BLANKET bans on bird imports, warnings on cooking poultry and eating raw eggs. Stockpiling of vaccines and the dithering of ministers as the avian flu epidemic begins to take on the lineaments of true disaster.

How reminiscent of the run-up to foot and mouth and BSE it all seems.

In neither of those earlier crises was the Government's response seen as anything but an unmitigated disaster: animals were needlessly slaughtered, farmers went to the wall. The FM outbreak wasn't contained at all - and the repercussions of BSE are still being played out.

And those were diseases that only affected animals! Think how much worse it will be with a virus whose true goal in life is pullulating through human lungs. I'm intentionally personifying H5N1 (or its erstwhile variants), because viruses are creatures too, and this particular virus hasn't evolved yet so that it can be transmitted between human carriers. As things stand, all that the stockpiling of antiviral drugs does is push up the share prices of Big Pharma. While all the control measures are doing is to slow down the rate of mutation, at tremendous cost.

I have another strategy: do nothing. Let it rip. The strain of H5N1 that is human transmissible may not be as lethal as feared. Indeed, all the measures aimed at blocking it may only make it wilier. Once the new strain emerges we can concentrate on ameliorating its symptoms and creating an effective vaccine; until it exists, we should do nothing.

As the medics have been quick to point out, these flu pandemics travel around the world as regularly as Tony Blair. And if he and his political pals can't even abolish a glaring human problem like global poverty, how the hell are they going to defeat an enemy they can't even see?

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