In the 1918 epidemic, healthy young people could die within 24 hours. Maybe not enough time for them to seek and obtain treatment.
The government will just tell drug makers to make more anti-virals? That would be nice, but there is such a thing as production capacity.
The Chinese produce a lot of antivirals. They give them to chickens and ducks.
Not only production capacity but legal liability. If you inject 300 million people with ANYTHING, even a placebo, some will get sick and/or die, thus causing many lawsuits.
No; I said: "Whereas today government would simply call upon certain drug companies to produce more of a certain vaccine or drug ... antiviral drugs didn’t exist in 1918." The larger point was the lack of availability of antivirals then compared to now. There wasn't an effective treatment to seek, not like there would be today.
When government wants more flu vaccine, it doesn't make it itself, it approaches companies, just like I suggested in the hypothetical, just like it would if push came to shove with this overblown bird flu.
Production capacity? Covered at the end of the column; Bush might say 200 million doses would be available in six months, which they could be. Companies wouldn't be making them for free, of course ... more of a motive to produce than anything I can imagine. We are all in the wrong businesses, my friend.