Anyone else scared of how a flu pandemic would be handled

by the incompetent cronies and fuck-ups in this administration? These clowns will turn a bad situation into the black death. WHere the hell is Clinton when we need him? Bill! Bill! Forgive us, we are sorry. Please come back.

I always loved him ...so I have nothing to forgive.

Until there is really a virus that transmits human-to-human there is nothing to direct a vaccine against. When it does emerge, there may not be time to produce a vaccine.

Anti-virals will be too costly for most people in the world.

In the end, most of us will rely on good hygiene and the luck of not being caught in an epidemic focus.

This is pure bullshit. Not a single person on earth has contracted, or has ever contracted, the bird flu. This is just another scare topic brought up incessantly to distract us from the real matters of importance in our country. Get on to the real stuff and forget about the scare stories. No different than Y2K - remember how it was going to be the end of the world?

He's trying to figure out how to get everything set here in our small city, as we most likely wouldn't get any federal help at all. The hospital has meetings on it, too.

can't bring myself to think about it at all. there are so many ways we are doomed if we don't turn things around. all i can see is some future civilization digging up our bones, seeing how we lived and saying... "what the hell were they thinking?"

I've got my duct tape, cipro, personalized Y2k Armegeddon Water and tons of garlic to spread should the plague reach my doorstep.

In the late 60s there were several massive flu epedemics. I remember the Hong Kong flu and how it kicked my butt...and that of most my class. But we survived. And that was before a lot of the breakthroughs in medical detection and prevention.

Just like how NOLA became a distorted shouting match about race instead of class, this issue is rapidly becoming a diversion about the major health care problems that millions in the country face.

How many people who have little or no insurance or, even with insurance, get poor health care. If there's a massive epedemic with hundreds of deaths in this country...it's more indicative of the lack of the accessibility of care than the illness itself.

The corporate media knows that fear and suffering draw viewers/ratings. Nothing raises fears higher than one you can't see or hear...a lurking threat. Replace bird flu with killer bees or even nuclear fallout and the story line is always the same.

and even IF there were human-to-human transmission, it doesn't mean that

WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE.

Some people may not get it at all. Some people will get it and survive. Many people got the Spanish flu in 1918 and recovered.

Actually, if a really horrific pandemic with a high fatality rate occurs, we'll have be as much concerned with surviving the following social breakdown as we would surviving the flu.

I hope there is no pandemic of bird flu or any other kind. But let's don't get hysterical about it.

As we know, this stupid, incompetent, corrupt admin. rules through fear. It’s to their benefit to keep everybody scared all the time.

Of course, if anyone still believes Bush can--or wants to--protect them from any sort of threat, they can just ask the N-O survivors from the Superdome about that.

because you know the government will not have its shit together. I'm not talking just about a flu pandemic either. My grandparents lived through two World Wars w/all the rationing, the 1918 pandemic, the depression, and countless major blizzards over the years. They always kept several weeks' worth of canned and dry goods in their pantry room, a lifelong habit that's gone out of style in recent decades. (And they never threw out their antique kerosene lamps.)