Guest Post by Morbo
U.S. public health officials are so concerned about the possibility of an outbreak of Asian “bird flu” in this country that a few of them took the unusual step of leaking the Bush administration’s draft plan for dealing with such a catastrophe. Guess what? We aren’t ready.
The 381-page draft plan, leaked by health officials who claim that it contains fundamental failures, predicts that a full-scale outbreak could kill as many as 1.9 million Americans and put 8.5 million in hospital at a cost of more than $450 billion.
Hospitals would quickly become overwhelmed, riots would break out at vaccine clinics, civil unrest would sweep the country, and power and food would be in short supply, according to the plan, which has been years in the making. It calls for quarantine and travel restrictions but concedes that those measures “are unlikely to delay introduction of pandemic disease into the US by more than a month or two.”
The report was leaked to The New York Times. It makes sobering reading. It calls for manufacturing 600 million vaccine doses within six months, ten times the country’s current capacity. As I write these words, the Bush Administration has purchases 4.3 million doses of vaccine. There are 280 million people in the United States. What are the odds you’ll get one? (And no, Ebay won’t have any.)
The report scores the administration for failing to place a central figure in charge of coordinating a national response to a bird flu outbreak, a type of “bird flu czar.” One official told The New York Times: “We don’t want to have a FEMA-like response, where it’s not clear who’s running what.”
That’s right, we don’t. And we don’t have to. We have the talent, energy and brain power to avoid that right now, and they’re all sitting at the Centers for Disease Control. Someone there is more than qualified to take on the “bird flu czar” role. Let’s find him or her now. And please, let’s get someone really qualified — not just some toady who happened to go to Yale with Bush or who sucked up to him by sending fawning birthday cards.
I have a feeling that won’t happen, mainly because of this administration’s overall cluelessness, appalling cronyism and strong anti-science bent.
To be fair, I should note that an-science bias runs through the entire culture. Science and scientists get derided a lot in our popular culture. Those eggheads in their goofy white lab coats and geeky glasses! They have poor social skills and can’t get dates. They’re always working on a death ray or something.
That’s the stereotype, and it’s funny sometimes. (I like Prof. Frink on “The Simpsons” as much as the next guy.) But when the chips are down, most American know that science consistently delivers the goods. The staff at the Center for Disease Control is working 24/7 to save us from the nightmarish scenario outlined in the leaked report. Their dedication is praiseworthy, but the hard fact is they are executing policy, not making it. If the administration is hapless, our response will be as well.
Unfortunately, “hapless” is the word that defines the Bush administration. Confronted with a horrific terrorist attack on the nation that took 3,000 lives, the administration did not muster its resources and make it a priority to capture the guy who planned the attack. Instead, it invaded a country that had nothing to do with it.
When warnings of a powerful hurricane approaching New Orleans were issued, the administration did, well, nothing because the guy in charge of FEMA had no relevant experience. After the storm hit, the administration got right to work — looking for ways to blame it all on Democrats.
President George W. Bush — a.k.a. “Mr. Global Warming is a Myth,” “Mr. I Love Intelligent Design” — doesn’t understand the first thing about science and probably could not read a college freshman’s Biology I text. Of course, no one expects the president to be a rocket scientist (although wouldn’t that be nice, just once?), but this guy is beyond stubborn. When science conflicts with his stated policy objectives or the perceived needs of Big Business, science goes out the window.
This is what happens when you elect a boob to the highest office in the land. In the last two elections, the American people had a choice between a boob and guys who understand science. They went with the boob. (Well, the Supreme Court did the first time.) Anti-science, anti-intellectual knuckle-draggers also abound in the House and Senate. Most of the time their antics frustrate, and occasionally provide amusement.
The anemic response to the bird flu, a disease that has already surfaced in 10 Asian countries and has just penetrated Europe, is beyond frustrating, and it sure as hell isn’t funny.
(While I’m at it, I should mention a few other Bush-era science howlers that you might have forgotten. Remember when we were told to protect ourselves from a chemical or biological attack by sealing up the basement windows with plastic and duct tape? People were actually buying the stuff until some wag pointed out if the windows were so airtight that no chemical agent could get in, no air would either. Oops.)
The administration’s plan for evacuating Washington, D.C., was also entertaining. If you don’t live in the area, you might have missed it. The plan was this: If you live south of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, drive south. If you live north of that street, drive north.
Hmmm. What if I live south of Pennsylvania Avenue but have a vacation home or relatives in rural Pennsylvania? What if I work north of Pennsylvania Avenue but live south of it? Must I double back if an attack occurs while I’m at work? What if I simply want to drive west? Can no one drive west? Aside from all of this, the plan overlooked one obvious fact about D.C.: This area experiences massive gridlock when we have one-quarter inch of snow. Yet we’re going to evacuate smoothly in the event of a chemical attack? As I told Mrs. Morbo, “We’re staying here. I’d rather die at home than on Exit 5 of the Beltway.”)
In 1918, the Spanish flu killed 50 million people worldwide. Researchers have never understood why it was so virulent — until now. Scientists reconstructed the genetic code of the virus by exhuming the corpse of a victim buried in the Alaskan permafrost. It’s an incredible example of what dedicated scientists can do.
What they learned should give us all plenty of food for thought: As The Washington Post noted, the Spanish flu “was a bird virus that appears to have become a human virus through the slow accumulation of mutations….”
Mutations? Don’t those have something to do with evolution — another scientific concept Bush rejects?