Now that it's a "secret," pandemic flu prospect freaks out Congress!
■"Fear of Flu Outbreak Rattles Washington: Are we prepared? After the hurricanes, readiness is a worry," by Gardiner Harris, New York Times, 5 October 2005, p. A19.■"Military's Role in a Flu Pandemic: Troops Might Be Used to 'Effect a Quarantine,' Bush Says," by David Brown, Washington Post, 5 Octber 2005, p. A5.
Congress is suddenly all jacked about the pandemic flu possibility. Avian flu's been around for close to a decade, and in all that time it has shown any capacity yet to jump from human to human, the key prerequisite for a pandemic. Instead, the cases have all been bird-to-human. If such a jump were made, it's more than likely that the strain would be weakened in the transfer, and yet, prudence says we need to get ready for this inevitability, no matter how far off it really is, or whether or not this flu is the one that actually does it. It just makes sense in a connected world.
But Congress has blown this issue off for a long time, basically ignoring every brief and warning and report that's come down the pike … until Katrina made it political. Now we have 32 Dem senators on Bush's ass with a letter demanding this and that.
Fine and dandy. Everyone needs the kick in the ass to get moving, and adding political desires to it is the sine qua non of our political system, meaning it's hardly a Dem-only habit.
But here's what kills me: senators have been exposed to this info many times before, but this time they held the meeting behind closed doors.
Ooooooh! Closed doors! Sounds secret! This makes the information so much more powerful. Several in the room said a new sense of urgency was felt bccause of the secrecy. Harry Reid says the briefing "scared the hell out of me." Where this guy was on the issue for the past several years is beyond me, but good for you Harry! Way to finally get scared!
All this proves is that Katrina really was a significant System Perturbation. It changed some rules on natural disasters, putting them into the 9/11 category of "get your head out of your rear-end Fed!'
Would the military play a big role in any such pandemic spread to the U.S. I've done this sort of scenario planning for the Marines, and let me tell you, if you want to restrict the movement of Americans, you'll need huge numbers of boots on the ground, not just to stop people but to check and then allow the movement of goods in our super-connected economy. Doing this for any length of time is a massive effort, one that the state National Guards could not manage, rest assured. No, you'd see some Pentagon SysAdmin effort, big time.