Avian Flu Strategy

Photo courtesy of CNN

Okay, so the header there is a little misleading. You may have read that, saw the photo of Bush cleverly taken at such an angle that you really have to squint to see that he's still making that smirk/twitch he does with the side of his mouth, and thought to yourself "wow, he gave a strategy to prepare for and fight against an avian flu pandemic?" If that was what happened when you saw those things, I apologize for misleading you. Hey that wasn't so hard to do. I wonder why he never apologizes for this shit... I had figured it just hurt too much, but nope!

After spending about half of his speech telling people in the audience what their jobs were at the NIH and then proceeding to try and make the rest of the audience shit a collective brick by telling horror stories of other pandemics (followed by the predicted "9/11 times a bazillion" line that made the avian flu the next, well, 9/11), the newly elected President (who is now a lame duck a year in to his first term.... that's historic too isn't it?) outlined the "strategy":

"Our strategy is designed to meet three critical goals: first, we must detect outbreaks that occur anywhere in the world; second, we must protect the American people by stockpiling vaccines and antiviral drugs, and improve our ability to rapidly produce new vaccines against a pandemic strain; and third, we must be ready to respond at the federal, state and local levels in the event that a pandemic reaches our shores."

Let's take a look here. First, we need to know who's sick. Gee that's a fuckin' showstopper of an idea. Next, we need to stockpile vaccine.... and then improve our ability to produce new ones? Just a guess but I think we'll focus on that in a minute here. Third, we need a new FEMA director who actually knows what the hell he's doing. Steel trap mind this guy has, no?

Let's go back to that second point. Keep in mind that at the end of the day he asked for $7.1 BILLION to get this plan off the ground. What exactly does it mean to improve our ability to produce new vaccines? We already have growing stockpiles. We are already trying to stockpile more. We just can't find a vaccine that actually works against the current strains of the avian flu. But does that mean that we are incapable of making new vaccines? Considering there's a pharmacy shelf of different ineffective vaccines I'd say we're pretty damn good at making them now... so what the hell is Bush talking about?

"...the cornerstone of our strategy is to develop new technologies that will allow us to produce new vaccines rapidly."

Oh... thanks for clearing that one up, George. The CORNERSTONE of the strategy is to research and develop currently non-existent technologies that will then allow us to produce other currently non-existent vaccines really fast. You guys know this thing might hit this winter right? Notice anything else missing in this "plan"? A WORKING VACCINE. The entire strategy assumes that we have one! This cornerstone is just about turning this shit out, but guess what it doesn't exist. THE STRATEGY TO COMBAT AVIAN FLU ASSUMES THAT WE HAVE ALREADY COMBATTED AVIAN FLU.

But.... why then $7.1 Billion requested for this strategy? Is it to buy a new FEMA director? Doubtful, and possibly illegal as if that would take it off the table with these guys. Could it be to figure out if people are actually sick? Some of the money probably goes there... George did you tell us how much by any chance? You did? Really...

"I've requested $251 million from Congress to help our foreign partners train local medical personnel, expand their surveillance and testing capacity, draw up preparedness plans, and take other vital actions to detect and contain outbreaks."

$251 million out of $7.1 billion? George, these numbers are starting to worry me. That leaves $6.8 billion... and the fact that there's an extra one million on the end of that seemingly arbitrary amount just has to be innocent. Where's the rest of this money going?

"And I'm asking that the Congress fund $1.2 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services to purchase enough doses of this vaccine for manufacturers to vaccinate 20 million people."

$1.2 billion for "this vaccine", which vaccine? One that's currently in clinical trials. It may or may not work, just like all the rest. But god dammit let's get 20 million people inoculated with it. You know there's 280 million in the country, and as well know what the fucking word PANDEMIC means.... right? So $5.6 billion to go. Another $1 billion to "stockpile" what we have now. That means buy shit from the store that we know doesn't work. Another $2.8 billion to new research and development in pharmaceutical technologies. $583 million for "pandemic preparedness", wait isn't that what the first fucking $251 million was for?! That brings us to a grand total of $1.2 billion unaccounted for. What's worse than that is that the stockpiling and new research basically boils down to giving the fucking money to pharmaceutical companies and wishing them the best of luck. Unless Bill Frist thinks he can do a better job watching a TV and talking about his findings on the floor of the Senate (as he did with Terri Schiavo).

He's asking Congress to take $5.6 billion tax dollars that don't exist (we just recently stopped the growth of the deficit... I guess he's trying to get it a kick in the ass) and give it (in fairness, give $3.5 billion on paper, and probably that unaccounted $1.2 billion as well, totaling only $4.77 billion of the $5.6 billion) to Pfizer and Merck so that they can overhaul their production lines.

Why would they want to do that? Because they have a pharmacy shelf full of vaccines that don't work that they want to sell. Think those medicines are going off the market now with everyone scared to death of the bird flu? No, in fact, they should probably start making more of it since it will fly off the shelves so fast. Well it sure would be profitable if they could make it even faster, wouldn't it? Hey, send some people down to Washington and see if we can't get money just for coming up with that idea. We can? Holy fuckin' Moses we can get how much? God bless America!