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Unintentionally funny, because of the sheer arrogance.

Right now, the United States has about 105,000 ventilators. Of these, 100,000 are needed in a typical flu season.

This means if H5N1 maintains anything like its 60% mortality rate, *with* ventilators for the other 40% infected, it is likely that mortality could rise to 75%, *without* ventilators.

And since the adults, from age about 20-40 are hit worst, much of the world that remains will be under 20 and over 40.

That is, there will be a “lost generation”.

Granted, because there will still be significant mortality among the under-20 young and over-40 age group, the situation will develop:

1) Doctors can tell from a lung X-Ray who will live and who will die.

2) The under-20 young will be more inclined to survive *with ventilation*, so they will get priority care with ventilators.

3) Adults over-40 will probably not have much access to ventilators except the politically powerful and wealthy, but the majority might be able to reduce the severity of the disease with immunosuppressant drugs. This age group will also be most likely to survive by disease avoidance through self-segregation.

4) People in the categories of the article might actually be better off than most, especially if they have older health care providers. That is, younger people will be out and about more, exposing themselves to the disease; but older and infirm people would have to have the disease transported to them.

All told, the very idea of triage in such a pandemic is almost laughable. It will NOT be up to doctors as to who will live and who will die. All they can do is look at the X-Rays, and give those young children who can survive the ventilators they need to survive.

As a final irony, those who survive the disease will to a great extent have lifelong severe lung damage. So there will be lots of survivors who are as crippled as people who have emphysema. They will be the long term victims of the killer influenza.

I suppose the only plus side will be after the plague is done, there will be many years of great prosperity around the world. High wages, low prices, much less government, and fewer and smaller wars.