Machine translations can be difficult to interpret. But Indo Newshounds have a lot of experience extracting meaning from Toggletext translations. And they are unanimous in their interpretation - Health Minister Supari is accusing US scientists of deliberately modifying H5N1 to make it more virulent. The  motive? To sell poor countries like Indonesia H5N1 vaccine for exorbitant costs.  

 

Now, I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person, but it has got to be credible. The H5N1 vaccine business represents a tiny fraction of the total revenues of pharmaceutical companies. Deliberately making a virus that could kill over 1 billion people, which is what an H5N1 virus would do if it went pandemic with its current lethality, would be like the US launching all of its nuclear missiles at the cities of the world so that potassium iodide manufacturers could make a higher profit. Ridiculous, just plain ridiculous.

 

 

I don't read minds, but if I were to guess, the behaviour of Health Minister Supari and her colleagues suggests that the situation in Indonesia is worse than the official reports would indicate.  Maybe, much, much worse.