First, we had Nipah virus that made eating pork hazardous. Then the mad cow disease put us off beef. Now the bird flu has even made fried chicken seem less palatable. It is a small mercy that viruses do not breakout among livestock simultaneously, or else we will all have to turn vegetarians.

The common problem with viruses such as HIV/Aids, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) and now bird flu, is that in the face of an outbreak, they are hard to contain and vaccines are difficult to develop because of their mutating nature.

The bird flu, which prompted mass culls in Korea, Japan and Vietnam, has now hit Thailand and Indonesia. In the case of Thailand, it was admitted only after weeks of prevarication and delay (justified on grounds of investigations).

Denial seems to be a consistent first response.

Viruses have material and adverse effects on Asian economies, and if we are talking about bird flu caused by the H5N1 strain or Influenza A in combination with the tentative resurgence of Sars in China, it has a potentially devastating combined effect. The big problem is transmission of virus - not so much from livestock to humans - but thereafter between humans.

It would therefore be expected that based on political economic and cultural considerations, the immediate response of Asian governments is denial and to carry out test after test before admission and activation of the health and information bureaucratic machinery to address and contain the problem, by which time the virus would have further spread and mutated.

At least that was our experience here with respect of earlier outbreaks. So far we hear that Hong Kong, Cambodia, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, and Thailand have placed bans on poultry imports from the affected countries, while Malaysia remains on high alert.

Malaysian chickens must be very healthy. According to a New Straits Times report, Health Minister Chua Jui Meng was reported to have said that there was no bird flu virus in Malaysia's poultry population, even though the flu swirls all around us in neighboring countries.

The question is whether we have the resources to detect such a virus, if it exists. This time around, Malaysians expect complete transparency in relation to any outbreak, and that there is no cover-up by the authorities on the actual situation.