Bush latest comment on Flu

Just in from Fox, W told reporters that Avian flu victims should be quarantined, but then he says 'how would we enforce quarantine in the US?'
I am a voter for Bush, but this worries me.
Comments?

God Bush sticks his foot in his mouth on a regular basis nowadays How you quanteen them is simple, you get a bunch of Marines in CDC suits with M4's and anyone who breaches the quarantine should be shot on sight. Draconian yes, nessessary well not yet but it may become nessesary.

There hasn't been a quarentine in America since Bush has been in charge?

Scary....

Do you have a link you can add to your opening post Bud?

ROFL, why do/did we not do this for aids carriers?
I still am behind my President, but he has a lot on his plate right now..

Go to foxnews.com and click on press conference. It is a video that contains this comment...

Bush Raises Notion of Using Military to Quarantine Areas Where Avian Flu Breaks Out




well how exactly do you control the outbreak of a pandemic without a quarantine?? And I would think the Military is most prepared to enforce such a quarantine.


[edit on 10-4-2005 by worldwatcher]

what are the chances of us really needing to take it this far?

Trust me if we get to the point where the army is needed to enforce a quaranteen, then a power grab is the least thing on my concern list. Personal survival is #1

Im actually glad to see that these things are being discussed rather than wait till we have outbreaks everwhere.

BTW, this is being covered here already: (I made the same mistake and made my own thread about this too. We should keep it all in one thread though.)

www.abovetopsecret.com...

what i meant my question was what are the chances of us really needing to do a quarentine in the first place? what are the chances that the bird flu will effect people in the united states on that scale? because right now i am hearing almost nothing about it on the news...as can be expected i presume. but im just wondering.
thanks
Digitalgrl

you can also find it on drudgereport.com

They want to give national gaurd command to the feds... meaning bush should be allowed to enforce military might in case a virus strikes.

Doesn't that seem kind of odd that he wants a military body to enforce a quarantine?

Isn't that what medical professionals are for? Military men would catch it, and they wouldn't know how to treat people. They only know how to use their guns.

I posed this in another thread so I’ll do the same here.

With a 55 percent fatality rate you better pray the military is there to help your local officials out. Not only is this virus extremely contagious, but like I said, it is 55% lethal.
The 1918 Influenza outbreak which was only 5% lethal and still killed 50+ millions of people when the global population was only 1.8 Billion.

Military personnel are trained on how to deal with chemical or biological warfare, and they have the gear for it, that's what you would essentially need in such a case. Not to mention the manpower and assets the military can use for logistical support, or for quarantine reinforcement. They are the right department for this situation, if it occurs.

The carrier of this disease is migratory birds. It will not be showing up in isolated spots here and there. Instead it will be like a wave spreading downwards from the North. Keep your eyes peeled for incidents beginning in Northern Canada first because that's how it will spread.

Containing the first cases of H5N1 will be done by using whatever means available, but how do you stop that infected bird from flying anywhere it wants?

BTW...I think this thread was started, like, several minutes before the other one on this topic.

The idea that it'd get to the point where the military had to shut down entire cities and states across the country is pretty laughable. The wwi flu epidemic didn't require that, outside of the movies nothing like that is going to happen.

The Katrina example is a perfect anology for why these extreme measures are are very bad idea. Its because:

We're all a bunch of idiots. Seriously, we're simply all too stupid to properly do anything about this on such a grande scale, and trying to do so, rather than letting the normal process of having the states handle their own end and the fed helping out too coordinate, is just going to make the disaster all that much worse, just like Katrina. Everyone was counting on FEMA, and it failed, again. Hell, it just added to the drama and overall misery.

Lets face it, americans simply aren't competent enough to handle having that much power and that much responsiblity. If everyone tries to apply it, they're going to abuse the power, and shirk their responsilibites, just like Katrina. A global bird flu pandemic will be bad enough, its hardly going to help having frightened troopers trying to enforce a 'quarrentine'.


To support the idea that america simply isn't competent enough to handle this sort of thing, I'd cite the fact that we're arguing about using the Army to handle the epidemic, rather than do the logical and sensible thing of having more factories, within the US, that can produce the medecine that fights the symptoms of the flu, and also more research labs to actually come up with a vaccine. Cause once there's a global outbreak, the countries that actually do have the factories and stockpiles of the medications, they're not going to let that stuff out of their country. The US has some of that, but not nearly enough.

See, stupidity. Lets cut some more science budgets and reduce our health care infrastructure some more right?



[edit on 4-10-2005 by Nygdan]

good point Nygdan, but what's the time scale? From the way it is sounding we could see a pandemic within the next 3 years or less, how long will it take to build these factories and produce stockpiles of whatever...

I don't think there is a cure and tamiflu (see thread in this forum) might not be as effective as once thought.

The time scale for bird flu hitting is 30 days, not years. In 30 days, with the budget that you'd use for that portion of the military that they are intending to use, yeah, you can definitly make a critical difference. You can nationalize/mobilize the genomics industry to collect and culture the virus, to get its code, to work out the structure of antibodies, to workup a vaccine and distribute it. I can see the military being good for distributing it, but of course that really doesn't require that the feds have control of the national guard anyway. With effectively unlimited resources, which is what the US can throw at this, you can make tamiflu, etc, it wouldn't be easy, but christ, we beat the nazis, we can make some damed flu factories in a few months.

But as it stands the 'wave' of the virus spreading will be practically burned out by the time that the normal methods of first getting the infectious-mutated virus and getting to a vaccine are complete. We know how long it normally takes, it takes way too long. I wouldn't want ot say that we can stop it, we cannot stop avian flu from killing, minimally, thousands, should it really have the ability to jump from human to human (in the US, as opposed to vietnam where it has but might've burned out), but we can reduce the casualty rate if we start doing something now.

First off, how about applauding Bush for at least talking and requesting action about the bird flu subject

Second, using the military to distribute, relocate, de contaminate or do whatever, was only one of the options that the President talked about. I agree that allocating more funds and resources to scientists and labs working to find a vaccine (because there isn't one yet) should be important and top priority.

Third, maybe some of you would like to pretend that all the president said was “gimmie full control of the military when the flu hits, and well be aright”, but in realty it was more that that.

West Point

I will have to take this one with more sense.

If an epidemic happen, who is going to control the mass hysteria that probably will erupt from it?

local police? I don't thing so, as long as if the national guard and not some "private security forces" I am fine with that.

We have to understand that national guard or active military are American too, and they will have families that will be infected too, as a former military wife I pretty much feel that it will be OK to have the national guard handling things around.

What we have to take care is if some groups of civilian taking matters into their own hands that will bring anarchy.

Now on the issue of quarantine, I will have to be skeptical on this one, if an epidemic happen in the US quarantine will be useless, plain and simple.

Now the issue should be about how serious the situation about an epidemic is when the president is already taking about it.

We as citizens should demand the government into finding a solution to the problem, after all a lot of our tax payer money goes into research for the prevention of diseases.

But all we get is more "miracle drugs" to target our pockets.

There is another thread that has been active asking 'where are all the birds'?
I have 20 acres of virgin woods and have been used to having hundreds of birds and owls.They are POOF~gone..for about a year now.
Is there any way the local birds are dying from this?
Help, I am beginning to sweat it..