New tool in the fight against bird flu ... chicken soup?

Public Health Minister Carolyn Bennett: "'The part that bugs me most is the bottom-up part. Does every Canadian know who their three neighbours are ... and would we be able to get them the chicken soup and not get infected?'"

In this article, this amazing statement follows another goody from Canada's Chief Public Health Officer, David Butler-Jones: "In a pandemic, we would see potentially 50,000 deaths in Canada. We see approximately that number of deaths in every year related to tobacco."

Let's see ... in the 1918/19 Spanish Flu pandemic, approximately 50,000 Canadians died. In 1918/19, Canada's population size was just over 8 million people.

There are now over 32 million people in Canada, largely living in highly dense, urban populations that are increasingly connected to communities all over the world through trade and transportation. Opportunities for disease transmission are orders of magnitude higher now, so to extrapolate a mortality prediction from a world 80 years ago that no longer exists is just ludicrous.

I'm glad their boss is on the ball, because these guys sure have dropped it ...