A non-alarmist pandemic story?

In a very rare appearance, CP is running a story at the moment which does not try to vastly oversell the risks of Avian Flu:

Forget about vaccines and wonder drugs: the main weapon available to Canadians for the first six months of a flu pandemic will be soap and water.

Health Canada studied all possible precautions for a pandemic, which it estimates could kill up to 58,000 people in the country, and concluded citizens can't do much to fend off infection except wash their hands. The information is available on a website, devoted exclusively to the risk of a flu pandemic, which was launched Monday by Health Minister Tony Clement.

That 58,000 death estimate is one of the lowest I've seen in the media. Most of the coverage has been hyping casualty estimates in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths in Canada alone.

The site says hand washing "is the cornerstone of infection prevention and may be the only preventative measure available during a pandemic."

Antivirals can be used to treat symptoms once a person is infected, but not to prevent infection.

Health Canada says people should have plenty of hygiene products as there may be "an interruption to the supply or shortages of hand antisepsis products, soap and hand towels."

A vaccine cannot be produced until the new flu strain has been emerged and been identified, says the website. It would then take six months to produce the vaccine.

This story will, of course, be ignored in favour of the more lurid and terrifying ones already in circulation. But it's nice to see that a few media outlets are trying to be realistic in their coverage of this not-yet-but-could-be-soon health crisis.