Who's afraid of Bird 'Flu?

If government statistics are to be believed, 11 million adults in Britain lack numeracy skills.  What does this have to do with bird flu?

The scientists and experts say that the latest outbreak of bird flu in Suffolk poses no immediate risk to public health, that it is exceedingly unlikely that any human will get sick as a result of the outbreak on that one turkey farm, and that globally the numbers of human cases are very, very small indeed.  They also say that the public are safe to continue eating poultry.

How are those with poor numeracy skills going to evaluate statements like exceedingly unlikely or very, very small?  Winning the Lottery is also exceedingly unlikely (14 million to 1 or similar odds), but millions still make that bet regularly, because "it could be you!" 

I feel pretty confident in predicting that there will be a fall in the sales of prepared poultry products, because although you cannot catch bird flu from this source, people still think you can.  I also believe that if people read the fairly out of date information on the BBC website, there may well be a large number of abandoned cats in East Anglia, and there will be concern about travelling in the East Anglia region.  Again, people are not sufficiently familiar with numbers to understand the scale of the risk.

Sadly, there will be less concern over the numbers cited about the Suffolk farm itself - 160,000 birds in 22 sheds, on average between 7,000 and 7,500 birds per shed.  Nor is there likely to be much concern over the statements that on modern poultry farms, feeding is done mechanically and involvement of farm workers with poultry is minimal. 

To me, the remote chances of anyone getting bird flu from this outbreak are too small to even consider.  The real issue this story has highlighted to me are the numbers involved in factory farming, and the lack of understanding about how our food is produced.

Comments

[john]

Tricky one this, do we go for a highly educated population and tell them the truth about everything, or create the illusion of an educated people and hide the very real threats to them as a matter of policy? I suppose we are all much happier if we continue in our state of blissful ignorance. Not just bird flu of course, but terrorism, global warming, economic issues, high level corruption, pollution, the list could go on for ages.