WASHINGTON — The U.S. is unprepared for the next flu pandemic, lacking the manufacturing capacity to provide 300 million doses of a vaccine for three to five more years, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said Sunday.

“What we all learned from (Hurricane) Katrina is that sometimes we have to think very clearly about the unthinkable,” Leavitt said. “We’re not as prepared as we need to be. …We will not have enough for everyone.”

A strain of a bird flu that has killed 67 people in Asia has sparked concerns of a super-flu that could kill millions worldwide, and U.S. officials acknowledge that the strain in its current form could reach here through a migratory bird.

Vaccines cannot be made overnight. It takes months, if not years, to produce this stuff. By then, H5N1 will have mutated into something the vaccine won’t touch. Experts are predicting the virus to hit the shores of the US next spring, if not sooner.

While stressing that chances remain slight, health experts say it could lead to a global pandemic if the bird flu mutates to start spreading easily among people.

“We can’t put a number on how probable that’s going to be,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the infectious disease division of the National Institutes of Health. “It’s a low probability. When the consequences are unimaginable, you must assume the worst-case scenario.”

Stressing the slight chance? How considerate. One would think they would always assume the worst. And this Dr. Fauci says two different things above….low probability and worst case scenerio…he’s an idiOt.

Added Dr. Michael Ryan of the World Health Organization: “This is certainly a dangerous virus, and it has crossed the species barrier now in 130 cases. We’re probably closer to a pandemic at any time in the last 37 years.”

The U.S., which has not seen any signs of the strain in birds or people, has only enough doses now for 4.3 million people.

That’s more like it…crossed species barrier in 130 cases…which means other animals, including humans, have caught H5N1. Least this doctor is being more honest.

We know it can jump from a chicken to a human,” he said. “If this virus was the seasonal flu with the inherent capability that the seasonal flu has of going from human to human, you would have seen an explosion of cases in Southeast Asia. …We’re not seeing that now.”
—SNIP—
“H5N1 is a bird problem, and it’s not in the United States at this time,” she said. “Even if it does enter through a migratory bird at some point, which won’t be surprising, we have a wonderful system of surveillance.”

Yes and the pandemic in 1918 was “just” a bird problem too, til it crossed over to humans almost overnight, killing 50 million people within a year. That was before modern transportation-planes, trains, cars….these people are medical pacifists who are not doing us any favors by being ostrich like, burying heads in the sand.

And this makes me feel really safe:

United Nations, Nov 21 (Prensa Latina) The United Nations is coordinating an international front to fight avian flu fearing that the H5N1 virus will mutate into human-to-human contagion.

The initiative is on the agenda for the ongoing eighth Conference on the Convention for Migratory Species, in Nairobi, Kenya, aimed at alerting experts and officials of the proximate arrival of migratory birds.

The UN Environment Program (UNEP), the Convention for Migratory Species and other international bodies are arranging an early warning system for the arrival of wild birds able to spread the virus.