IT'S ONE THING to say that the avian flu risk may be overhyped, and do it with sensible arguments as one Instapundit reader did, and another to say that an avian flu pandemic is "science fiction", as Spain's agriculture minister did just yesterday. Actually her cabinet colleague, the health minister, doesn't seem to agree: this is why massive amounts of anti-virals (not vaccines, as they have been saying) are being bought by Spanish authorities (by the way, most of them to be delivered on the beginning of 2007, but that's a 'small' detail that gets never reported). The president of Spain's National Veterinary Association, Juan Jose Badiola, an expert in animal to human disease transmission, also thinks the risk is high (link in Spanish).

I'm not in a position to judge whether the risk is bigger or smaller, of course, but what I do know is that it's not science fiction at all.

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