The Sky Isn't Falling
This reassuring fabrication in the name of maintaining calm comes from The Daily Times - Malawi’s Premier Daily
Government has ruled out bird flu following deaths of thousands of wild birds in Ntchisi on Tuesday, December 13.
Oh good. They've completed all tests and have arrived at a definitive explanation for why migrating birds in this highly circumscribed few acres of hillside died suddendly.
In a press statement released Wednesday government attributes the deaths of the birds to a heavy downpour that fell the previous night.
All the birds were huddled together in a ditch and unable to fly as the waters rose? All the birds for some reason turned their heads to the sky and their beaks filled with water in a thunderstorm and they died? And so did birds everywhere die in this heavy downpour? No? Just this particular flock who had been in close contact with each other over thousands of miles of migration? Curious.
Samples of the dead birds have been sent to Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute in South Africa to establish the cause of the deaths.
Say: I thought that is what your headline was telling us--that the tests that could rule out highly-pathogenic avian flu had come back from South Africa and were negative. I hope that this outcome will be the case. But such a silly explanation as birds drowning in a rainstorm might just make the government lose a bit of credibility should a pathogen be found at fault for these bird deaths. Maybe calm and confidence are better achieved if mum's the word in Malawi til the results are in hand.