Thieving magpie steals H5N5 avian flu cure from China lab

China: An opportunistic magpie has flown away with the cure for H5N5 avian flu from a research lab in Wuhan – causing other ground floor labs in the region to step up security and close all windows for starters.

Health officials were understandably furious. “This is such a schoolboy or Proud Boy error,” said Barry Li, the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. “After trying to win back confidence after the botched Covid release, we were really hoping to mollify the West with this cure, even though avian flu [including H5N5, which infected a human for the first time this week] is a disease of our making and mainly only affects us.”

To help the community rally together, local birdwatchers have been out in force with their binoculars to try and spot the culprit and hopefully recover the cure – which is in a vial about yay big.

Why they have only trained their sights on local schools and swimming baths in the region, however, has caused one female parent to utter, “I don’t give a shit about avian, bat or pangolin flu. We have bigger problems to contend with. Unfortunately, most of them are in the local communist party, so they are ‘protected’,” she said, with the implied scrunching of the fingers gesture.

Barry Li drew on his fake Gitanes philosophically. “They’ll probably just call in the army,” he said. “Which is kind of like sending in a hammer to catch a mouse, but we have the biggest military in the world and Taiwan is not on the cards just yet. Or Japan. Maybe Korea. Yeah, we might have a little surprise for them if you get my drift."