#4943
The situation in Indonesia over night appears to be evolving, but `into what’ isn’t easy to say.
The headline – if it can be trusted – is that the number of people being `monitored’ with flu-like symptoms in the area where thousands of birds have recently died has grown to 18.
But exactly what criteria is being used to decide who to monitor, and how seriously ill any-or-all of them are is difficult to determine.
And here I confess to a built-in hesitance to place too much credence on machine-translated news stories.
The different outputs, the often tortured syntax, and the all-to-frequent double negatives spat out by these software translators tend to induce minor brain bleeds whenever I try to read them.
The escalation in persons monitored comes from a report in Pare Pos (h/t Treyfish), which – despite the headline - spends a good deal of time listing the numbers, and locations, of poultry deaths before listing the number of people under observation near the bottom.
The operative paragraph near the bottom of the story, via ToggleText translator, states:
But last September 25, several residents entered observation of the Pinrang Health of the Service, in part in the Suppang Saddang Village 10 people, the Sama Ulue Village of two people, Mallongi-longi five people, and the Amassangan Village of one person. Not not all that 18 people were monitored because of being suspected could tertular the bird flu virus.
Google Translator comes up with a more verbose output:
While data from the Health Department Pinrang mentioned, until now there has been found that infected people have bird flu, but Sept. 25, a number of residents included in the monitoring of Public Health Pinrang, among others in the village of Suppang Saddang 10 people, Village Ulue Same two people, Mallongi longi-five people, and the Village Amassangan one person. Not less than 18 people can be monitored on suspicion of contracting bird flu virus.
Same original text – two translation programs – and two similar, but different results.
As far as which is more accurate? Your guess is as good as mine.
Meanwhile, Ida at BFIC has yet another (human, this time - thankfully) translation of this story that focuses on the poultry deaths, their locations, and some of the containment efforts underway.
South Sulawesi ::: Bird flu outbreaks in Kabupaten Pinrang, Sidrap, and Parepare
Posted by Ida on September 28, 2010
Livestock and Fishery Service of Kabupaten (municipal) Sidrap, South Sulawesi strengthened livestock traffic control from Sidrap borders: Pinrang-Sidrap, Parepare-Sidrap, Wajo-Sidrap and Soppeng-Sidrap. This is to prevent disease introduction to Sidrap from other area, mentioned Head of Livestock and Fishery Service of Sidrap, HM Abd Azis. So far, Azis and team are still investigating whether thousands of chickens death in Sidrap was caused by bird flu virus.
Livestock and Fishery Service of Sidrap until now recorded about a thousand of chicken which had suddenly died. The most casualty was recorded from Kelurahan Kadidi.
Separately from Kabupaten Pinrang, Head of Agriculture and Livestock of Pinrang, H Syamsu Sulaiman stated they had done disinfection in entire sub-districts and depopulation of hundreds of bird flu infected chickens. Livestock service also isolated the infected areas, Sawitto, Tiroang, Paleteang, Mattiro Bulu, and Lanrisang.
There are certainly other illnesses circulating in Indonesia that could be the cause of `flu-like’ symptoms – and so I’m not particularly keen to jump to the bird flu conclusion.
Not just yet, anyway.
Given the high mortality rate of H5N1 to date in that country – if any of these people are infected with the bird flu virus – I would expect to start hearing that their condition has deteriorated.
For now, the monitoring of these people appears due to an abundance of caution.
The newshounds on the Flu Wiki and FluTrackers, along with many of the bloggers in Flublogia are keeping an eye on the situation and will keep you posted. In time, we’ll hopefully be able to make better sense of it.
