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With their abilitiy to fly long distances, swans have been responsible for carrying bird flu into several countries. The swan found in Scotland apparently was washed ashore into the harbour of a small coastal village called Cellardyke in Scotland.

It must have died reasonably close to shore, though it was reportedly decomposed and had been seen floating in the water for several days. It makes me wonder if the North Sea (and others) is littered with dead swans who never made it to land. If they float after death, which is sounds like they do, it must be likely that seagulls would peck at them and therefore become infected too. I don’t know if other bird species, such as gulls, are susceptible to avian influenza, but if they are then this represents real concern because the spread of the disease could be very rapid indeed.

I need to know about the species specificity of avian flu. When I find out, I’ll pass it on. If you know, please let me know too, or post a comment.

Someone has kindly pointed out to me that a swan has been identified with bird flu in Scotland. Judging by this article it seems that the strain is H5 and not the lethal H5N1, however this is yet to be confirmed.

Interestingly, the outbreak simulation exercise that was underway in the UK, has been curtailed as containment measures are being brought into play for real.

I’ve been looking at various blogging products for a while now. I’ve downloaded numerous products and dutifully installed, briefly tried, and then deleted most of them. Two I have kept coming back to.

I have followed pMachine since the early days of that product. Always powerful and configurable, it has now evolved into a version called Expression Engine. It has also become complex and more like a well featured content management system (CMS), than a pure blogging system. Given some programming skills and creativity you can create some amazing newspaper style sites and sites that don’t resemble blogs at all. Neat.

In contrast, Wordpress has stuck to its roots as a powerful, but easily used and configured blogging system. It can be used as a straightforward CMS if you want to, however blogs are what it is good at.

After installing pMachine, I could see what a powerful system it is and the pMachine forum is full of hacks and plugins to make it more powerful still. I just wanted to blog so it seemed pretty daunting.

Ten minutes after installing Wordpress I was writing my first blog - it’s that simple to use. It does everything that I want and I don’t (yet) feel the need to delve into its code. Wordpress is highly recommended if writing rather than programming is your aim.

I find it reassuring that London and Singapore are devoting significant resources to testing their readiness for possible outbreaks of avian flu.  The London based exercise started today and is involving a large number of authorities who will be tasked with managing and containing a bird flu outbreak.

Note that they are testing their responses to avian flu in the bird population, not humans and I think this is the correct approach.  Containing an outbreak with various levels of exclusion zones will reduce the risk of the virus spreading across the country and maybe into the population as a whole. 

Testing that each agency understands their roles and responsibilities now, rather in the heat of the moment, has to be sensible.  I guess the UK government has looked long and hard at their poor response to foot and mouth disease about five years ago.

When, I wonder, are other countries going to start simulating bird flu outbreaks.  Of course some European countries - France and Germany, for example - are doing this in earnest already but countries with reliance on agriculture should be undertaking similar exercises too.

I’ve finally decided that I should join the millions publishing their own blog online. 

I guess the main reason is that whilst researching and editing the news articles for SurvivingFlu.com I frequently feel that there is much more to say, however I don’t think it’s appropriate to mix my opinions with the news items on the site. 

I had thought about an “editorial” section, which might have fitted the bill, but instead I decided to seperate my thoughts and opinions from the more objective nature of that site.

There are also subjects other than bird flu that I would like to write about, so starting a blog here gives me a broader canvas on which to paint my distorted view of the world - sorry!

Please share your views here - all comments are welcome and I need to be kept on the straight and narrow!

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