Staying prepared for a pandemic is wise health policy

I thought about this last week as news came from Canada that government officials there had slaughtered 60,000 turkeys belonging to two brothers in British Columbia, leaving them without any means of support.

I thought about it as well as I read that the "stimulus" package pushed by President Obama and Democrats in Congress included $420 million to combat avian flu.

Granted, selling flu preparation as a way to get the economy moving again may qualify, on its own, as an irresponsible piece of colossal ignorance, but it isn't irresponsible for Washington, and for all local governments as well, to be prepared in the event of a medical catastrophe.

Writing last week in the Wall Street Journal, Shigeru Omi of the World Health Organization said, "A pandemic can be averted, but only if the world stays on full alert." This, he said, means "putting in place a surveillance system to pick up early signs of influenza-type cases."

But, as Leavitt put it, "It's no fun to talk about this because, first of all, it hasn't happened for a long time and people are quite skeptical about whether it will.

"But," he added, "It will."

If we could only find that happy place between unwarranted panic and complacency, we might be ready.

Jay Evensen is editor of the Deseret News editorial page. E-mail: even@desnews.com. Visit his blog at www.deseretnews.com/blogs.