The fear is that bird flu, which has only killed birds and about 60 humans who have had close contact with infected birds in Asia, will mutate into pandemic flu that would pass from human to human. Bird flu has reached Russia and the concern is that migrating birds will bring it to Western Europe.

Lots of sane and rational people, such as the boffins at the World Health Organisation and Sir Liam Donaldson, the Government’s Chief Medical Officer, are worried. The Department of Health has drawn up a detailed contingency plan for coping with a pandemic.

In the light of Hurricane Katrina it is reassuring that our Government is preparing for a potential disaster. But, paradoxically, the more detailed its preparations, the more anxious those of us who dwell on these things become.

No one knows if avian flu will mutate into a communicable human disease and if it does how deadly it will be. The Government believes that in a pandemic 25 per cent of the population could be infected and upwards of 50,000 could die. Other experts have painted a doomsday scenario in which as many as two million would perish.

One solution did occur to me: an enormous shooting party spanning the coast of Britain and obliterating the migrating flocks as they arrive. This would cheer up the huntin’ and shootin’ brigade, who have been feeling a little unloved in Blair’s Britain, and earn them the gratitude of us townies who wouldn’t want to get involved in anything so distasteful ourselves. But I can already hear the squawks of outrage from the RSPB and the RSPCA and admittedly the whole thing might get rather messy. Furthermore, there are concerns that shooting the birds might exacerbate the problem. In France, where it is already regarded as a matter of national pride that no migrating bird be allowed to pass over without being pumped full of shot, there are warnings that handling infected birds will increase the risk of a pandemic.

There is no vaccine for pandemic flu because nobody knows precisely what form it will take. The plan is to try to contain the flu while scientists beaver away on a vaccine. The Government plans a mass education campaign about the need for extreme vigilance over handwashing and good cough etiquette. This may sound trite, but you need only look at the revolting way that people fail to cover their mouths when they honk and splutter on the Tube to comprehend how quickly an airborne flu could spread.

The anti-viral drug Tamiflu is believed to be the only effective means of reducing the severity of the symptoms and making patients less contagious. Ken Livingstone has spent £1 million on tablets for London’s essential workers. The Government has ordered enough of the drug for a quarter of the population. However, its stockpile won’t be completed until December 2006.

NHS doctors will only be giving the drug out to people with symptoms and don’t want individuals to try stockpiling the drug themselves. But Tamiflu is available at chemists’ if you can get a private prescription. Have I made a call to a doctor friend? Well yes, dear reader, I have. He muttered something about “hype.” But I’m hoping to persuade him to help me out. Not that I’m panicking or anything.

damian.whitworth@thetimes.co.uk