She Loved that Chicken, Cried, & Got Bird Flu

I read a chilling story yesterday. A little girl lived on a farm in Turkey. She loved many of the chickens in the barnyard, and often held them and kissed them. Last week she was playing with one of her favorite chickens, who was ill. The farmer ran outside and saw his daughter kissing the sick chicken, and began yelling at her to put it down.

Upset, the little girl cried. At the moment she wiped away those tears, she infected herself with avian flue, and later in the week, she was one of the country's fifteen diagnosed cases Two of them have died.

While human to human transmission remains, god forbid, still undocumented, this story illustrates how tenuous our grip really is over these terrible flus that killed so many millions back in the olden days.