I told you so

My Way News:

"She [White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend] said the biggest lesson from the test was the leading role that state and local governments would have to play in responding to a pandemic.

"'This is not going to be a federal answer to the problem,' she said. 'The federal government has got a support role to play. But frankly, I think, really very important is the state and local efforts.'"

It seems to me that I made this point weeks ago when they first started the scare campaign over the H5N1 avian influenza. All the airy talk of the military and quarantines and all boils down to the simple fact that if such a thing happened the Feds could not cope and now they have admitted as much.

Moreover, the responsible authorities seem to be backing off their former worst case scenario and now speak of 92 million infected (about one person in three) and two million deaths. This is awful, but it does not threaten the survival of the nation directly. What we ought to be asking now is "How many people will be sick at any one time?" and just how incapacitated they will be. Is there a real danger of collapse of essential infrastructure? Could this event, if it came to pass, embolden a rival nation to take military action against us?