| February 2004
The usefulness of bird flu
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This season, some 10 countries in East Asia have been affected by avian
influenza. Chickens by millions have had to be
culled in Vietnam, China and Thailand, and still the outbreak isn’t
contained.
Indonesia is also badly affected, but the government is reluctant to order culling because they have no money to compensate farmers. A relatively small number of humans who were unfortunate enough to have been in close contact with infected fowl have also caught it. The fatality rate is rather high. This week, news emerged from Thailand that a white tiger and three domestic cats have been diagnosed with the same H5N1 virus, raising the fear of more cross-species infection to come. The World Health Organisation is concerned that it is going to be many months at least before this outbreak is brought under control, and in the meantime, there is a risk of the virus mutating into a form that is far more contagious in human to human transmission. That may mean a repeat of the worldwide flu pandemic of 1919-1920 when some 60 million people died. For a number of reasons, this disease will really test many Asian governments’ capabilities. Vaccine is in short supply, and compensation to farmers for mandatory culling means huge holes in government budgets. All the while the economic distortion as consumers stay away from chicken and bid up the prices of fish and pork may mean unexpected winners and losers. But this story isn’t about the macro picture. It’s about a very, very micro picture. * * * * * So here I am in a Bangkok cyber café. It’s nearly midnight and the internet is still quite congested. Download speeds aren’t exactly fast, and I have time to look around while a page gradually assembles itself on my screen. Three swishy Thai guys pick the computer next to the one I am using. They take turns checking their hotmail. Each of them has 2 or 3 messages in their inboxes, but only one of them can read English, so he translates the usually-short incoming mail for his friends. My eyes brush across a few of their messages, and I see that they say simple, almost banal things like “How have you been? I can’t help thinking about you everyday since I’ve been back”, “It’s very cold now in Toronto” and “I really hated going back to work after such a wonderful holiday with you.”. The three “sisters” don’t immediately reply to any of the messages, though this doesn’t strike me as all that strange. I myself sometimes want to mull over what to say before replying. But no sooner than I dismissed the whole thing as routine, though a little distracting, they re-organised themselves to carry out their true mission. And that really piqued my interest. Miss English-speaker sat himself at the keyboard and unfolded a page torn out from a notebook. On that multi-creased sheet of paper were about 7 or 8 handwritten lines, obviously prepared text, carefully composed with the aid of a dictionary beforehand. He then opened each of the incoming messages again, of his own hotmail account as well as that of his friends, and basically typed the same message as a reply to each of their “boyfriends” in wintry Canada or wherever. After that, the friends took out their little black books, read off additional email addresses, and more or less the same message, with a bit of personalization, was composed to each of them. Altogether, they must have sent off 20 such messages, with more to go by the time I finished my mail-check and left the shop. What was in that prepared text? Something along these lines:
* * * * * And you can bet that the gambit will work.
Not all 20 besotted farangs in sub-zero North America or Europe will fall
for it, but some will. Enough money will come through. © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes None Addenda None
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