For more than two years the NIAID division of NIH has been requesting money to:
a.) modernize the vaccine development and production system;
b.) stockpile anti-virals, especially to encourage the further development of additional antivirals.
Why? This became an issue beginning in 2003 when Chiron's Liverpool plant and other vaccine manufacturing facilities could not maintain quality standards, leading to flu vaccine shortages. Other drug companies simply left the vaccine market rather than spend the money needed.
The underlying problem is there is very marginal private demand for flu vaccines, and vaccines in general, as well as antiviral drugs in "normal" years. The Japanese are quick to but Tamiflu when they contract the flu, but few others in the world find it worth the bother. This means there is very little profit available to keep facilities running, let alone upgrade them to a modern bio tech from chicken and duck eggs - which can only be made for six months out of the year.
Of course, in a year with a 1918 style flu (for which we are long overdue) the public would gladly pay hundreds of dollars for a vaccination or antiviral drugs they wouldn't have given two cents for the year before. Unfortunately, few companies are interested in maintaining an expensive program for when "the big one happens" every forty years or so on average. Yet it takes many years to develop a program like this. Somebody has to subsidize they anemic private demand in the off years. Insurers, employers, the government / aka taxpayers. Somebody has to, or nobody is safe.
Worse still, preventing the plague requires the vast majority of the population become vaccinated, whether they can afford it or not. Without this universal vaccination, vaccines are not quite so preventative as you might imagine. Your vaccination might not be 100% effective, but it will seem that way if nobody can spread the disease to you because their vaccinations did work.
In the U.S. this is part of a larger problem. If you want to be safe from tuberculosis, you have to be certain that the homeless alcoholic who has tuberculosis is treated every day with enough antibiotics to cure him, rather than simple generate a new drug-resistant strain of TB - which I might easily contract while walking to my office from my limo.
So this problem became urgent after 2003 when it became clear that current spending could no longer maintain the status quo, which took away illusions that we had a deeper capacity to meet a large sudden demand to provide vaccine quickly for everyone, rather than just the young and elderly. Bird flu simply makes a very bad problem potentially catastrophic.
For two years the spending-est President on record could not find the money for this premier national security issue until one week after they were embarrassed by their non-response to hurricane Katrina. This was also two weeks after it seemed pretty clear that human-to-human transmission of H5N1 was occurring in Indonesia, but I don't think this had anything to do with it. I heard it was all embarrassment over Katrina.
Actually they still haven't found the money for the vaccine program upgrade from the 1950s technology currently used. But they did put in an order for some anti-virals. Its unfortunate that they will not be shipped until July of 2006. This is what happens when you wait until the Christmas Plague rush season to order your drugs. Other nations have enough antiviral drugs to treat 1/3 of their population while the U.S. has enough to treat less than 1%.
We're not talking about huge amounts of money. Sparing the nation from the next plague might cost five Abrams tanks. Or a small slice of the torrent of money currently being flushed into New Orleans in an attempt to save face politically for a delayed response due to the National Guard being now based in Iraq.
In my mind, Bush is the classic alcoholic who just wrecked his second new car while his children are at home without food to eat. Alcoholics / addicts are self-centered individuals with no sense of responsibility, ethics or priorities.
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