Blogging about Pakistan’s Bird Flu

This is terrific! A blogger, blogging about bloggers who blog about bird flu.

Bird flu bloggers are busy writing about the outbreak in Pakistan, where eight people have been infected with bird flu and one has died. If bird flu morphs into a pandemic, easily spread human-to-human, the first hint of global peril may come from these bloggers.

The bird flu bloggers are not taking blood samples and culling chicken flocks in Indonesia or Pakistan. But they are good at tracking news, medical journal reports and official announcements to let their readers know what’s credible, new or bears watching. That is a valuable service.

Bird flu outbreaks generate hundreds of news items, many incomplete and sometimes contradictory. Knowing which sources are reliable, what information might be suspect and where government pressure may have had a role in the information flow, takes experience and the bird flu bloggers are getting plenty of it.

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