Fiddling while Rome burns

There are very few press releases where you actually doubt that a company could be so stupid. Obviously we all keep our eyes open in the run up to April Fool's Day, but today's inbox filler was a classic: a Gartner report into the effects of bird flu.

Now there's a lot of hysteria about bird flu at the moment. As a race we're overdue for a pandemic and, with so many hungry and weakened people on the planet, any illness would find plentiful numbers of victims. But there's still no person-to-person infections and we should maybe calm down.

Reports like this don't help. Yes, disaster planning has its place but, for decency's sake, a respected analyst firm like Gartner could have used better language.

If things do go pear-shaped I'll be protecting my loved ones, not worrying about "reduced workforce productivity".