By Pete Kotz By Michael Musto By Michael Musto By Capt. James
Van Thach told to Jonathan Wei By Kera Bolonik By Michael Musto
By Nick Pinto By Steve Weinstein Washington, D.C.President
Bush's vague plan for coping with a serious outbreak of bird flu
is based largely on fear and greed. There is no secret about
this. He seeks to get people's attention by scaring the
citizenry with visions of millions of people dying from a
pandemic so bad it leads to martial law, mass quarantines,
restrictions on travel, and so on. He wants to encourage private
business to meet the crisis by producing more of existing drugs
such as Tamiflu to combat a flu plague and entice the drug
companies to work harder and faster to make a vaccine by
ensuring its profitability. The answer to a bird flu pandemic is
not a passive first-world population riveted to the TV, watching
one person after another drop dead across the world as sickened
birds fly closer and closer and finally land in our midst. The
answer lies in effective communication