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Originally Posted by OldJeff
I do not believe there is anything we can do about it. Nature will take it's course, every once in a while the Earth needs to shake off a few million people. As a species we are generally pretty good about killing each other off to keep things in balance.
I do know that using untrained 18 year olds as "police officers" for an epidemic that "might" happen IF the virus mutates, and IF the virus becomes easily transmutted to humans, is not the answer. M-16's are not really much use against a virus.
Here is a crazy idea, take a billion or so of the dollars that was wasted in Iraq and make more vaccine. Soldiers are no good for fighting a virus, you need doctors and scientists for that kind of thing.
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We can't afford to spend money on vaccines ... I suspect that will be part of the money cut to pay for the Gulf Coast Blow Jobs and the tax cuts. Besides, vaccines do not generate enough of an ROI to be significant to the pharmacuetical industry, and with two lobbyists for every member of Congress, they talk loud.
The idea of training the military to handle certain tasks - quarantine being one of them - in the event of a full scale crisis has merit. Of course, we COULD build the active duty military back up to the size it should be, and then have the National Guard for this sort of thing, and restore the old Public Health Service to an appropriate size.
I'd be lying if I didn't admit Bush talking about a larger role for the military within the U.S. makes me almost as nervous as it would make Mike AI were if the President and Congress were Democratic.