I subscribe to many "alternative health"-type newsletters. Admittedly, many of them give slanted information, and many of them have commercial tie-ins with some potentially-dubious products. So I take everything that I read with a huge grain of salt.

What I've been reading about avian flu and Tamiflu in these newsletters is rather alarming, at least on its surface. The gist of the claim is that Tamiflu has been proven to be ineffective against the avian flu, and that our government is buying up millions of doses of Tamiflu from Roche on the (possibly false) assumption that Tamiflu is an effective remedy for the avian flu. (Another possibility is that our government knows that Tamiflu has no proven track record against avian flu, but that they are making this huge investment just so that it will SEEM as if they're doing SOMETHING to be prepared for the pandemic, if and when it arrives on our shores.)

Some reasons that I don't necessarily believe the alternative health newsletter claims follow:

1-There have been no large human studies of the effectiveness of Tamiflu against avian flu, mostly because there have been relatively few human cases of avian flu to study.

2-My understanding of avian flu is that human victims start to show symptoms within two days of exposure, and that pneumonia develops very quickly, often on the same day that symptoms of infection start to show. It may be that the Tamiflu was not given to the patients soon-enough to keep the deadly symptoms from developing. In "normal" usage, Tamiflu is supposed to be given within two days of exposure to the flu. Is it possible that it's already too late for Tamiflu dosing to be effective in that two-day window, when a patient starts to show symptoms of exposure to the avian flu virus?

3-To my knowledge, Tamiflu has been used as an influenza remedy, not as a preventative. Maybe Tamiflu needs to be given prophylactically--and continually, for the entire "threat period"--in order to be effective against avian flu? If that is the case, then how many billions of doses would be required to keep the U.S. population protected? It boggles the mind to contemplate this possibility!

The point of this post is that we should not, perhaps, place our faith in Tamiflu as a partial solution to the avian flu threat. What we do know with certainty is that Tamiflu is very expensive. --And it is in somewhat-short supply. And, for all of that, it may not even be effective.

The pending avian flu disaster will not come out of the blue. In a world where extreme poverty is tolerated if not ignored, and extreme cruelty to animals in the form of factory farming is considered "efficient" and thus desirable, we're all but begging for this major slapdown called the avian flu.

Like so many of the great debates of the information age, this one is characterized not by differing points of view within a cohesive framework, but by the polar opposites of "This is the most majorly serious problem" and "This is nothing to worry about."

I think that within Davis' argument, there is an understandable ambiguity about whether bird flu will be "the big one." What must be remembered is that whichever particular virus it's going to be is less important than the systematic failures that will allow that disease to rampage in the way epidemiologists are predicting. The imporant parts of Davis' argument are not details about how the avian flu might be the one (although the case that it will be avian flu seems strong to me, precisely because of the close proximity and concentration of different species) but rather that whatever may come, we are woefully unprepared to handle a contagious disease outbreak.

Definitely the Dems should find an issue and campaign on it. A clue would be a good beginning. Perhaps the Dems could find someone to run for the next election who was not, in the words of Hunter Thompson, "a shameful electrified corpse."

Yes, I certainly have a lot of faith in the ability of the Democratic party to protect the ideals of America. They have shown so much strength and competence over the years, and as a political party, they are our last best hope against tyranny.

So basically, we're screwed.

I read interesting information on the state of the public health infrastructure in America. But precious little on whether bird flu is actually a threat. I read that that the public health infrastructure is not geared up to handle any arbitrary threat like bird flu not whether bird flu is the actual threat we need to be worried about. I read it could be might be who knows which of course is an unassailable prophecy. I wonder if bird flu hasn't already been coopted by everyone to further their own agenda, whether that is public health issues, drug company profits or plain old political power?

Democrats can only win national elections if we restrict our national campaining to populist economic issues and their immediate consequences. I don't mean that we should abandon other issues; I refer only to campaign tactics. This article shows a great example of the right thing to campaign on: the abandonment of public health. There are so many daily examples, with this horrible scenario even playing to the affluent.