[PissAndVinegar]

Ridiculous....
" Bird flu has killed more than 60 people in four Asian nations since late 2003 and has been found in birds in Russia and Europe."

Let's get some perspective:
How many have died from the 'plain old' flu in this time period?
From Drunk drivers?
From food poisoning?
From an infection after stubbing their toe?

Can we mobilize the military against the citizens if there are mass toe stubbings?

[areafiftyone]

You can chock that up to WHO - Panic buttons!

[BlueBlood]

The only problem is that drunk drivers, stubbing your toe, and food poisoning aren't contagious. After WW I, between 25-50 million people died of the 'flu,' which is contagious. It seems to me that some precautions should be taken to avoid an epidemic...

[VeniVidiVici]

I'm sure we have plans to invade Canada and Japan too. Will we ever use them? No (well, maybe not Japan ;-)

But it sure is nice someone is planning for it to mitigate problems with the response.

[Cold Heat]

Ridiculous.... " Bird flu has killed more than 60 people in four Asian nations since late 2003 and has been found in birds in Russia and Europe." Let's get some perspective: How many have died from the 'plain old' flu in this time period? From Drunk drivers? From food poisoning? From an infection after stubbing their toe? Can we mobilize the military against the citizens if there are mass toe stubbings?

Yes, lets get some perspective.......

Extrapolating the 1918 numbers for a pandemic of this kind, we can safely say that there would be 1.7 million dead from this bug in the U.S. alone.......

I don't call that ridiculous....I call it a potential and more and more likely occurrence every year that passes and idiots continue treating chickens with antibiotics that may well make the bug immune to every tool we have.

It's just a matter of time, as we wait for the hammer to come down.

So I think a bit of prior planning is in order and discussions are necessary so that the big surprise does not catch us with our pants in the dryer.

[Artemis Webb]

OK...lets take this slow and easy so you will understand. We are not talking about the bird flu as you know it right now. In fact nobody even knows if the bird flu is going to be the source for the next pandemic..although that is looking like a very strong possibility.

Flu strains mutate.

Hurricane Katrina did not start out as a category 5 hurricane...it started as a warm summer breeze.