(HHS Secy.:) U.S. Unprepared for Super-Flu Pandemic (not enough vaccine)

LAT/AP: U.S. Unprepared for Super-Flu Pandemic
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON -- The U.S. is unprepared for the next flu pandemic, lacking the manufacturing capacity to provide 300 million doses of a vaccine for three to five more years, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said Sunday.

"What we all learned from (Hurricane) Katrina is that sometimes we have to think very clearly about the unthinkable," Leavitt said. "We're not as prepared as we need to be. ...We will not have enough for everyone."...

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The U.S., which has not seen any signs of the strain in birds or people, has only enough doses now for 4.3 million people.

President Bush has proposed stockpiling enough of the anti-flu drugs Tamiflu and Relenza for 81 million people, a goal drug manufacturers believe they can reach by the middle of next year, said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention....

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Leavitt said the low supply means state and local governments will have to make tough choices on how best to allocate the vaccine should an outbreak occur. The federal government has suggested top priority be given to first responders....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/ats-ap_top14nov20,0,3131125.story

likely killed by falling aircraft parts

It is a bit unsettling to me, however, that if the "unthinkable" happens and we do have an epidemic, the Secy. of HHS seems to be essentially saying that we will have another Katrina-type response. I lack confidence in this administration's ability to do much of anything.

I'm already stockpiling canned foods.

I hate going to the grocery store as it is. I'm conviced I got the flu there last spring. It's full of those dirty shopping cart handles and germy little kids running around.

The bird flu is a real danger - to chickens.

Why in the blue blazes do we need a vaccine for the bird flu?

How many of us live in close quarters with chickens or other fowl?

Could that $7 billion be better spent on some of the medicare and medicaid programs that were cut?
Or spent on education, or on fuel assistance, etc?

Heck no, everyone scream for the bird flu vaccine, so that
Rumsfeld can make some more money.

This is a thinly disguised attempt to further rob the US treasury.

Even the congress figured it out.

It probably is loaded with thimerosal anyway, as the other flu
vaccines are.

It may well be an anti-flu drug, but it IS NOT A VACCINE, a pretty specific medical term. There is no vaccine for the 'super' strain at present.

The deadliness of the bird flu is also in question. A comparison to the 1980 spanish flu pandemic is a terrible comparison, since medicine has grown leaps and bounds since 1918, and the average lifespan back then was somewhere between 55 and 65 years.

Oh, and the mortality rate of the spanish flu was only like 2.5%. That may sound like a lot, but it's not the evil kill-everyone virus that they're playing it up to be. I would put the mortality rate of the bird flu (if it ever mutates to a form that can go from human to human) at somewhere more like 1%, due to the medical advances that we have made since 1918.