Category Archives: avian flu

Unsurprising developments from today’s news…

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  1. "States, cities and businesses should not expect to be rescued by the federal government if a flu pandemic strikes, warns a draft of the latest national response plan," quoth the AP. This is only news to those of you who slept through Katrina.
  2. "Despite the wall-to-wall coverage of the damage from Hurricane Katrina, nearly one-third of young Americans recently polled couldn't locate Louisiana on a map and nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi," quoths the AP again. But is being unable to ID Mississippi really  a bad thing?
  3. "Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said Tuesday he is 'very confident' that federal officials are ready for the upcoming hurricane season," quoths the AP yet again. This from the same people who had so much "confidence" in Michael Brown.
  4. "Many teens taking virginity pledges renege on them and others take them after having had intercourse," quoth Bloomberg News. Teens lie about sex. You needed a survey to find this out? "Harvard School of Public Health Researcher Janet Rosenbaum found that 52% of adolescents who made the pledge not to have sex until marriage in the 1995 survey denied making such a vow a year later. Almost a third of nonvirgins in the first survey who took a virginity pledge disavowed previous sexual experience in the second survey." And again: You needed a survey to find this out?

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    USDA doesn’t think latest mad cow scare will hurt beef sales, also questions the whole what goes up coming down thing.

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    File under: Who you gonna believe … me or your lying eyes?

    Mad cow alert won’t harm beef sales: USDA’s Johanns qoes the Reuters headlines. Is it just me or does the ability to whistle as you pass the graveyard seem to be a prerequisite to getting a job in this administration? In this case our maestro of mouth must is Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns who was in Poland when he said, “I do not think it will have a negative impact on trade with other countries.” Sadly communications between eastern Europe and the Pacific rim are not all that great and word of this pronouncement had not yet reached South Korea. SK was nearly simultaneously announcing that yes they would ban US beef if this latest cow turned out to be crazy.

    A lesson for Mr. Johanns comes from India where the government has had to do a massive ad campaign to get people to eat chicken and eggs again after avian flu whacked sales. Keep in mind that this downturn in sales came DESPITE the fact that there is no link whatsoever between eating poultry and catching the so far not-so-dread disease.

    Maybe if they’d just serve the chicken on Krispy Kreme…