Re: Another Bush screw-up looms...

Tom,
Does that surprise you that Harry would edit someone else's work, and
present it as an unedited cut and paste article?


"Shortwave Sportfishing" <onetwothree@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:bv3ik1dvun9vt0djjj2640tmolgpfgold5@xxxxxxxxxx
> On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 23:20:25 -0400, Harry Krause
> <harry.krause@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>
>>October 8, 2005
>>Bush Plan Shows U.S. Is Not Ready for Deadly Flu
>>By GARDINER HARRIS
>>NY Times
>>
>>WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - A plan developed by the Bush administration to deal
>>with any possible outbreak of pandemic flu shows that the United States
>>is woefully unprepared for what could become the worst disaster in the
>>nation's history.
>>
>>A draft of the final plan, which has been years in the making and is
>>expected to be released later this month, says a large outbreak that
>>began in Asia would be likely, because of modern travel patterns, to
>>reach the United States within "a few months or even weeks."
>>
>>If such an outbreak occurred, hospitals would become overwhelmed, riots
>>would engulf vaccination clinics, and even power and food would be in
>>short supply, according to the plan, which was obtained by The New York
>>Times.
>>
>>The 381-page plan calls for quarantine and travel restrictions but
>>concedes that such measures "are unlikely to delay introduction of
>>pandemic disease into the U.S. by more than a month or two."
>>- - -
>>
>>Yes, we're really moving forward with this dirtbag in the White House.
>>Maybe he'll fly over some city in the US where everyone has died in
>>order to show his concern.
>
> Harry, you really shouldn't snip and paste to protect your viewpoint.
>
> Unless of course you are into some kind of Orwellian "newspeak" in
> which only those parts that directly your view of the President are
> important.
>
> I'm very disappointed in you - I thought you were for truth and
> honesty - in particular being a journalist and having worked for a
> newspaper at one time.
>
> Here's the whole article.
>
> October 7, 2005
>
> After Delay, U.S. Faces Line for Flu Drug
>
> By GARDINER HARRIS
>
> As concern about a flu pandemic sweeps official Washington, Congress
> and the Bush administration are considering spending billions to buy
> the influenza drug Tamiflu. But after months of delay, the United
> States will now have to wait in line to get the pills.
>
> Had the administration placed a large order just a few months ago,
> Roche, Tamiflu's maker, could have delivered much of the supply by
> next year, according to sources close to the negotiations in both
> government and industry.
>
> As the months passed, however, other countries placed orders that
> largely exhausted Roche's production capacity this year and next.
>
> Democrats on Capitol Hill are complaining that the delay has put
> Americans in jeopardy. "The administration has just drug its feet
> through this whole process," said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of
> Iowa, who has pressed for legislation to buy more courses of Tamiflu.
> A course includes enough pills for a full treatment.
>
> Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, said in an interview that
> Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, told
> senators in a closed-door briefing last week that the administration
> would soon place an order to raise the government's Tamiflu stockpile
> to 81 million courses - up from 12 million to 13 million courses
> expected by the end of 2006. Mr. Obama has long been urging the
> government to buy more Tamiflu.
>
> "Secretary Leavitt admitted that they are currently in negotiations
> with Roche to try to rapidly build up those stockpiles," Mr. Obama
> said. "But we're behind countries like Great Britain, France and
> Japan, and it's probably going to cost us a lot more money than it
> would have to catch up."
>
> In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Leavitt said that the government would
> buy more Tamiflu although he did not specify how much.
>
> "But it's not a surrogate for preparation," he said. "It's like saying
> that if we could get everyone in America to wear seat belts, we would
> solve auto accidents. It's part of a comprehensive solution."
>
> Christina Pearson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Leavitt, said she could not
> confirm whether the Bush administration had a new goal of buying the
> 81 million courses.
>
> Mr. Leavitt said the Bush administration planned to prepare for a
> possible influenza pandemic by strengthening both international and
> domestic disease surveillance programs, buying drugs like Tamiflu and
> investing in research to develop alternative methods of making flu
> vaccines.
>
> Preparing the vaccines usually takes nine months and involves the eggs
> of thousands of chickens. Because chickens themselves could be wiped
> out in a pandemic, the present system of manufacturing vaccines is
> highly vulnerable.
>
> Introduced in 1999, Tamiflu for years had disappointing sales and
> received little attention. But just as Bayer's antibiotic Cipro became
> wildly popular in the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks, Tamiflu has
> become the drug of choice for those worried about pandemic flu because
> it is one of the only medicines proven to reduce the duration and
> severity of the potentially deadly disease if taken within 48 hours of
> infection.
>
> Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster
> Preparedness at Columbia University, is among those who have been
> insisting for months that the government buy more Tamiflu. But he said
> the Bush administration largely ignored his and others' warnings.
>
> "And now that they're finally worked up about it, the store is
> closed," Dr. Redlener said, referring to Roche's supply problems. "The
> U.S. is now in line behind much of the rest of the world."
>
> Terence Hurley, a Roche spokesman, said that 40 countries had ordered
> Tamiflu to fill medical stockpiles in case of a pandemic. Many
> countries in Europe - including France, Britain, Finland, Norway and
> Switzerland - have ordered enough to treat 20 percent to 40 percent of
> their populations. The American stockpile would treat less than 2
> percent of the population.
>
> Mr. Hurley said that Roche would be able to deliver all the courses
> that the United States government has currently ordered, including at
> least two million courses ordered this year.
>
> Asked how soon the company could produce 68 million more courses if
> the United States placed such an order, Mr. Hurley refused to say.
> "We're just going to have to see what their demands are," Mr. Hurley
> said. The suggested 81 million courses would cover more than a quarter
> of the population.
>
> The government and industry officials, however, said that Roche had
> committed to delivering seven million courses to the United States
> next year and would not be able to deliver substantially more until
> 2007.
>
> Since 1997, avian flu strains have killed millions of birds in nearly
> a dozen countries. But so far, nearly all of the people infected -
> more than 100 so far, including some 60 who died - got the sickness
> directly from birds. Until the virus passes easily among humans, it is
> unlikely to cause a pandemic that could kill millions.
>
> An outbreak, therefore, may still be years away or may never occur.
> But news this week that the 1918 flu virus, which killed at least 50
> million worldwide, was also a form of avian flu raised concerns
> further.
>
> On Thursday, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, and
> Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, introduced a bill that
> would bolster defenses against the flu.
>
> And here's today's article from the New York Times
>
> October 9, 2005
>
> Danger of Flu Pandemic Is Clear, if Not Present
>
> By DENISE GRADY
>
> Fear of the bird flu sweeping across Asia has played a major role in
> the government's flurry of preparations for a worldwide epidemic.
>
> That concern prompted President Bush to meet with vaccine makers on
> Friday to try to persuade them to increase production, and it led
> Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt to depart
> yesterday for a 10-day trip to at least four Asian nations to discuss
> planning for a pandemic flu.
>
> But scientists say that although the threat from the current avian
> virus is real, it is probably not immediate.
>
> Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy
> and Infectious Diseases, said a bird flu pandemic was unlikely this
> year.
>
> "How unlikely, I can't quantitate it," Dr. Fauci said. But, he added,
> "You must prepare for the worst-case scenario. To do anything less
> would be irresponsible."
>
> Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, chief of the molecular pathology department
> at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, said, "I would not say
> it's imminent or inevitable." Dr. Taubenberger said he believes that
> there will eventually be a pandemic, but that whether it will be bird
> flu or another type, no one can say.
>
> The Bush administration is in the final stages of preparing a plan to
> deal with pandemic flu. A draft shows that the country is woefully
> unprepared, and it warns that a severe pandemic will kill millions,
> overwhelm hospitals and disrupt much of the nation.
>
> What worries scientists about the current strain of bird flu, known as
> H5N1, is that it has shown some ominous traits. Though it does not
> often infect humans, it can, and when it does, it seems to be
> uncommonly lethal. It has killed 60 people of the 116 known to have
> been infected.
>
> Alarm heightened on Thursday when a scientific team led by Dr.
> Taubenberger reported that the 1918 flu virus, which killed 50 million
> people worldwide, was also a bird flu that jumped directly to humans.
>
> There is a crucial difference, however; the 1918 flu was highly
> contagious, while today's bird flu has so far shown little ability to
> spread from person to person. But a mutation making the virus more
> transmissible could set the stage for a pandemic.
>
> Another concern is that H5N1 has become widespread, killing millions
> of birds in 11 countries and dispersing further as migratory birds
> carry it even greater distances. This month, it was reported in
> Romania.
>
> Meanwhile, the flu is spreading widely among birds in Asia. And it has
> unusual staying power, persisting in different parts of the world
> since it emerged in 1997.
>
> "Most bird flus emerge briefly and are relatively localized," said Dr.
> Andrew T. Pavia, chief of the division of pediatric infectious
> diseases at the University of Utah and chairman of the pandemic
> influenza task force of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
> The most worrisome thing about H5N1, Dr. Pavia said, is that it has
> not gone away.
>
> Some scientists suspect that if H5N1 has not caused a pandemic by now,
> then it will not, because it must be incapable of making the needed
> changes. But others say there is no way to tell what the virus will do
> as time goes on. And they point out that no one knows how long it took
> for the 1918 virus to develop the properties that led to a pandemic.
>
> Meanwhile, H5N1 seems to be finding its way into more and more
> species. Once known to infect chickens, ducks and the occasional
> person, the virus is now found in a wide range of birds and has
> infected cats.
>
> "It killed tigers at the Bangkok zoo, which is quite remarkable
> because flu is not traditionally a big problem for cats," Dr. Pavia
> said.
>
> It has also infected pigs, which in the past have been a vehicle to
> carry viruses from birds to humans.
>
> "We should be worried but not panicked," Dr. Pavia said.
>
> The timing of the bird flu's emergence also makes scientists nervous,
> because many believe that based on history, the world is overdue for a
> pandemic. Pandemics occur when a flu virus changes so markedly from
> previous strains that people have no immunity and vast numbers fall
> ill.
>
> "In the 20th century there were three pandemics, which means an
> average of one every 30 years," Dr. Fauci said. "The last one was in
> 1968, so it's 37 years. Just on the basis of evolution, of how things
> go, we're overdue."
>
> Dr. Bruce Gellin, director of the National Vaccine Program Office,
> said: "You get this sense of compounding risks. First, it's in some
> birds. Then more. Then more area, then more mammals and then to
> humans, albeit inefficiently."
>
> In just a few instances, Dr. Gellin noted, the virus does appear to
> have spread from person to person.
>
> "The only thing it hasn't done is to become an efficient transmitter
> among humans," he said. "It's done all the other things that are steps
> toward becoming a pandemic virus."
>
> But not everyone is equally worried about the bird flu.
>
> The fear "is very much overdone, in my opinion," said Dr. Edwin
> Kilbourne, an emeritus professor of immunology at New York Medical
> College, who has treated flu patients since the 1957 pandemic and has
> studied the 1918 flu.
>
> The bird flu, he said, is distantly related to earlier flus, and
> humans have already been exposed to them, providing some resistance.
>
> Scientists also say that the death rate may not be as high as it
> appears, because some milder cases may not have been reported.
>
> Dr. Kilbourne and other experts also noted that when viruses become
> more transmissible, they almost always become less lethal. Viruses
> that let their hosts stay alive and pass the disease on to others, he
> explained, have a better chance of spreading than do strains that kill
> off their hosts quickly.
>
> Moreover, he said, while much has been made of comparisons between the
> current avian flu and the 1918 strain, the factors that helped
> increase the flu's virulence in 1918 - the crowding together of
> millions of World War I troops in ships, barracks, trenches and
> hospitals - generally do not exist today for humans.
>
> But an essential difference is that people carrying the flu today can
> board international flights and carry the disease around the world in
> a matter of hours.
>
> Dr. Kilbourne emphasized that medical care had improved greatly since
> 1918. Although some flu victims then turned blue overnight and drowned
> from blood, with fluid leaking into their lungs, many more died of
> what are now believed to be bacterial infections, which can be treated
> with antibiotics.
>
> Although the death toll from that flu was high, the actual death rate
> was less than 5 percent.
>
> In addition, more people now live in cities, where they have probably
> caught more flus, giving them immunity to later ones. "In 1918, you
> had a lot of farm boys getting their first contact with city folks
> who'd had these things," Dr. Kilbourne said.
>
> What researchers wish they could do now is look at a flu virus like
> H5N1 and predict whether it is heading down the genetic road to
> becoming a pandemic strain.
>
> "I hope in the future we will be able to do that, work out which
> mutations are critical," Dr. Taubenberger said. "We know the 1918
> strain had everything it needed."
>
> Andrew Pollack and Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting for this
> article.
>
> ----------------------------
>
> It would appear that we should have been doing more about this ten
> years ago - which would make that who's administration?
>
> Interesting how the viewpoint changes when you have the whole picture
> doesn't it?


.

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  • Re: Another Bush screw-up looms...
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