Posted on 11/01/2005 8:58:42 AM PST by Solson
By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer 32 minutes ago
President Bush outlined a $7.1 billion strategy Tuesday to prepare for the danger of a pandemic influenza outbreak, saying he wanted to stockpile enough vaccine to protect 20 million Americans against the current strain of bird flu.
The president also said the United States must approve liability protection for the makers of lifesaving vaccines. He said the number of American vaccine manufacturers has plummeted because the industry has been hit with a flood of lawsuits.
Bush said no one knows when or where a deadly strain of flu will strike but "at some point we are likely to face another pandemic."
The president, in a speech at the National Institutes of Health, said the United States must be prepared to detect outbreaks anywhere in the world, stockpile vaccines and anti-viral drugs and be ready to respond at the federal, state and local levels in the event a pandemic reaches the United States.
Bush outlined a strategy that would cost $7.1 billion including:
_$1.2 billion for the government to buy enough doses of the vaccine against the current strain of bird flu to protect 20 million Americans; the administration wants to have sufficient vaccine for front-line emergency personnel and at-risk populations, including military personnel;
_$1 billion to stockpile more anti-viral drugs that lessen the severity of the flu symptoms;
_$2.8 billion to speed the development of vaccines as new strains emerge, a process that now takes months;
_$583 million for states and local governments to prepare emergency plans to respond to an outbreak.
Bush said a pandemic flu would be far more serious than the seasonal flu that makes hundreds of thousands of people sick ever year and sends people to their doctors for a flu shot. "I had mine," Bush said. Unlike seasonal flu, pandemic flu can kill people who are young and healthy as well as those who are frail and sick, he said.
In asking Congress for money to buy vaccine, Bush said the vaccine "would not be a perfect match to the pandemic flu because the pandemic strain would probably differ somewhat from the avian flu virus it grew from. But a vaccine against the current avian flu virus would likely offer some protection against a pandemic strain and possibly save many lives in the first critical months of an outbreak."
He also said the United States was increasing stockpiles of antiviral drugs, such as Tamiflu and Relenza. Such drugs cannot prevent people from catching the flu, but they can reduce the severity of the illness when taken within 48 hours of getting sick, he said.
"At this moment there is no pandemic influenza in the United States or the world, but if history is our guide there's reason to be concerned," Bush said. "In the last century, our country and the world have been hit by three influenza pandemics, and viruses from birds contributed to all of them."
He pointed out that the 1918 pandemic killed over a half million Americans and more than 20 million people across the globe. "One-third of the U.S. population was infected, and life expectancy in our country was reduced by 13 years.
"The 1918 pandemic was followed by pandemics in 1957 and 1968, which killed tens of thousands of Americans and millions across the world," Bush said.
Bird flu has been documented in Asia and has spread to Europe but has not reached the United States, the president said. "Our country has been given fair warning of this danger to our homeland and time to prepare," he said.
Bush said the cornerstone of his strategy was to develop new technologies to produce new vaccines quickly. "If a pandemic strikes, our country must have a surge capacity in place that will allow us to bring a new vaccine online quickly and manufacture enough to immunize every American against the pandemic strain," Bush said.
The principal goal of Bush's plan, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said, "is the capacity for every American to have a vaccine in the case of a pandemic, no matter what the virus is." "There is no reason to believe that in the next day or two or week or month that that's going to occur," Leavitt said on CBS's "The Early Show." But he added that "we do need to be ready in case it begins to mutate into a human transmissable disease."
Pandemics strike when the easy-to-mutate influenza virus shifts to a strain that people have never experienced before, something that has happened three times in the last century. While it is impossible to say when the next super-flu will strike, concern is growing that the bird flu strain known as H5N1 could trigger one if it mutates to start spreading easily among people. Since 2003, at least 62 people in Southeast Asia have died from H5N1; most regularly handled poultry.
The nation's strategy starts with attempting to spot an outbreak abroad early and working to contain it before it reaches the United States.
Today, most of the world's vaccine against regular winter flu, including much of that used by Americans each flu season, is manufactured in factories in Britain and Europe.
The government already has ordered $162.5 million worth of vaccine to be made and stockpiled against the Asian bird flu, more than half to be made in a U.S. factory.
But the administration plan, to be released in more detail on Wednesday, calls for more than stockpiling shots. It will stress a new method of manufacturing flu vaccines — growing the virus to make them in easy-to-handle cell cultures instead of today's cumbersome process that uses millions of chicken eggs — as well as incentives for new U.S.-based vaccine factories to open.
Such steps will take several years to implement, but the hope is that eventually they could allow production of enough vaccine to go around within six months of a pandemic's start.
___
Associated Press Writer Nedra Pickler contributed to this report.
It is serious. Some of us have been following it for a while now, and if this little bug makes a successful jump to human to human transmission....
Well, worst case, it would be like Stephen King's The Stand.
That was helpful, thank you.
Something is missing from the article.. I've read all through it but I can't find the spending offsets to pay fo this....I wonder where they are.
Clearly, you don't understand how this is done...
President Bush on phone:
Hello? US Mint? Oh, good. This is the President. I need you to run off $7,100,000,000 in currency ASAP. Can you get that done by close of business today? You can? Great! Thanks, byeSee how easy that is?
When it comes to a threat of avian influenza,this region has an extremely reliable defense stategy - I've seen it in action and it is a truly amazing cooperative effort between the public and private sectors in 3 states. Granted the effort is primarily to protect the economic interests of those involved, but it also does protect the public health.
That would have been funnier if it wasn't so close to the truth.... :(
"I read somewhere yesterday that Donald Rumsfeld owned a large block of stock in the company that makes Tamiflu. I know this is not responsible posting, but just came in to check my email real quick and have to run back to work. Maybe someone can verify....bye."
Rumsfeld is the ex-CEO of a vaccine company. I think you can figure the rest out for yourself.
If there's a flu 'outbreak' you won't be able to see a doctor for months, if then. You'll have to stand in a line (waiting for the government) along with everyone else who has the flu. Good Luck.
You'd better be able to take care of yourself if you plan to survive.
We all have are own assertions, sometimes it's hard to tell which one is more of a joke than the other, but I tend to believe that some traction on dealing with illegal immigration is being made and that Bush is not looking to open the borders as part of a massive government spending project to endear the dems...that seems a bit irrational.
Well, worst case, it would be like Stephen King's The Stand.
You've got that correct.
But as I have been trying to emphasize on this thread, even if it doesn't make the jump to human to human transmission is will cause a devastating blow to the poultry industry and thus all of our wallets.
Not to worry, the pandemic will correct that.
Has anyone heard what is the outcome of the request of GWB to congress to advise him about the us of the US military to impose quarantines?
It's not a matter of if it's a matter of when.
Anybody know how Chiron's stock is performing?
There's some potential danger to the poultry section of the economy. But that's not where the hysteria is focused, all the hysteria is obsessed with a possible (though at this point not probable) mutation that leads to rampant human-to-human transmission. With no serious evidence of a true threat to humans all this vaccine crap is hysteria, pure and simple.
Just answered my own question: on appx. 9/1 Chiron's stock rose from 35 to 44.
I heard that on the radio. I don't remember where.
I hesitated to say anything because I couldn't verify a source.
Potential danger????? I wish there was an iota of the hysteria about the possible mutation to human-to-human infection applied to what this can do to the poultry industry. We are talking about a multi BILLION dollar blow to the economy of numerous states.
Sorry for my shouting - I don't even have any financial interest in the poultry industry, I just happen to live in an area where much of the economy relies upon it, and there are many other areas that do as well. A major outbreak of AI can and will destroy many businesses and communities.
Congress could authorize a $7 billion program to prevent people from slipping on the ice and breaking an ankle. Too bad we got this idea that Congress should spend a dime for anything but defense and increase of commerce.
As somebody else noted up thread the West Coast (and a few states inland) just delt with a poultry blight, I'm sure it sucked for the farmers but over all it didn't really bust things up too bad; being generally disconnected from poultry I didn't even find out about it until I went to the 4H section of the county fair and saw the sign explaining why there were no chickens (I'd guess chicken prices went up but since I don't actually like chicken (they call it foul for a reason) I never noticed). And until it actually invades American poultry farms it is still just a potential danger, nothing about the spread of diseases is inevitable too many random factors play too big a role in disease spread. Certainly there's a bigger danger to the poultry industry than there is to humans, but it's all still potential and revolving around various ifs.
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