Jerome M. Hauer used to be the Ass't Sec. for Public Health Emergency Preparedness. He developed the country's first bioterrorism response plans while serving as Director of Emergency Management for New York City. He graduated from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and is now director of the Response to Emergencies and Disasters Institute at The George Washington University.
Who is in charge now? Why a Mr. Stewart Simonson, a lawyer, not a medical expert. Simonson is a crony of HHS Sec. Tommy Thompson and was his legal counsel when Tommy was governor of Wisconsin. Let's hope he is more capable than 'Heck of a job' Brownie. BTW, avian flu has killed 50% of the people in China that have been diagnosed with avian flu infection. Recently, Spanish flu, which killed millions in the early 1900's, has been identified as an avian flu strain. Wish ourselves luck.
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I've been saying we needed a good national and global plan since working with these viruses in the 1980's (just down the hall from a certain blogger I know). It was only a matter of time before one of them mutated and began to infect humans.
Unfortunately, the containment efforts in Asia have been disappointing so far (I wonder if Brownie is in charge).
I am further disheartened to see that the federal government seems to be relying on stockpiling the one antiviral that seems to work on this particular H5N1 virus. I can almost guarantee that this drug will lose its effectiveness within a few days of use because of the very high mutation fequency of the virus. They also seem to be relying on quarantine measures. They need to read their history of the 1918 pandemic where extreme quanantine measures were universally ineffective. Some of the hardest hit places were remote villages in Alaska.
A good vaccine in massive quantities would be a workable solution, but this effort will likely dissolve into yet another transfer of public funds to corporate welfare queens with disappointing results.
Do I sound too cynical? Sorry, I've just been thru two hurricanes and seen first hand how well our federal boys deal with disasters...
Those were the good old days Matt.
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