In one of the more crass utterances by a Hong Kong legislator, Tommy Cheung Yu-yan has suggested that to make Hong Kong safer from H5N1, Hongkongers should be given guns to shoot wild birds ('Blazing away won't shoot down virus fears, says health chief', October 29).
If a wild bird has H5N1, there is no need for a gun: the disease is highly lethal in wild birds anyway. Mr Cheung made the curious assertion that H5N1 outbreaks were caused not by poultry but by migratory birds.
This suggests he has gleaned only a very superficial knowledge of the disease. The H5N1 strain - as typical of highly pathogenic bird flu strains - is a product of poultry farms.
Unknown in wild birds, the disease evolved in poultry farms, becoming highly efficient at transmitting between and even killing birds (but, thankfully, not humans). There are indeed many strains of wild bird flus known, but all cause few or no apparent symptoms in wild birds. As Mr Cheung would appreciate had he cared to assess the scientific evidence, this mildness can be explained by sound evolutionary principles, which might be summarised as 'dead ducks don't fly'.
With no apparently healthy wild birds testing positive for H5N1, despite extensive testing including over 7,000 birds in Hong Kong this year, it is indeed the poultry industry that is responsible for sustaining this disease. The key means of spreading is through bird trade, both legal and illegal.
Mr Cheung is not alone in adopting a superficial approach to bird flu. Indeed, Hong Kong was perhaps the first place to make wild birds an easy scapegoat for bird flu spread; this despite the evidence to the contrary.
Wild birds are victims, not vectors, Hongkongers do not need arming with Tommy guns.
