Reply #6: Others have posted the Tamiflu-Rumsfeld connection here at DU

[mcscajun]

No one's disputing it AFAIK.

The disease has a 50% fatality rate -- truly alarming in any disease, however transmitted. So far, while this flu strain has only been transmitted to humans through direct contact with infected birds, if it mutates, either through transmission to swine then to humans, or it finds a human host with a "normal" flu strain already present, it could recombine into a form that would be transmissable from person to person, something that does not exist as of yet. That's the risk we're looking at. BushCo didn't manufacture this threat; it doesn't mean they aren't poised to take political and economical advantage of it. None of that makes the threat any less real.

I've been involved in this discussion for the past several months here at DU.

If the pandemic hits, the World Health Organization is is talking about possible death figures of between 5 million and 150 million people worldwide. Concern shown by Bush is another matter; as usual, George "arrives late for the party and shits on the dining room table"; in this case, by using the Avian flu scare for one of his "be afraid, be very afraid...and only I can save you" speeches. Meanwhile, yes, Rumsfeld stands to make a killing, yet Tamiflu has already proven mostly ineffective, as your scare mail points out. Relenza is now the drug the EU medical community is looking at for avian flu treatement.

Someone else here at DU at one point in the Avia Flu discussion talked about Bush being the little boy who cried 'wolf'; and they're right. While he's been busy scaring those he can, those of us he can't scare have been growing more and more cynical about what comes out of his mouth, to the point that even if he managed one day to state an absolute truth that we already knew to be true, we'd have to check with our sources before we'd truly accept it. This is the ultimate danger of the man. (I use the term "man" loosely, and with apologies to male humans everywhere.)

BushCo never found a fear they wouldn't (or couldn't) exploit. It's like flies to shit.
The threat of avian flu turning into a pandemic is, unfortunately, quite real.