Birds! Well, it had to happen. Yesterday HK health officials found the birdflu virus in a chicken smuggled in from mainland China. Three people are in hospital after eating a chicken that was also smuggled in with the infected chicken.

Two points first - none of the three people in hospital have been diagnosed with birdflu. (Yet.) In addition, there have been other instances of infected birds in HK in the past few weeks, but they have all been migratory birds, and no humans have been infected.

Now the really interesting point in this story is - during a televised press conference last night the HK health officials said they'd rung up their counterparts in Guangdong on the mainland and asked if there had been any cases of birdflu in Guangdong. Their Guangdong colleagues assured them that there hadn't been. So what I want to know is - if there isn't any birdflu in Guangdong then where did the smuggled chicken come from?

I think if we're going to rely on Guangdong health officials to tell us the truth about birdflu in Guangdong, the HK health authority better start more rigorous checking at the borders, and get all the chickens out of HK village backyards and slaughterhouses. Because I'm not exactly confident that those Guangdong health officials are going to tell us what we need to know (see Famous Saying #5), when we need to know it.  ¶ 3:43 PM