Fighting the flu

If I learned one thing from my parents, and God knows they tried to teach me more than I committed to memory, it was to always, always get a flu shot. Every year at about mid-October, my brother and I would be taken to Dr. Kettel's waiting room and play with plastic trucks and find the hidden pictures in Highlights magazine. Then we'd be whisked off to the examination room where the smiles, stuffed animals and pictures of airplanes provided ample distraction before the nurse mercilessly drove the needle into our arms. \nTwo weeks ago when the nurse stabbed me with my 20th flu shot, I asked if this would save me from avian influenza. She told me no, but it'd keep me from legitimately skipping class, which was almost as good.\nA Sept. 15 memo to U.S. Treasury Under Secretary Tim Adams, titled "Conclusion & Minutes: Vulnerabilities Working Group/Economic Aspects of Avian Flu," recounts the minutes of a meeting attended by CIA and Treasury officials discussing the effects of the H5N1 virus popularly known as "bird flu."\nI know what you're thinking: SARS was supposed to be the end of the world and that didn't cause any serious problems, so what's different about this disease? The difference is 40 percentage points. SARS has a mortality rate of about 10 percent of infected humans; bird flu, on the other hand, kills 50 percent of its hosts. The memo estimates a global death toll of some 5.2 million, including 270,000 in the United States and Canada.\nBased on extrapolations of data from the SARS scare, the memo predicts governmental isolationism and a breakdown of infrastructure will cause the collapse of economies and order. This raises serious moral and legal questions, most notably those of containment and treatment.\nIn all likelihood quarantined facilities will not be necessary. Western hospital systems should be capable of treating realistic infection numbers. It's the question of forced admittance to those hospitals that will become the issue. Obviously the disease needs to be contained, but can the government overstep legal barriers in order to detain and treat infected citizens without consultation?\nThat question is still being grappled with, but in an uncharacteristic show of good judgment on the part of President Bush, at least the question of treatment has been answered. There is currently a limited supply of stockpiled antiviral drugs, which have raised concerns about priority. One's first inclination is to vaccinate the very young, the very weak or the very elderly, but that's far from the best policy.\nThe president made a speech Tuesday calling for a $7.1 billion preparedness package and outlined the response in the event of a national epidemic. Antiviral drugs will be administered to law enforcement, medical personnel and essential government employees first. \nTo some this may sound like a typically Republican-elitist response in which only the well-connected survive, but consider the lawlessness after Hurricane Katrina. As rare as these sorts of catastrophes are, they do occasionally happen and at such points human nature can't be trusted. If the first responders aren't vaccinated before the public, there's not much hope for anyone else. Nonetheless, I'd rather have martial law than the plague.