Here we go again

Covid is dead, long live bird flu!

Covid-style model for bird flu pandemic drawn up by health officials

Health officials are drawing up Covid-esque modelling to see what would happen if the current bird flu pandemic evolved to be able to spread from human-to-human

Now, I'm not going to go trawling through Google looking for all the stats, facts and figures, just for a mediocre blog post, I'll just go off memory. And as I remember it, all the Covid modelling was so far away from reality, it was total junk

So in typical Government style, they're doing more of the same for the next perceived threat. Maybe they have found some scientists who are much better at virus modelling than the last lot who made such a piss poor job of Covid?

The 26-person strong group includes UKHSA Chief Medical Advisor Prof Susan Hopkins; Imperial’s Prof Neil Ferguson, who has worked on bird flu for decades but is best known for his Spring 2020 projections which brought about the first Covid lockdown; and Prof Munir Iqbal, head of the Avian Influenza Group at The Pirbright Institute.

No. So now we need to prepare ourselves for a load of hysteria about bird flu heralding the end of civilisation as we know it. Dead grannies on every street corner

The UKHSA is also looking into bird flu lateral flow tests, documents show, as well as investigating what is the best lab-based test to pick up the virus.

Good lord! How do you stick an LTF in a chicken?

One of the scenarios being investigated by officials is if the virus is relatively mild, with an infection fatality rate of 0.25 per cent, similar to Covid. 

Is that mild as in mild now, or mild when they were prophecising global armageddon?

Sir Jeremy Farrar, a former member of Sage and Chief Scientist designate of the World Health Organization, said the avian H5N1 virus is now the world’s biggest pandemic threat. 

Nope. The WHO and the Governments who follow it, are the worlds biggest pandemic threat

He called this week for governments to make vaccines against the virus as a precaution. 

Now I don't wish to be an armchair scientist, but I'm pretty sure they need to know which strain is going to pass to humans, before they can create a vaccine against it

The modelling from UKHSA will likely be key in deciding if any actions are required to curb spread, should the unlikely event of human-to-human transmission occur.

Come on then. Let's do it all again. I mean we didn't entirely fuck up absolutely eveything last time. Let's finish the job

Link (Paywall)