Bush Outlines $7.1B Flu-Fighting Strategy

AP ^ | 11/1/05 | LAURAN NEERGAARD

[Solson]

Bush Outlines $7.1B Flu-Fighting Strategy

By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer 32 minutes ago

President Bush outlined a $7.1 billion strategy Tuesday to prepare for the danger of a pandemic influenza outbreak, saying he wanted to stockpile enough vaccine to protect 20 million Americans against the current strain of bird flu.

The president also said the United States must approve liability protection for the makers of lifesaving vaccines. He said the number of American vaccine manufacturers has plummeted because the industry has been hit with a flood of lawsuits.

Bush said no one knows when or where a deadly strain of flu will strike but "at some point we are likely to face another pandemic."

The president, in a speech at the National Institutes of Health, said the United States must be prepared to detect outbreaks anywhere in the world, stockpile vaccines and anti-viral drugs and be ready to respond at the federal, state and local levels in the event a pandemic reaches the United States.

Bush outlined a strategy that would cost $7.1 billion including:

_$1.2 billion for the government to buy enough doses of the vaccine against the current strain of bird flu to protect 20 million Americans; the administration wants to have sufficient vaccine for front-line emergency personnel and at-risk populations, including military personnel;

_$1 billion to stockpile more anti-viral drugs that lessen the severity of the flu symptoms;

_$2.8 billion to speed the development of vaccines as new strains emerge, a process that now takes months;

_$583 million for states and local governments to prepare emergency plans to respond to an outbreak.

Bush said a pandemic flu would be far more serious than the seasonal flu that makes hundreds of thousands of people sick ever year and sends people to their doctors for a flu shot. "I had mine," Bush said. Unlike seasonal flu, pandemic flu can kill people who are young and healthy as well as those who are frail and sick, he said.

In asking Congress for money to buy vaccine, Bush said the vaccine "would not be a perfect match to the pandemic flu because the pandemic strain would probably differ somewhat from the avian flu virus it grew from. But a vaccine against the current avian flu virus would likely offer some protection against a pandemic strain and possibly save many lives in the first critical months of an outbreak."

He also said the United States was increasing stockpiles of antiviral drugs, such as Tamiflu and Relenza. Such drugs cannot prevent people from catching the flu, but they can reduce the severity of the illness when taken within 48 hours of getting sick, he said.

"At this moment there is no pandemic influenza in the United States or the world, but if history is our guide there's reason to be concerned," Bush said. "In the last century, our country and the world have been hit by three influenza pandemics, and viruses from birds contributed to all of them."

He pointed out that the 1918 pandemic killed over a half million Americans and more than 20 million people across the globe. "One-third of the U.S. population was infected, and life expectancy in our country was reduced by 13 years.

"The 1918 pandemic was followed by pandemics in 1957 and 1968, which killed tens of thousands of Americans and millions across the world," Bush said.

Bird flu has been documented in Asia and has spread to Europe but has not reached the United States, the president said. "Our country has been given fair warning of this danger to our homeland and time to prepare," he said.

Bush said the cornerstone of his strategy was to develop new technologies to produce new vaccines quickly. "If a pandemic strikes, our country must have a surge capacity in place that will allow us to bring a new vaccine online quickly and manufacture enough to immunize every American against the pandemic strain," Bush said.

The principal goal of Bush's plan, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said, "is the capacity for every American to have a vaccine in the case of a pandemic, no matter what the virus is." "There is no reason to believe that in the next day or two or week or month that that's going to occur," Leavitt said on CBS's "The Early Show." But he added that "we do need to be ready in case it begins to mutate into a human transmissable disease."

Pandemics strike when the easy-to-mutate influenza virus shifts to a strain that people have never experienced before, something that has happened three times in the last century. While it is impossible to say when the next super-flu will strike, concern is growing that the bird flu strain known as H5N1 could trigger one if it mutates to start spreading easily among people. Since 2003, at least 62 people in Southeast Asia have died from H5N1; most regularly handled poultry.

The nation's strategy starts with attempting to spot an outbreak abroad early and working to contain it before it reaches the United States.

Today, most of the world's vaccine against regular winter flu, including much of that used by Americans each flu season, is manufactured in factories in Britain and Europe.

The government already has ordered $162.5 million worth of vaccine to be made and stockpiled against the Asian bird flu, more than half to be made in a U.S. factory.

But the administration plan, to be released in more detail on Wednesday, calls for more than stockpiling shots. It will stress a new method of manufacturing flu vaccines — growing the virus to make them in easy-to-handle cell cultures instead of today's cumbersome process that uses millions of chicken eggs — as well as incentives for new U.S.-based vaccine factories to open.

Such steps will take several years to implement, but the hope is that eventually they could allow production of enough vaccine to go around within six months of a pandemic's start.

___

Associated Press Writer Nedra Pickler contributed to this report.

[edcoil]

OK, I'll say it.

Americans get 7 Billion of there own money for what we are told is a flu to kill millions of us and President Bush give 15 Billion dollars of our money to Africa.

[Gabz]

Thanks, I was just about to post that link.

[Shermy]

"So, is this a serious threat to the US or just hysteria hitting hard?"

Much drug company corporate welfare.

[burzum]

SARS wasn't hysteria. SARS was a very dangerous disease that was brought under control. While SARS was not nearly as transmissible as the flu, if I recall correctly, it was still surprisingly transmissible. Most cases of infection occurred in apartment buildings or hospitals. When that occurred, many people in the apartment buildings or hospitals became infected, and in many cases they never had direct person to person contact. Once people became aware of SARS' characteristics, they took actions such as donning breathing protection, washed their hands more often, opened windows, quarantined people for ten days, and put on breathing masks over the victims. Then the transmission rate plummeted. Out of about 8000 reported cases, about 800 people died. If China would have acted faster, it might have been half of that. If health authorities would have acted slower, it very well could have become a pandemic, though it probably wouldn't have had done too much to the US (where people don't congregate as often in stale air environments and where the health care system is equipped to handle such a disease). Nonetheless, I believe that health authorities around the world saved millions of lives due to their actions (and in some cases sacrifices such as Dr. Urbani who died researching it).

[discostu]

Running rampant throughout Asia the bird flu has killed less people in 18 months than the regular flu has killed in any major city during the same time period. Hysteria.

[tallhappy]

The emphasis on this is odd. It does seem to be somewhat hysterical.

[Herakles]

You beat me to it!

Sixty deaths since 2003 with a world population of 6 billion and he wants to spend 7 billion. He would stand a better chance of stopping the spread by spending the money on boarder security.

This sounds like either a red herring or someone in the skull & bones society is running a drug company!

[Gabz]

Living in a poultry producing region such as I do, this stuff is not taken lightly.

Evrn if it doesn't mutate to a human problem, it will be a major human problem because such an outbreak could decimate the economy of this area. Only 50 miles north of me is the county that produces the most broiler/fryers in the country. Only 20 miles south of me is one of Perdue's largest processing plants in the country, and I live only about 4 miles from one of Tyson's largest plants in the region (I won't mention the 150,000 chickens currently residing across the road from me).........

I've got no connection to the industry other than being a major consumer, but this is not a laughing matter and we've all been talking about it for years.

[dljordan]

"So, is this a serious threat to the US or just hysteria hitting hard?"

Wait and see where the money goes. What companies are going to make the vaccines and who is connected to them?

[dljordan]

"No. Though more than 100 human cases have occurred in the current outbreak, this is a small number compared with the huge number of birds affected and the numerous associated opportunities for human exposure, especially in areas where backyard flocks are common. It is not presently understood why some people, and not others, become infected following similar exposures."

Let's not pour water on a perfectly good hysteria.

[discostu]

SARS was pure hysteria. All the transmissions happened in countries with crappy medical systems, we never got a patient 1 in the US inspite of importing at leats 3 patient 0s. It ran rampant in Canada becuase the same hospital allowed not one but TWO people killed by SARS to lie in high traffic halways for HOURS. When Canada finally started acting like they had a modern medical system they shut SARS down. A normal old every day see one or two every year flu is caught by more people and kills more people, SARS was entirely driven by media produced hysteria to fill time.

[brothers4thID]

The bird has to cough on you while infected with the disease. I don't know about you, but my Thanksgiving turkey has never coughed on me! ;)

[DumpsterDiver]

Living in a poultry producing region such as I do, this stuff is not taken lightly.
Evrn if it doesn't mutate to a human problem, it will be a major human problem because such an outbreak could decimate the economy of this area.

Two or three years ago there was an outbreak of Newcastle's disease in the poultry farms here in California. Millions of chickens were slaughtered. It was spread by illegal aliens smugglng in infected gamecocks from Mexico. The same people who were raising the smuggled in birds were also working at the poultry farms.

I've got no connection to the industry other than being a major consumer, but this is not a laughing matter and we've all been talking about it for years.

I'm not laughing, but I'm not that concerned about it either... not yet anyway.

[upchuck]

Indeed, pharmaceutical companies hold the cards. Which one is producing the vaccine?

Chiron.

[Gabz]

When the region you live in loses a huge chunk of it's economy when this thing comes through, tell me it's hysteria.

When your nearest neighbors are a couple 100,000 chickens, tell me this is hysteria.

Sorry if I sound tinfoilish, but the threat of this stuff is nothing to sneeze at or about (pun intended). Even if it never mutates to a human to human strain the decimation of the poultry industry and the trickle down effect on agriculture in general will be a major blow to the US economy.

Just one bird in one flock on one farm testing positive for any strain of avian influenza causes the entire flock to be destroyed. One modern chicken house holds upwards of 30-35,000 birds and there are some farms with 15-20 of those houses. One infected bird can ruin a family farm. I've seen it happen.

[panaxanax]

I read somewhere yesterday that Donald Rumsfeld owned a large block of stock in the company that makes Tamiflu. I know this is not responsible posting, but just came in to check my email real quick and have to run back to work. Maybe someone can verify....bye.

[steve86]

Clearly, some of the posters on this thread are going to find the "Avian Flu Surveillance Project" as far over their heads as a flock of geese.

[Wiseghy]

Stratfor ran an article a while back saying that the risk was small. Nonetheless, a pandemic is still a major concern. The hurricane, ironically, has set the standard for what people expect from their government in times of crisis.

In the meantime, a decent civil defense strategy is a perfectly reasonable action to respond to a small but significant strategic threat.

[Gabz]

The avian flu outbreaks in Delaware and Maryland last year were traced back to the live poultry sales in either NewYork or New Jersey. Most poultry grown here doesn't go to the live market - they go straight from the houses to the processing plants.

On a personal/human level I'm not terribly concerned about it - I'm extremely concerned when it comes to an economic standpoint, of course I've felt that way for 20 years.

Like most people that grow up in the big city, I never really paid much attention to where my food came from, or what was involved in getting it to me to cook it (except when I was cooking fish I had caught). Moving to an area where some of the stuff in the supermarkets comes from is a major eye opener.

If this doesn't mutate and poultry is not high on one's list of preferred foods, this is a non-issue. However, if you enjoy eating poultry - be preparred to find shortages and major hits to the wallet if it shows up.

[burzum]

We had over 70 cases in the US, though we had no fatalities. Canada had 250 and lost 38. The main reason, once again, for the high transmissions in Canada was the stale air environments in which the patients were infected.

I disagree with you that SARS was hysteria. I just think it was killed before it got to critical mass. Most airborne infectious diseases grow at an exponential rate (a simplified equation is A=A0*k^(t/t_T) where A is the number infected at a time t, A0 is the initial number infected, k is the number of transmissions per person on average, and t_T is the average time to transmit to k people). In the early stages is is theoretically possible to mobilize enough resources to combat and defeat a disease. This was done with SARS. In the later stages, the exponential law overwhelms that option. Consider a normal flu virus. The number of infections due to the normal flu virus is past the critical mass point, and actions like quarantines will not reduce the infection rate appreciably. If avian flu becomes readily transmissible from human to human, I think it is highly probable that it will go past the critical mass point. With a potentially high mortality rate this is unfortunate. It should be noted that with US health-care, the mortality rate will probably be much smaller than that which is observed for the rest of the world (maybe 20%).