Well, well, well. Look what the feathered drake dragged in. H5N1, that avian apparition we have all been studiously ignoring while polishing our own metaphorical halos, has finally alighted upon the sunburnt soil of Australia. The virus has now achieved the epidemiological equivalent of a Grand Slam, touching every continent. And what has been the response from the UK’s vaunted bio-security units? They are on ‘high alert.’ Which, as any student of British bureaucratic throat-clearing knows, is code for ‘we have formed a committee to discuss forming a committee, and the chairman has just popped out for a fag and a think.’ Meanwhile, the actual birds, those feathered harbingers of doom, are probably having a jolly good laugh from their hastily erected quarantine pens.
Let us paint this grim picture with the lurid brush of truth. Australia, for those not versed in geography or Crocodile Dundee films, is both a country and a continent. This means the virus has achieved a totemic milestone: it has now officially run out of landmasses that are not permanently encased in ice. The penguins of Antarctica are surely polishing their waddling shoes and praying to the old gods of krill. For the rest of us, this is the moment when the pandemic pundits pivot from ‘pandemic potential’ to ‘pandemic, full stop.’ The poultry industry, that noble bastion of cheap nuggets and questionable welfare standards, is about to have a very bad year. Expect egg prices to soar higher than a peregrine falcon on Red Bull. Expect the phrase ‘free-range’ to take on a grimly literal meaning as flocks are culled with ruthless efficiency. The supermarkets will be littered with the empty shells of broken omelette dreams.
But let us not forget the deeper, more absurdist horror of it all. Here we have a virus that primarily inflicts its misery on birds. Yet we are on ‘high alert’ because of the vague, existential threat it poses to humans. Dr. Prof. Dame Something-or-Other will be wheeled out to solemnly intone that the risk to the general public remains ‘low’ while simultaneously advising us to stockpile antiviral drugs and avoid contact with any pigeon that looks at you funny. The irony is suffocating. We have become a species that flails wildly at the shadow of a bird while the concrete reality of a crumbling health service and a cost-of-living crisis looms ever larger. But no, the news must have its drumbeat of doom, and the second avian flu hits the shores of the Lucky Country, we are expected to drop everything and quake in our boots. Or our wellies, since it is presumably raining.
My sources (a man who knows a man who once saw a swan in St James’s Park) inform me that the actual bio-security measures being implemented involve a lot of men in white suits waving clipboards and a ceremonial burning of a single, symbolic duck. The rest of us are advised to remain calm, wash our hands, and perhaps reconsider that plan to keep a miniature chicken in your flat as a ‘funny pet.’ We have been here before, dear reader. We have seen the slow march of contagion, the flicker of fear in the eyes of politicians who suddenly realise they cannot mandate a lockdown for pigeons. This is the theatre of the absurd, currently playing at a continent near you.
So let them flap. Let the bio-security units be ‘on high alert.’ Let the headlines scream. I, for one, will be raising a glass of gin (neat, no tonic, no bird) to the glorious, horrifying, utterly ridiculous spectacle of it all. The world is ending, not with a bang or a whimper, but with the faint, distant clucking of a very disgruntled chicken.
