Bird Flu and SARS From the Same Place?

No way, you're thinking. That's what I thought, then I read this Reuters story about Avian Flu most likely beginning in the Guangdong province of China. Scientists believe that finding the source is the key to keeping it to a minimum, especially considering there are continuing outbreaks in the area:

"We show that the Chinese province of Guangdong is the source of multiple H5N1 strains spreading at both regional and international scales," the researchers wrote in their report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"It is probably still originating there and spreading," Walter Fitch, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.

"If you can control the virus at its source, you can control it more efficiently," Fitch added in a statement.

When I read this, I could have sworn I read about that province before. Turns out, I had. From 2003:

Soon, other cases emerged in Hong Kong, and World Health Organisation (WHO) officials began to suspect the disease might be linked to sporadic reports from the Guangdong province of southern China in early February that hundreds of people were falling ill with a strange form of pneumonia. It turned out they were right: an outbreak had begun there in November 2002, and had now spread to Hong Kong. It was in the former British colony that the worldwide outbreak really got its wings: thanks to the international nature of this bustling Asian city, and its role as a trade and transport hub for Asia, the putative disease had soon spread to 19 countries. As of 10 April 2003, there were 2,781 known cases and 111 deaths from the new disease.

SARS scared the snot out of the world. If Avian Flu becomes as bad as health officials are warning that it might, we can just look to China, because they were so forthcoming with information about SARS. Uh huh. Posted as something scary to think about.