http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2005/pdf/05-6907.pdf
The actual order doesn’t even specify avian...just influenza.
This really shouldn’t shock anyone. The potential for a flu pandemic has been well understood for decades.
We know the flu virus mutates. And we know that if it mutates in way to where it forms a strain that is neither predicted, nor anyone has natural immunity to, it roars through the population.
And there’s not a hell of a lot you can do about it.
It’s already out and now it’s being confirmed from New Zealand to the Americas. In the global economy you can’t isolate this or contain it.
All you can do is react.
The huggy feely stories that suggest everyone in America is having “mild” cases while 7.5% of those confirmed with in Mexico have already died, make no sense. It’s the same virus.
7.5% is unrealistically high, which surely means that many Mexicans who have gotten it have neither died nor been officially diagnosed.
But the most famous flu killer, the Spanish Flu from early last century, did kill 2.5% of the people who caught it.
There is a very good chance we’re watching the start of a flu pandemic. None of us are immunized for it.