Re: "Ward off a pandemic"

Per Paula Dobriansky:
> Within the United States, ... a $7.1 billion national strategy for
>combating pandemic influenza.
>.... We have already committed $38 million to prevent the spread of
>avian influenza in Southeast Asia and the President has just requested
>an additional $251 million to detect and contain outbreaks around the
>world. These monies fund such vital measures as preparedness plans,
>expanded surveillance and testing activities, training of first
>responders and purchase of protective gear.

> When nature strikes, we must be ready.

Sounds like a lot of money at first.

But when put in the context of:

- 300 million people in the USA alone,

- what we spend very month in Iraq, and

- what all the money spent on homeland security did not get us in our response
to Katrina (the mayor of a major city didn't even have a satellite phone or any
other means of communicating until his deputy mayor broke into a Radio Shack and
found a live internet connection/router)

my knee jerk reaction is "Fat Chance".



Look at the number of antiviral doses they're talking about and then run the
numbers: doses required per person, number of people in the USA.... they haven't
even got most of the first responders covered.

Congress, corporate bigwigs, maybe high-level state people like governors, and
certainly anybody who flys with Air Force One, yes - with some left over,
even.... but no realistic percent of even the healthcare providers, much the
civilian population.

Think of what I saw last year here in Chester County PA (about 23 miles west of
Philadelphia): there was a local epidemic of a "flu-like" illness that so
overloaded the hospitals that a friend's wife couldn't get in for something
else. I think that most of us can forget about having acute care while we have
whatever form of the disease comes - we're basically going to be on our own,
much as the people in 1918 were.

Consider that the experts I've heard seem to be talking about vaccine
availability sometime around what? 2012.... Hopefully I'm way off base on that
one...

IMHO if/when this thing gets loose with virulency/infection levels above a
certain number there's going to be pandemonium.

The least-awful realistic scenario I can envision is a reassortment event that
unleashes something with greatly-reduced lethality that will infect a huge
number of people without killing too many - giving us, as a population, some
residual immunity to whatever comes next. Sort of a naturally-occurring live
vaccine.
--
PeteCresswell
.

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