Q - Fever

Even for one of Europe’s most efficient countries, it is a tricky problem.

At least 40,000 pregnant goats must be destroyed in the coming weeks to head off a new outbreak of Q-fever, a nasty disease that has killed six of the 2,300 people in the Netherlands who caught it last year.
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The culprit, Coxiella burnetii, is one of the most infectious bugs around.
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Released into the air during birthing or miscarriages by infected goats, a single bacterium is enough to infect a human, causing symptoms much like flu, though more persistent.
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Though treatable with antibiotics, it can cause fatal complications if undiagnosed.
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Governments have investigated it as a potential biological weapon.
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The epidemic has been growing since 2007.
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In 2008 infections exceeded 1,100, a record. In 2009 that doubled, and the disease claimed its first human victims.
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That has prompted the Dutch authorities to order the destruction of all pregnant animals testing positively for Q-fever, including healthy but vaccinated ones.
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Farms marked as “infected” face breeding bans and may not buy more animals.
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So far, some 60 out of 400 goat farms have been marked as infected.
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The question now is whether this outbreak will remain limited to the Netherlands, where large numbers of big goat farms in the south of the country may have formed fertile ground for the disease.
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If it spreads elsewhere in Europe, it could become a wider agricultural calamity, like the foot-and-mouth epidemic in Britain of 2001.
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But unlike foot and mouth, Q-fever infects people
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The Economist
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And guess what comes next?
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Swine flu was a dry run in many respects
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Whatever comes next you can be sure that man provoked it in some way or another