CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Western Australian poultry farmers are on high alert, after a second case of the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain was confirmed on the south coast, causing traumatic flashbacks to the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Major producers are currently locking down operations after the virus has now been detected in two wild seabirds found near Esperance.
Much like the last pandemic that turned Western Australia into a dictatorship of iron-clad biosecurity measures, these initial positive cases have been migratory, and flown in from oversea.
And is expected, the sandgropers refuse to be complacent in the face of this potential pandemic event, despite there being no evidence of infection in commercial poultry flocks.
Anyone with a poultry or egg farm has immediately moved to secure their operations, after authorities alerted producers to the initial detection on Friday.
Meanwhile, the two positive cases will be given the 'Western Australian Vaccine' which is a colloquial term for twelve gauge shotgun shells fired at point blank range.
Luckily, the Western Australian government are in a position to move swiftly to prevent the spreading of this virus, with the entire state in agreance that feathers will have to fly to protect their local economy.
While this approach was initially suggested as a potential approach to dealing with the initial COVID-19 cases that had found their way on Western Australian soil - the naysayers in Canberra intervened before such scorched-earth methods could be put in place.
However, endangered seabirds are far more expendable than the mining tycoons and media executives who arrived back in Perth with a slight cough in mid-2020.
"There will be no 'quarantining from home' this time around" said Western Australian Premier, Roger Cook.
