Getting ready for H5N1... or NOT, as the case may be!

Hello, Visitors. I've got to cover Maureen's shifts at the Asylum for the next few days. I'll have time to fill you all in with the week's scandals mid-week.

She's come down with a touch of the Bird Flu, we think - her Turkey Neck was definitely looking a bit sweaty and wobbly on Friday night when we all went to the karaoke night at the 'Anaesthetist and Parrot'.

Come to think of it, the Parrot was looking a bit miserable!

Dr. Strangelove was telling me at lunchtime that the Asylum Board of Trustees have, as usual, left it far too late to stock up on enough vaccines for the patients and staff, because there's no profit in keeping miserable old age pensioners, snotty teenagers and unproductive babies alive.


Even though the Asylum Laboratory has been warning them for almost two years that this Bird Flu could potentially kill millions of people worldwide like in 1918, the Trustees took the position that since the Flu always begins in the Far East, and they've always secretly wanted something really bad to happen to those Godless Commie Bastards, and China-land is a long way away, they didn't need to do anything.

H5N1 virus (gold)

Now the penny has dropped, and they've realised that the virus is carried not by disposable humans who can be stopped from getting onto trains, planes and automobiles, but by hoardes of migratory birdies with wingies, and the deadliest strain is now 3/4 of the way across Europe, they'd better pull their bloody fingers out.


The Trustees have also discovered that Beijing Pharmaceuticals is already working flat out to supply all the other countries who had the intelligence to get their orders in early to beat the Christmas rush, and they have no extra manufacturing capacity because there are only five plants in the world capable of making the vaccine. The Trustees have just got enough vaccine in for themselves, so we're all screwed!


The good news, apparently, is that the funeral pyres will be administered by Halliburton...

Needless to say, when the H5N1 strain finally gets here, your ever-faithful Nurse Riches will be at your bedside to hold your hand and mop your fevered brow...