Friends, this is an urgent call to action. Finally, after a frighteningly long period of inaction and idiotic statements from Mike Leavitt of the HHS, our good Democratic senators got an amendment to a military funding measure passed to fund avian flu preparedness to the tune of $3.9 Bln. However, I just learned that Ted Stevens in going to attempt to
kill this desperately needed funding in conference.
The US Senate voted yesterday to provide $4 billion for antiviral drugs and other measures to prepare for a feared influenza pandemic, but whether the measure would clear Congress was uncertain.
The Senate attached the measure to a $440 billion defense-spending bill for 2006, according to the Associated Press (AP). But the House included no flu money in its version of the defense bill, and a key senator said he would try to keep the funds out of the House-Senate compromise version. The Senate is expected to vote on the overall bill next week.
more below
Please raise hell over this to your congresspeople and the media, wherever hell can be raised. Do not let them forget how monstrously unprepared they were for Katrina, and how a few billion stitched in time at the levees could have saved hundreds of billions and much more importantly, thousands of precious lives and endless suffering. Similarly, the $3.9 bln price tag is a pittance compared to the estimated hundreds of billions of potential economic loss again, secondary to the immense death and suffering that will most likely result from lack of preparedness.
The WHO has recommended that each nation stockpile at least enough antivirals for a quarter of their population in order to contain the virus. The Infectious Disease Society of America calculates that the US should have a minimum of about 70 to 125 million courses stockpiled to contain the epidemic. The Bush Administration has been reluctant to stockpile sufficient amounts due to expense. They currently have 2.3 million courses stockpiled. Leavitt has recently said that the government will order 20 million courses that they are contemplating distributing via the U.S. Postal Service(!). However, the US made its order very late, and, because Roche (the drug maker) is providing it on a first-come, first-served basis, we are low on the list. When asked why the US waited so long, Leavitt had no answer.
So now, when finally, the right thing is being done for the American people and the world, they wish to thwart it! The only reasoning I can make out for this is a profound lack of an ability to reason, and indeed, a massive death wish, not for the well-connected who will have their drugs, but for the many millions of Americans denied antivirals. Or perhaps a strong desire for a distraction from political woes, or a good excuse for martial law. It can't be the expense. These crooks threw more cash into the streets of Baghdad than it takes to contain a global pandemic.
RAISE HELL, MY FRIENDS, RAISE HELL!