From the June 2006 Idaho Observer:

The smallpox…uh…SARS…uh…avian flu pandemic plan

The federal government began developing an influenza pandemic preparedness plan, by order of President Ford, in the wake of the 1976 swine flu mass-vaccination fiasco. Since that time, domestic pandemic concerns have gone global, modern technology has improved surveillance capabilities dramatically and legions of public health agencies and drug manufacturers are itching to show us the results of 30 years of pandemic preparedness planning. Absent a real disease of natural origin, a fabricated disease of synthetic origin will work just fine.

by Don Harkins

Within weeks of 9/11, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MEHPA) and instructed public health officials from the several states to begin lobbying their legislatures to pass what critics viewed as a template for health officials to declare medical martial law in the event of a real or imagined public health emergency.

First was concern that Arab "terrorists" would unleash "weaponized" smallpox on an unvaccinated American public, potentially causing a pandemic that could kill millions. That threat disappeared as vaccine trials were deadly and the virulence of smallpox and the likelihood it would be used as a bioweapon were dramatically exaggerated.

Then came SARS, another disease scare that did not manifest pandemically.

And now we are being conditioned to fearfully anticipate the day when a specific, type-A strain of avian influenza virus (H5N1) will inevitably "jump species" into humans. The international public health community, led by the WHO, CDC and the U.S. Department of Social and Health Services (HHS), is predicting that hundreds of millions of defenseless, unvaccinated people worldwide "could" die of avian flu.

To meet the latest pandemic threat, the 36-page MEHPA has morphed into the 396-page "HHS Influenza Plan (the Plan)—a global disease surveillance web and response plan that incorporates MEHPA "partners" in government and industry while expanding its domestic authority to include international emergency intervention.

The Plan calls for, "Every nation [to] develop comprehensive strategies and contingency plans for a global pandemic. These plans should be coordinated regionally and at the ground level. The opportunity to contain an initial outbreak can only be realized in the presence of a sophisticated global strategy."

The Plan also acknowledges the need for the U.S. to "have a system of plans at all levels of government and in all sectors outside of government that can be integrated to address the pandemic threat."

As HHS describes the Plan, you feel assured that it has overlooked nothing in its pandemic preparedness planning—except for the possibility that nutrition, sanitation and hygiene may be more effective in stopping the spread of the disease than drugs and vaccines.

It is curious that the comprehensive HHS pandemic plan omits completely any reference to pure water, nutritious food and clean, safe environments as factors that would mitigate the severity of disease symptoms and would significantly reduce death tolls.

In fact, drugs and vaccines are central to the plan—no other alternatives are considered—and, once a state of emergency has been declared, the police powers of the state, led by the federal government and possibly the U.S. military, will be commissioned to force compliance with the Plan at gunpoint.

The Plan does not confine itself to H5N1, but considers that, for no scientifically-definable reason, the likelihood that bird flu will jump species into humans who will have no preexisting immunity, is the greatest pandemic threat in the world at this time.

Pandemic planners are forging ahead under the following assumptions:

1. The virus will "spread rapidly worldwide."

2. The "fact" that people without symptoms "may be infectious."

3. Outbreaks all over the U.S. will occur simultaneously, stretching the resources of jurisdictions to the breaking point.

4. "Enormous demands will be placed on the healthcare system."

5. Delays/shortages in the availability of vaccines and antiviral drugs.

6. "Disruption of national and community infrastructures, including transportation, commerce, utilities and public safety due to widespread illness and death among workers and their families and concern about on-going exposure to the virus."

HHS "preparedness planning and response activities" are guided by the belief that:

1. All government and private sector preparedness "partners" must be properly coordinated.

2. The public must be "informed."

3. "Domestic vaccine production capacity sufficient to provide vaccine for the entire U.S. population is critical..."

4. "Quantities of antiviral drugs to treat 25 percent of the U.S. population should be stockpiled."

5. The Plan will be triggered when "sustained human-to-human transmission" is discovered anywhere in the world.

6. "[P]rotective" public health measures (quarantines) will be employed to reduce person-to-person transmission and to prevent/delay disease outbreaks.

7. Because vaccine will likely be in short supply, "priority groups" to receive vaccines will be established.

8. Antiviral drugs will also be in short supply and will be dispensed in order of groups’ priority rank.

Because avian flu could emerge from anywhere in the world, "...working with our international partners, HHS has greatly intensified its U.S. and global surveillance activities." Along this line, HHS is "developing comprehensive infection control strategies."

Because resources in developing countries may not be adequate to meet the demands of HHS infection control strategies when an outbreak of human-to-human transmissible bird flu is "confirmed," the world’s global health resources will descend on the region in an attempt to "contain" the infection.

Many of those who have been monitoring the development of pandemic planning believe that bird flu will not be another trial run—it will be the real thing. The pandemic planners appear to be fully prepared to "go live" with this one. With what we know from past experience and understanding the science proving that injected proteins cause the allergic reactions for which anaphylaxis was named, our most important hour has come: We must scuttle this looming disaster.