La grippe des oiseaux

Miracle wonder drug Tamiflu has been prescribed for flu so regularly by Japanese doctors that its effect on the illness was already beginning to weaken. With that in mind it can't be any surprise that the human strain of the H5N1 bird flu is showing resistance to Tamiflu in Vietnam. Except, of course, it's apparently an enormous surprise: Roche's Tamiflu is still "seen as the best treatment for bird flu", says the Beeb, and the UK Government is trying to arrange for 80 million billion doses to be given to everyone in the country at every mealtime until they retire. Rather like a crap E, Paracetomol would be cheaper, and probably as effective.

(The Americans are getting GlaxoSmithKline's Relenza, lucky bastards, although actually that won't be any good either until they've developed a version that can be injected. At the moment you have to inhale it, which, if you've been exposed to a hefty dose of bird flu, is—to paraphrase the medical reports—useless.)

In other news, amidst the crowds of avian stuff on-screen, I can't have been the only person to misglimpse the final word of the BBC headline, "Paid leave plans for new fathers".