I have received a number of responses to last week’s e-Letter article entitled ASF Outbreak in Northern Europe. The respondents all very politely questioned my intellectual foundation, level of ignorance, lack of attention to detail and basic inability to read a map. While most of you that know me have accepted these shortcomings and decided to overlook them, in this case I must plead an attempt at "journalistic integrity" for my apparent ineptitude.
The e-Letter article in question indicated that Georgia was located in "northern Europe". As I was compiling information for the original e-Letter article I referred to a map and it appeared to me that Georgia is not located in an area I would refer to as "northern" Europe (or Europe at all for that matter). However, it appeared that no one else actually knew how to describe where Georgia was located either. Numerous other reports I reviewed for this article listed Georgia as located in "southeastern Europe", "southwestern Asia" and "northern Europe". Those of you writing in also described its location as "Russian", "Middle Eastern", "Armenian", and "north of eastern Turkey".
In an attempt to try to be true to the original "official" report describing the outbreak I chose to print the location in the e-Letter article as described in the official OIE release which stated that "this is the first ever occurrence of the disease in northern Europe". I assumed that they knew better than I the location of the outbreak.
The point is that wherever Georgia is, it’s not in sub-Saharan Africa or Sardinia, Italy. Thus, we have to be concerned that ASF has been diagnosed outside its traditionally recognized endemic areas.
So, thanks again to all of you who took the time to read the article and email me a response. I am glad so many of you actually read the e-Letter. One thing that does concern me, however, is the fact that the OIE article mentions that ASF experts are being sent to investigate the outbreak. I just hope they don’t show up in Atlanta.