much been taken up with the H5N1 story and how to deal with it once it gets here (or Tanzania or South America). My colleagues at the Wildlife Health Center are conducting Flu School this week, a train-the-trainers program which may take off fast, hopefully faster than the spread of the virus and its transgenic mutation to a strain that spreads easily among humans.

We had to get all the materials together by this morning, which was a huge undertaking given that a) the illustrator (who at this point I’m promoting to goddess) didn’t know exactly what illustrations were needed or what order they went in or what their context was; b) ditto for the syllabus compilers; c) ditto for me, the apparent queen of xeroxing (well, okay, layout and design too). At 10:45 last night I really hoped this was all worth it, having inhaled miles of xerox-ozone and snapped hundreds of binder fasteners together. And opened them. And snapped them. (I really really hate binders but some people unaccountably love them; the director of this project is one of them. We joke. But he orders the binders, so I snapped away.)

I haven’t actually bled a chicken or vaccinated one. But I think I could, based on what I’ve been looking at for the past week. I could probably slaughter one, though this wouldn’t be my first choice of activity on a Monday evening. I might be able to pass the fluorescent powder test of Personal Protective Equipment on and off, showing no flourescent on my person afterwards under black light. I know now you’re not supposed to drive a truck from farm A to farm B without disinfecting it first.

And I offer up to whatever deity is listening that none of this proves necessary, because if it does, we’re in the deep cack. Chicken cack. It will reach, dear readers, to the ozone layer.