Jumping to Conclusions

According to last night's ATV news, the Hospital Authority would make a full investigation into the contaminated blood transfusion received by a patient in Tuen Mum Hospital (who has subsequently died), but was satisfied that hospital staff were not to blame.

Perhaps someone should tell them that it is a good idea to conduct the inquiry first and announce the conclusions afterwards; otherwise you run the risk of coming across like the Pakistani government, which within the space of a few days announced that Benazir Bhutto had been shot; then that she had been killed by shrapnel; then that she had fractured her skull on the sunroof of her car while ducking to escape a suicide bombing; then that it didn't matter how she died, only who killed her; then suggesting that she should be dug up again to establish the cause of death for sure. Now they have apparently come back to the original gunshot theory (after two videos emerged showing men brandishing guns in the crowd around her).

The Hong Kong incident also produced an early entry in the "stupid statements of 2008" file, when a hospital spokesman was reported as saying that the bacterium concerned, Pseudomonas Fluorescen, would do little harm to a healthy person. Since blood transfusions are not generally given to healthy people, this falls into the category of totally useless information. Once can only assume the intent was to make a serious situation seem more trivial in a feeble attempt to dilute criticism for it.