Posted on 10/06/2005 7:54:24 PM PDT by george76
Health officials have warned for years that a virulent bird flu could kill millions of people, but few in Washington have seemed alarmed. After a closed-door briefing last week, however, fear of an outbreak swept official Washington...
The day after the briefing, led by Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of Health and Human Services, and other senior government health officials, the Senate squeezed $3.9 billion for flu preparations into a Pentagon appropriations bill.
Mr. Leavitt acknowledged in an interview that the United States was not prepared for a pandemic flu outbreak. He plans to spend next week touring Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the countries most likely to be the source of an avian flu outbreak, and talking with health ministers there about a coordinated surveillance of outbreaks.
Mr. Leavitt warned in the briefing last week that an outbreak could cause 100,000 to 2 million deaths and as many as 10 million hospitalizations in the United States, one person who was present said. Those numbers have been presented publicly many times before. But hearing them in closed session gave them urgency, some who were at the meeting said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Oh, for pete's sake. There have been ongoing threads here at FR for months regarding the Avian Flu threat. This ain't new news.
Something is up for them to all the sudden spend all that money.
I don't know about this one. A friend of mine called me from Seattle last night and said that there were lots of people coping with a real bad flu.
For what it's worth!
Please... the Slimes is not a reputable source of News.
This has upcoming media hysteria written all over it.
Chicken Little is gonna bite us in the arse after all?
Right the headline and the Slimes are hysterical not the government.
How does a country prepare for a pandemic flu outbreak?
Oh, good. Now the Times is hoping that a few million Americans will die of Avian Influenza so they can blame it on Bush.
" Senate squeezed $3.9 billion for flu preparations into a Pentagon appropriations bill." Thats a fairly significant amount of change.
Dat would buy a ho' buncha debick cards and plazmuh tee vees.
I be feelin' violated, cause I don't be scared of no bird.
Remember the flu shot panic before last year's election?
"Senate squeezed $3.9 billion for flu preparations into a Pentagon appropriations bill." Thats a fairly significant amount of change."
Corporate welfare for drug companies might be an answer.
Annual flu scares might be a target of the government dole for years to come.
All that is missing from this article is a sourceless claim that secret experiments are going on at Area 51 to develop a vaccine for Avian Flu based on alien technology.
"How does a country prepare for a pandemic flu outbreak?" If it happens and we can't figure out a way to stop it, then the country will need to be prepared to dig a lot of graves. If it comes to that, at least we will have much better excavation equipment this time around.
You best make sho you fry dem chickens good o else you gonna git the chicken flu, ya heah?
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