Why did the chicken cross the road? To get away from the bird flu, apparently.

How did the chicken cross the road? Well, it had to escape a Chinese quarantine and then get past all the media outlets scrambling to take its picture.

The threat of avian flu, despite its failure thus far to mutate into a virus that can be transmitted from human to human, has caused quite a bit of hysteria as of late. I find myself asking: Has the hysterical mob of journalists blown the gist of this story out of the water?

Dr. Hon Ip of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center spoke recently to National Public Radio about the amount of coverage the news media has given to this particular story: “Although the number of human cases has been small so far, the potential for the virus to change into a more serious threat to humans is also real. So some level of public awareness, including media coverage, is appropriate,” Ip said.

The World Health Organization has attributed only 60 human deaths to bird flu. Human cases of the disease have occurred in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. The organization reports that these cases occurred because of direct contact with infected poultry, “or surfaces and objects contaminated by their feces.”

These human cases have occurred in mostly rural areas where families keep small poultry flocks; that is to say, human fatalities to date have occurred as a result of living in close proximity with infected birds.

So what about a worst-case scenario? How might this avian virus become a serious threat to people around the world, not just in Asia?

In order for it to become a pandemic it must be able to establish and sustain an efficient means of transmission from human to human. This has yet to occur.

One way bird flu could become a pandemic is through a gradual process of adaptive mutation. The WHO also reports that the virus could undergo a “reassortment” event where genetic material is exchanged between human and avian viruses during a co-infection; in other words, an infection in which both human born and avian born viruses are present within a person at the same time. A co-infection could cause a mutation in the virus that would make it easily transmissible from human to human.

Dick Thompson, a spokesman for the organization, urged calmness over the fear that human deaths might increase. “People confuse it with pandemic influenza, but they’re very different diseases. If people just paid attention to the human risk the possibility of infection is very low,” Thompson said in an Associated Press report.

While the inevitable influenza pandemic is always looming on the horizon (pandemics usually occur every 20 to 30 years) the perceived threat of a pandemic is often more real than the actual threat; as of this moment, the actual threat has yet to materialize.

As for myself, I plan to keep a close eye out for any wandering poultry that might cross my path on campus; I hear that there have been sightings on campus of a giant golden rooster pecking its way amidst the mass of healthy students.

Contact Kyle Hardwick at [email protected]