The government is working on Captain Trips

Or Super Flu if you will

Bush on Tuesday is visiting the National Institutes of Health to announce his administration's strategy on how to prepare for the next flu pandemic, whether it's caused by the bird flu in Asia or some other super strain of influenza. Federal health officials have spent the last year updating a national plan on how to do that.

Stockpiling drugs and vaccines is just one component.

Ok every so often we here folks from the government come out and say "Oh My god their is some guy in taipei and he has this flu and if he spreads it we're all going to die~!"

well lets back up and remember two important things

Not all FLUs are cured by the Flu Vacinne

so stockpiling a vaccine or drugs that may or may not work ( we don't know) is wasteful. Thats drugs and vaccine that if they aren't used quickly have a shelf life.

Already the government is buying $162.5 million worth of vaccine against that bird flu strain, called H5N1, from two companies _ Sanofi-Aventis and Chiron Corp. _ in case that happens. It also is ordering millions of doses of Tamiflu and Relenza, two antiflu drugs believed to offer some protection against the bird flu, stockpiles that the pandemic plan is expected to order be augmented.

In animal testing.....
That haven't been tested on humans to work on the bird flu....
on a strain that hasn't mutated to infect humans on a large scale.

Why don't we just put 160 million in a rat hole, at least then we wouldn't be enriching two companies for no cause.

and it would probably be just slightly less effective

But amid growing public fear about the bird flu, federal health officials are beginning to wonder about a backlash if the worrisome strain in fact fizzles out _ or is contained in birds, as specialists are struggling to do _ and never threatens Americans' health.

yep for this to cross from humans to birds you have to... HANDLE birds.

So you can target the people who do that with good preventative care.

No wasting of money, no causing a panic

But that wouldn't be "common sense" in the mind of Ted Kennedy (D-Chevas Regal)