Bird Flu: Time to Panic?

Not quite yet. Despite what Betsy and ABC have been trying to tell us, we might be able to stop this things short of 25 million dead. Here's what the Times has to say today.

If you're "too busy" to read the whole thing, here are a couple of high points.

Even as it crops up in the far corners of Europe and Africa, the virulent bird flu that raised fears of a human pandemic has been largely snuffed out in the parts of Southeast Asia where it claimed its first and most numerous victims.

Vietnam began vaccinating its chickens last summer and has not reported any avian flu in humans this year.

Health officials are pleased and excited. "In Thailand and Vietnam, we've had the most fabulous success stories," said Dr. David Nabarro, chief pandemic flu coordinator for the United Nations.

Vietnam, which has had almost half of the human cases of A(H5N1) flu in the world, has not seen a single case in humans or a single outbreak in poultry this year. Thailand, the second-hardest-hit nation until Indonesia recently passed it, has not had a human case in nearly a year or one in poultry in six months.

Encouraging signs have also come from China, though they are harder to interpret.

This doesn't mean that we're necessarily in the clear. . .

"To say the disease is 'wiped out' there is probably too strong, too positive," said Dr. Wantanee Kalpravidh, chief of flu surveillance in Southeast Asia for the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, which fights animal diseases. The governments of Thailand and Vietnam "believe they got rid of it," she said, "but they also believe that it might be coming back at any time."

But. . .

But this sudden success in the former epicenter of the epidemic is proof that aggressive measures like killing infected chickens, inoculating healthy ones, protecting domestic flocks and educating farmers can work, even in very poor countries.