are you ready for a new flu?

This news from Indonesia is potentially quite unpleasant -- three deaths in one family, apparently from the H5N1 avian flu strain. These weren't farmers; it was an Indonesian government official living in the capital city and his two daughters, with no known contact with farm poultry.

The World Health Organization has so far only confirmed one of the deaths, but it appears the other two were also avian flu. The last big flu outbreak was in 1968 so we are certainly due for a pandemic, and all the epidemiologists and public health people are running around with their hair on fire -- the risk of an outbreak has even penetrated into the mainstream media these past several months.

We forget that influenza outbreaks can be devastating. More people were killed by the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918-19 than in the entire First World War, somewhere around 40 million. Public health officials are predicting millions could die if the avian flu becomes transmittable from human to human.

Meanwhile here in Reagan/Bush2 America, we have been starving public health for the past 35 years. As noted here, even with all the noise, most US states have no plans to deal with a serious flu outbreak.

But who needs public health spending anyway, right? I mean, I'm sure our private, for-profit medical system will stockpile adequate supplies to deal with a major flu outbreak, just like last winter when they had plenty of flu vaccines -- oops, scratch that... Fact is, dealing with epidemics is something the private sector is woefully unprepared to do. There is no profit in quarantining people or in providing vaccinations for the masses.

So what is the US plan to deal with the risk of an outbreak? Cross your fingers. No, I don't mean cross your fingers to hope we have a plan -- that IS the plan. Sorry folks, public health doesn't just happen by itself. It takes money to plot threats and plan responses to health epidemics, and our political leaders (mostly elected by us) haven't paid.

We aren't ready.