Dick Thompson Birds Quotations

Tens of millions of birds have been affected. But there have been only about 117 human cases in two years, ... This is a very difficult disease to move from animals to humans.

There have been something like 180 million birds that have died either directly from the disease or been culled because they were exposed to it. Yet it's taken us all this time -- more than two years, almost three years now -- to cross this barrier.

You have to put this in perspective: there have been 180 million birds that have been killed because of this disease and yet we've identified fewer than 200 human cases.

The crisis ... may seem more intense now because birds in Europe have become infected.