Pres Bush visits Cleveland & speaks about Bird Flu

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   Pres Bush visits Cleveland and answers a question about Bird Flu.  

Click here to read the entire speach covering other subjects.

THE PRESIDENT: Doc.

Q - I'm a pediatrician at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital across the street.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, sir. Nutritionist?

Q Pediatrician, yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Pediatrician.

Q Yes, sir. Returning to a domestic item -

THE PRESIDENT: Must feel good to be a healer.

Q It is, sir. Thank you. Good to serve. One of the things that we're passionate about in pediatrics now, both at Rainbow and across the nation, is disaster preparedness and disaster response, specifically the needs of children. Could you comment, Mr. President, on how well-prepared we are as a nation for, God forbid, the next Katrina, or pandemic flu, or some such calamity?

THE PRESIDENT: We learned a lot of lessons from Katrina. Lesson one is, is that we've got to make sure local governments are better prepared to respond. Lesson two is that there's seamless decision-making between the state and local government. And lesson three is, is that if need be, the federal government needs to move troops in there, regardless of what the local people want.

We are better prepared, and drill it a lot. Great question. The more difficult question is his question on pandemic flu. I asked Mike Leavitt, who is the head of HHS, and Chertoff - he's the Homeland guy - Department of Homeland Security - (laughter) - Secretary of Homeland Security. (Laughter.) In Crawford, we kind of shortcut it. (Laughter.) Anyway, look, nobody has accused me of being Shakespeare, you know? (Laughter.) Anyway - I just hope you can figure out what I'm saying - (laughter) - is we spend a lot of time on pandemic flu. One way you anticipate a crisis is you kind of war-game it.

The first - I'm going to try to see if I can remember as much to make it sound like I'm smart on the subject. I actually spend a lot of time on it, because I am concerned that if a pandemic flu - the H5N1 virus were to mutate to the point where it becomes transmittable from bird to human to human, we'll have a significant international problem on our hands. So step one is to work with countries where the virus is more likely to show up and mutate on transparent information systems.

When I went to Vietnam, one of the things we looked at was the Vietnamese reporting process of the detection of chicken viruses, and whether or not that virus was mutating to the point where it could become infectious. And we've done a good job of that. As a matter of fact, at the APEC - which is the countries around the Pacific Rim - meeting, the last two meetings and this next one I'm going to in Australia, I always make it a point to talk about the need for all of us to be in a position where we can share information and track the mutation of the virus.

The issue, as you know, is that there is no, like, inoculation that will stop the spread. Yet we're spending a lot of money on trying to develop new vaccines, based not upon eggs, but on genetics. And Leavitt says we're making some pretty good progress.

Thirdly, just in case it were to hit here in the United States, we have stockpiled a lot of the spray. What's it called - anyway - Tamiflu. It may work, may not work. But just in case it does work, we got a lot of stockpile for you. (Laughter.) We do - as a way to try to, at least, arrest somewhat the spread of the disease.

But the ultimate effect - and this is what the dangerous thing about this is - is the ultimate public policy decisions are going to be, do we shut down America? 

Do you say that nobody can come in and out of your city?

 Or do you shut down all air travel? And so we've war-gamed a lot of options. 

And Mike has traveled the country - Mike Leavitt - to state and local government to help them think through different procedures that would be necessary to try to halt the spread of this virus if it were to mutate.

For example, how would a local community deal with schools? 

We happen to believe that the local response would be a better response than the federal government trying to one-size-fits-all each community's response. And that, as you know - there's different responses to different hurricanes that have hit, and so it would be a little uneven. And so we're trying to train as best as we can and war-game it out. It's a very interesting question you got.

I would give us a "A" for recognizing that we need to think about it. And until we get this vaccine - and by the way, we do have it teed up pretty well, where the vaccine makers would be willing to go full production if we can find a proper vaccine to manufacture. 

We're spending a lot of money on it at NIH - through NIH. I'd give us good marks for recognizing the issue, good marks for doing something about it, and - I can't tell you what marks we'll get in response, because, thankfully, we haven't had to respond, but we're watching carefully.

Yes, sir. Good question.   