If You Want Something to Worry About

I recently finished reading The Great Influenza, an account of the influenza pandemic of 1918.

Aside from considerable dirt on my favorite bête noire, Woodrow Wilson, the book describes the horrors of a world disease event that killed millions.

The Great Influenza is on point today because every sign is that we are very likely to be hit with another influenza epidemic, of one or more variants of the Avian or Bird Flu that is now spreading in domestic and wild populations of birds in Asia. Here's recent roundup on possible preventive measures.

Here is a legitimate rôle for government, and of course, not nearly enough is being done. We should be stockpiling Tamiflu, and increasing budgets for research on vaccines and antiviral agents, and epidemiology. The flu virus is a rapidly mutating and recombining virus. Given a sufficient number of trials the emergence of a virulent strain highly contagious in humans is likely. With globlization, the spread of such a virus before measures such as quarantine and mass Tamiflu treatment in the vicinity of an outbreak becomes more and more of a threat.

People who worry about leakage of nuclear radiation from Yucca Mountain 5,000 years from now, increases in emphysema cases from automobile emissions, or marginal increases in cancer rates from pesticide residues ought to refocus their priorities. Here is a massive threat of millions of deaths, not enough is being done, and our environmentalists and self-proclaimed public health watchdogs are silent.

This really is a big deal.