President Bush just got done addressing the United Nations
in the opening of the historical summit of world leaders.

Most of what he said was a case of typical déjà vu. He
reaffirmed the need to fight terrorism and “catapulted the propaganda” on the
reasons for staying the course in Iraq.

One interesting point he did bring up, which is what
provoked me to blog about this, is avian flu or “bird flu”. He is introducing a
measure to require nations the have human cases to report all findings to the
World Health Organization so that the world can work as a team in combating what
could be this centuries first pandemic.

It strikes me as odd that the President is now taking an
interest in this. We saw how weak our response to disaster is in the aftermath
of Katrina. Another fact that is not well known is that the United States
procrastinated on ordering vaccines for bird flu to the point that we will not
start getting them until next year, after the flu season.

If we do see the outbreak of bird flu this year, it may
very well yield the same outcome as the great influenza outbreak in the early
1900’s. To further the point of lack of preparedness on our government’s part,
it should be a scary and sobering sign that our leaders delayed on getting
protection that we will need in the event of this outbreak. Seems like the
terrorists do not need biological labs or rooms of scientists now –  just get
one infected person over the boarded and let nature run its course.