As scary as using the military in a civilian capacity may seem it is not nearly as scary as the spectre of another global flu pandemic like the one that killed over 20,000,000 people worldwide in 1918.
The US military is the only organization on earth to respond to a situation of this magnitude if it occurs (which I sincerely hope it does not).
If you want to read what I am talking about, Google "1918 influenza". This was the greatest human disaster of the past 100 years and it has been mostly forgotten.
Carolyn
Exactly!
But even if it meant the loss of my own family currently, at no point would I advocate the use of the military for 'humanitarian' purposes on US soil. But of course Republicans have advocated that in one form or another since the beginning of the party haven't they? Good to see Bush is returning back to even more Republican roots
It disturbs me that so many that consider themselves conservative would be willing to hand any portion of control to the military on our home soil
Look at the job the local officials did concerning Katrina. They were more dangerous than the hurricane.
The military already has the organizational skills to spread out and help if it comes to pass.
My husband has been doing a lot of research on this. He has found out that there was a strain of flu that then mutated into the deadly strain. It is believed (found?) that the people who got the original flu did not die from the mutated flu strain. They also still can not figure out why the age group that died the most was 18-45.
My question is if they consider it dangerous enough for that then why arent they doing something about the appalling lack of antivirals and flu vaccines available.
My grandfather talked about it from time to time many years ago.
They lived on a little spread on the Missouri/Iowa border and he claimed that out of the 23 or so people on their little place only seven or eight lived.
Mom died, sister died, brother died, aunts and uncles and other relatives too. He claimed that at one point the ground was frozen hard enough that they had to stack the bodies in the barn until it thawed out enough to dig graves.
He said it was pretty weird towards the end because they’d all be hanging out in the kitchen drinking coffee or whatever in silence and they’d all be taking glances at each other wondering who would be the next to keel over – and wondering whether they’d ALL eventually fall out.
Whatever. They were cut from considerably sturdier stock in those days and weren’t running around begging someone to help them.
Anyway, have we decided whether or not we’re worried about overpopulation or not? Occasionally the subject pops up and everybody gets all excited, but when the big outbreak that’d solve the overpopulation “problem” comes up everyone somehow turns their attention to fighting it.
Sorta a "big problem" (according to some) that we spend lots of money trying to maintain.