World From Berlin Bird Flu -- To Panic or Not to Panic?
Avian influenza has killed 92 humans and millions of chickens in Asia, Europe and Africa, and has been spreading unexpectedly fast since the beginning of the year. France is the latest European nation to report the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus in the past week, joining Italy, Austria, Germany, Slovenia and Greece. So far, German authorities have detected H5N1 in the carcasses of 81 wild birds -- 79 found on Rügen and two on the northeast German mainland. The local government has ordered a cull of ducks and chickens near sites where dead flu-infected birds have been found. Vehicles leaving the island have to drive through a disinfection pit to kill the virus. No poultry is allowed to leave the island. Poultry farmers in Germany, France and the Netherlands have been ordered to keep flocks indoors to avoid contact with wild birds.
The conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says deploying the army is silly and the pictures of dead swans on Rügen beaches have created an atmosphere of panic among the public as well as in parliament and the government. "One can already see how things are going to pan out," the paper writes. "In the next few days television footage will show Bundeswehr soldiers. The island of Rügen as a military camp with soldiers manning disinfection points, soldiers who were trained to fight against bacteriological weapons. That is just silly. A little more sense of proportion would be appropriate." Some media are fanning the sense of alarm, writes the paper. "One tabloid newspaper has already described the island of Rügen were the virus was discovered as an 'island of death'. It's become virtually impossible to convey to people that there is no disaster. And no 'island of death.'"
The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung points out that the H5N1 virus is similar to the influenza virus that struck in 1918/19 and killed 50 million people worldwide, and that Europe's governments evidently don't agree on how to deal with the problem. "In Germany, poultry is being put indoors, in France they're vaccinating flocks. Bavaria has secured Tamiflu anti-flu medication for 30 percent of the population, Berlin for 5 percent. Who's doing it right? On what basis are those in positions of responsibility taking decisions? In truth everyone knows little about the danger of the disease -- it's getting closer, that much is certain. But what effect that will have remains uncertain." The paper points out that last Friday, local authorities in northeast Germany either refused to give information on where dead birds had been found or couldn't be reached. Meanwhile, anyone who bothered to go to Rügen could walk around dead and presumably infected birds unhindered. People are asking themselves how dangerous it is to wipe bird faeces off the car, or to be close to pigeons, or whether they should remove birdhouses from their gardens, or let bird-eating cats on the sofa, writes the paper.
Business daily Handelsblatt says the local government's handling of the outbreak is more disastrous than the outbreak itself. The government of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the German state Rügen belongs to, has been refusing to help the Rügen district council remove bird carcasses from the island's beaches because it wasn't directly responsible unless the virus was detected on the mainland, writes the paper, adding: "There's a similar confusion of responsibilities if the virus mutates into a killer virus that can be passed on from human to human." The country's 16 federal states have so far failed to honour a nationwide agreement to stock up on enough vaccine to cover 20 percent of the population. Most only have enough vaccine for 10 percent of their inhabitants or less.
Financial Times Deutschland points out that German politicians were quick to condemn Turkey's handling of the bird flu outbreak there in January. And European experts gave ample advice when the virus raged in southeast Asia last summer. "All that and the long time authorities have had to prepare led one to expect that Germany would respond competently when the H5N1 virus arrived here. The contrary is the case," writes the paper. "The authorities' crisis management is almost more disastrous than the outbreak of the virus itself. It's not just that sightseers were allowed to walk close to the sites where dead birds had been found on Rügen, thereby possibly contributing to the spread of the virus. The chain of command between federal, state and local authorities appears to be unclear." The "dress rehearsal" has gone wrong, writes the paper. Other regions of Germany will have to prove that they can handle it better if and when they have to contend with dying birds.
