Yes, you should be afraid (avian flu)

As avian flu threatens to kill millions, Bush bets our lives on the free market

You can’t swing a sick chicken these days without hitting a pundit pontificating about bird flu. After nearly two years of sporadic news coverage, the media woke up to the threat in late September when George W. Bush spoke about the potential pandemic; now, the topic is regular fodder on the nightly news, the weekend shows, the daily papers, and the popular newsweeklies.

Everyone is having their say and, unremarkably, everyone seems to view it through their own lenses. Thomas Friedman recently opined on the Don Imus show that bird flu demonstrates the "flat-world" hypothesis of his latest best-selling book. Apocalyptic evangelicals cite it as a sign of the impending End Days. George Bush wants to invoke his administration’s handling of it, post-Katrina, as an example of their competence. Democrats say that Bush’s approach to the problem represents the exact opposite, as Senator Edward Kennedy argued in a Boston Globe op-ed last Sunday.

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In the case of Bush and the rest of the administration, that slant is primarily capitalistic and secondarily militaristic. These are, in fact, the only two types of solutions the Bushies seem to know. Name any problem of the past five years, and the administration’s proposal has been either to provide financial incentives to big business — remember that they have touted corporate and high-income tax cuts as the proper response to both recession and growth — or to roll out the armed forces.

Bush’s recent proposal to use the US military to impose quarantines has drawn considerable attention and justified criticism. But that is merely a sideline. The primary bird-flu strategy involves giving as many concessions as necessary to prompt the pharmaceutical industry to make the drugs we’ll need. There are arguments to be made for that approach, but stronger arguments against it — including, most noticeably, that it has failed miserably before.

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http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/top/features/documents/05040077.asp

Until then...relax.

7 years I don't think it's even done one of them. This is all stuff and nonsense.

Whether they make it, spread it, or just produce the same results, it's all the same to me--terrra! terra! terrra!