Conservative Central Office is "distancing itself" over comments made by my old friend Ed Vaizey on Adam Boulton's Sky programme this morning. Ed said he had "no worries at all" about bird flu and called alarmist headlines "ridiculous". He went on: "I don't know whether I am going off-message or not and I will say it from a personal basis. I have no worries at all about bird flu...I have no worries about it at all. Headlines about 100,000 people dying are completely ridiculous." A Conservative Party spokeswoman said: "I would say that is not the official line. Obviously our concerns remain and this is not something we would endorse." Vaizey said the only people who had died from bird flu were Asian farmers who lived in very close proximity with their birds. I smell the whiff of a New Labour diversionary tactic with bird flu. Ramp up the dangers to deflect the media from the constant rowing between Blair and Brown. Even Roy Hattersley seems to agree that this rowing is destroying the Party. The lesson from this is clear. If CCO hadn't commented there wouldn't have been a story.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Ed Vaizey is Right About Bird Flu
Conservative Central Office is "distancing itself" over comments made by my old friend Ed Vaizey on Adam Boulton's Sky programme this morning. Ed said he had "no worries at all" about bird flu and called alarmist headlines "ridiculous". He went on: "I don't know whether I am going off-message or not and I will say it from a personal basis. I have no worries at all about bird flu...I have no worries about it at all. Headlines about 100,000 people dying are completely ridiculous." A Conservative Party spokeswoman said: "I would say that is not the official line. Obviously our concerns remain and this is not something we would endorse." Vaizey said the only people who had died from bird flu were Asian farmers who lived in very close proximity with their birds. I smell the whiff of a New Labour diversionary tactic with bird flu. Ramp up the dangers to deflect the media from the constant rowing between Blair and Brown. Even Roy Hattersley seems to agree that this rowing is destroying the Party. The lesson from this is clear. If CCO hadn't commented there wouldn't have been a story.
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7 comments:
Ed is right. The only danger of bird flu is if it transmits to humans. This only happens where contact is widespread as he says. The chances in the UK of catching such a variant is 100m/1, so why worry?
The Tories should be debating health policy regarding the 13 yr old boy who contracted measles recently and later died.
Due to the low take up of MMR vaccines and the resulting lack of herd immunity across the country there is a real risk of further deaths from what is an entirely preventable disease.
Er, as an MP...
And Roy said it on the GMTV Sunday Programme, Iain!
Just making sure we get our fair share of credits. Frank Dobson said something very similar to Ed on our show this morning too.
Does anyone remember SARS? - we were all going to die of that too. Vaizey spot on.
If we should be in a panic about bird flu, then we should be in a panic about storms, as we are more likely to be struck by lightning.
Ed is correct.
As a news story the bird flu non-epidemic is bloody tedious. However, almost every government and expert seems to be taking the threat seriously and it is possible they know more than Ed Vaizey. Although a human-to-human variant is unlikely to develop in Britain, it could easily spread here from countries with more intimate traditions of animal husbandry. The fact it makes for a crap news story until thousands start dying should not mean we dismiss the threat altogether.
Headlines about 100,000 people dying are completely ridiculous.
Given that an avian flu or swine flu variant killed millions in 1918, it seems entirely inappropriate to dismis the possibility of a similar event occuring now.
Such fears are not new. In 1976, for example, the US government launched a mass immunisation programme after a soldier was found to have died from swine flu.
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