I was on holiday in the Dales when the 2001 epidemic was at its height.
The sense of Government on the rampage, completely out of control, was disturbing, even frightening.
The excellent Warmwell site has the latest news on this new outbreak. Fingers crossed that terms like 'mayhem' and 'berserk' won't apply this time round.
7 comments:
Clearly the revenge of little Shambo, his soul rotted and twisted by hatred at his unjustifiable death.
I'm hoping that the government will waste no time on a "firebreak vaccination" strategy this time.
I'm hoping that some sensible people who happen incidentaly to "work for the Government" will put the lid on this, before all hell breaks loose.
But I'm a natural-born panicker.
Well to be fair it shouldn't be the mess that it was in 2001 or for that matter 1968 (when virus also escaped from Pirbright). First, the government should have a learned a little from the debacle 6 years ago and have a better plan. Second they have a gift in the fact that the animals have been infected with the vaccine strain. Thus firebreak vaccination (the practice of immunizing all animals in surrounding farms) has a decent chance of working as it should provide 100% protection and thus contain the disease -these "protected" animals are ultimately slaughtered as a safeguard. But then nature has a habit of working in extremely complicated ways so we'll see what happens...
Thanks for the information, Mad Dog, I didn't realise there had been a previous incident with Pirbright.
And "the government should have learned"... here's hoping.
I remember the smell of the sheep on the pyres/mobile incinerators. Awful. You could smell it for miles around.
All sorts of bad rumours went round - about farmers comitting suicide or getting killed, one member of a slaughter team killing another with a bolt-gun... no real way to know what was happening 'out there'.
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