Dae sumthin!

A rather confusing report from the BBC website:

"The government has awarded two companies multi-million pound contracts to produce a vaccine against the deadly strain of bird flu for humans.
The contracts for 3.5m doses of the vaccine against H5N1, worth £33m, have been given to pharmaceutical firms Chiron and Baxter.
The vaccine will be given to key groups such as health workers in the event of a pandemic...
H5N1 has so far affected 170 people in south east Asia and Turkey, killing 90."

OK, H5N1 has been around in Asia for some five years and has affected 170 people. So why is our Government buying 3.5 million doses of vaccine? (It is abundantly clear from the report that the purpose is not to vaccinate chickens.) But you will only get H5N1 if (as a Minister put it last week) you are "intimate" with chickens.

Secondly:

"Ms Winterton admitted the vaccine might not be effective if the pandemic strain of flu was significantly different to the H5N1 strain being seen now.
Ms Winterton, who is attending a meeting of EU health ministers in Vienna, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It is certainly true that if the H5N1 virus developed into a virus that could be passed between humans, you couldn't be absolutely clear that an H5N1 vaccine would be appropriate.
"If a human pandemic does develop, we would have to look at that point at the virus and then develop a vaccine from that."
She added: "There is no guarantee that a vaccine would be appropriate in those circumstances."

So, a human pandemic will not arise unless the flu strain mutates, in which case the 3.5 million doses of H5N1 vaccine will be useless.

Are Ministers panicking? Or do they just want to be seen to be doing something, however pointless?