Panic causes trouble - Event Date: April 13 2006

 

 

An article on the newspaper's Web site said the document is the first to spell out how the government would detect and respond to a flu outbreak and continue to function through what could be an 18-month crisis capable of killing up to 1.9 million Americans.

The 240-page response plan identifies more than 300 specific tasks for federal agencies, including determining which frontline workers should be vaccinated first and expanding the Internet to accommodate a likely flood of people working from their home computers.

The newspaper said the Treasury Department is poised to sign agreements with other nations to produce currency if U.S. mints cannot operate.

The Pentagon, anticipating difficulties acquiring supplies from the Far East, is considering stockpiling millions of latex gloves.

The article, which was also to appear in the Post's Sunday editions, said the Department of Veterans Affairs has developed a drive-through medical exam to quickly assess patients who suspect they have been infected by the virus.

Bush is expected to approve the plan within a week, the article said.

The White House is eager to show it can manage the medical, security and economic fallout from a major outbreak following its widely criticized to Hurricane Katrina, the Post said. Concern about a possible pandemic has grown with the emergence of the H5N1 avian flu, the most dangerous strain in decades.

Bush is expected to adopt post-Katrina recommendations that a new interagency task force coordinate the federal response and a high-level Disaster Response Group resolve disputes among agencies or states, the newspaper said. Neither entity has been created.

BF is at least as devastating as Katrina but on a world level. All of us here have gaps in our imagination of what something of this magnitude would be like. For starters I would read the Stand by Steven King, I would follow that with Lucifers Hammer, by Niven and Pournelle......... and then get back to me if you have any questions. this is what we are talking about here, in this forum a society changing event. That effects every value, every assumption you may have about how life works and what is valuable. Of course this might be a trivial mater.

 

Your husband only owns a shotgun? He better whip out the plastic because  he is woefully underprepared. Of course this is JMHO..