These days, in Hong Kong, it's still possible to walk into a drugstore, hand over HK$200 (U.S. $25) to a clerk, and walk out with a box of 10 capsules of Tamiflu, the antiviral drug that shows promise in treating humans for the deadly avian flu. Local pharmacists say they face no particular difficulty in stocking Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate) and that public demand for it is not particularly strong. F. Hoffmann-La Roche, which makes the drug, says 10 capsules are enough to treat a bout of the flu.
But the drug will become harder to find if the flu strain now spreading in Asian bird populations mutates into a form that can spread rapidly among people and precipitates a bird flu pandemic. In the spring of 2003, when Hong Kong was tensely fighting off SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), a teenager posted on a website the fake news that Hong Kong had been declared a diseased harbor, something that would disrupt food shipments to the territory. This caused thousands of people to rush to supermarkets in the middle of the afternoon to stock up on essentials like staple foods and bottled water.