The thing that jumped out to me were the moderater's opening comments:
1. He put everyone on notice that this was going to be in the public record, and comments could be used against the participants. In other words, be very careful what you say, and think about how it will be reported in the news.
2. He defined the framework for discussion right after reminding everyone that this would be in the media: This was to be treated as the classic "insurance" problem. How much should be spent on protection against an unlikely event that will nevertheless be catastrophic if it occurs.
In other words, the official line for public consumption was to be that this is unlikely, regardless of what it might mean if it occurs.
As readers of this thread know, the odds of H5N1 making the jump to easy human to human transmission are actually pretty good. The odds are not 100%, but they are a lot higher than 50/50.
The real questions are WHEN?, and will the easily transmissible version be milder than the versions we are seeing now.
HALIFAX (CP) - Thirty-six healthy, wild ducks from the Maritime provinces have tested positive for H5 and H7 strains of avian influenza viruses.
Researchers are quick to point out that these results do not indicate any increased threat to human health or commercial poultry flocks. Of 710 birds tested as part of a national wild bird surveillance program, 35 in the Maritime provinces were found to be carrying H5 viruses and one carried an H7 viruses.
Most of the birds were taken from an area along the border between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Additional testing needs to be done to identify which strains of H5 viruses were found.
But health officials say it is unlikely the viruses are the same as the virulent H5N1 strain causing widespread outbreaks among birds in southeast Asia. That strain has been blamed for at least 68 human deaths.
The H5 and H7 viruses were the first officials looked for because some viruses of these subtypes are highly pathogenic and can trigger economically devastating outbreaks in domestic poultry. Smaller numbers of birds infected with H5 and H7 viruses have been found in British Columbia, Manitoba and Quebec as part of the surveillance program.
The Maritime samples have been sent to the National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease in Winnipeg to confirm preliminary results and to determine the subtypes of the viruses.