Bird Flu Monitor > Personal Finances and the Bird Flu

[fluFactor] But in a question that I posed to Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt this morning I was told that if a pandemic does hit the United States, the economic net that many families will hope to find will probably be limited to existing programs such as unemployment, welfare and food stamps. The message here is that families need to put together a financial disaster plan and that they won’t be able to count on the government to intervene on their behalf.

Previous [Previous] Report: USDA lacks plan for bird flu testing...

Next [Next] Earliest Human Case of Bird Flu Disclosed...

Some related posts from Technorati and Google.

[The Birdchaser] I and the Bird #18: Before bird banders routinely used RFID chips on their bands, and public websites allowed birders to get real time coordinates for RFID banded birds, bird watchers had to actually depend on skill and luck to find the birds they wanted to see. Of course, there were more birds back then, but birding was still more challenging, and in many ways, more rewarding.

[Health and Fitness Blog :: Main Page] The Game of Life - Applying Athletic Training... : I crave the reality-TV camera following the Olympian through his or her daily life, seeing the hometowns, seeing the flashes of childhood family photos, perhaps seeing an interview with the admiring kindergarten teacher or high school coach to hear about the special qualities that athlete possesses that has helped pave his way to the Olympic games.

[Thomas Paine's Corner] Money for Napalm but Not for Food Stamps: The bill tosses 220,000 people off food stamps, allow states to jack up the cost of co-payments for poor Medicaid beneficiaries, squeeze students with loans, and cut aid to child-support programs.

[ ENEMY OF THE STATE by ENEMY OF THE STATE] Money for Napalm but NOT for Food Stamps: The bill tosses 220,000 people off food stamps, allow states to jack up the cost of co-payments for poor Medicaid beneficiaries, squeeze students with loans, and cut aid to child-support programs.

[Nude King On The Blog] Frequent Medical Miles: The proposed Continued Medical Education (CME) program looks like a mixed bag of ideas taken from Frequent Flyer Miles, Hello Kitty stamps, and reckless driving penalty points. Or so it seems:

[Healthnewsblog.com] Health News Blog -- Bird Flu / Avian Flu H5N1: Another WHO expert, Dr Mike Ryan, director of epidemic and pandemic alert, said, "We truly feel that this present threat is likely to stretch our global systems to the point of collapse." H5N1 has continued to spread easily from country to country and scientists are sounding more alarmist with each new human case and with each discovery of the virus in a new country.

[Worldhum.com] World Hum | Travel | Bird Flu Isn't Hurting Asia Travel: (Some, for example, had decided to avoid rural areas in Southeast Asia.) Three months later, the travel industry is thriving in Asia as the Lunar New Year approaches, according to the AP. Said one travel company director in Vietnam, “According to the figures from hotels, they’ve never known such a high occupancy rate.”

[Avianinfluenza.org] Bird Flu (Avian influenza): An official of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said the move was taken when investigators learned there had been traffic of people and perhaps poultry between the farm where the virus was found and another farm, both of which have small, mixed, free-range backyard flocks. Jim Clark, national manager of CFIA’s avian influenza working group, said no birds from the second farm have displayed signs of illness and for the time being, authorities have not ordered their destruction.

[Avianfluprep.blogspot.com] Avian Flu Preparedness: Many published studies have already illustrated the effects of various pandemic scenarios, most commonly a repeat of the 1918 influenza pandemic that had a mortality level of 0.67% in the U.S. and even more severe effects in other countries. Analysis of the virology and epidemiological science shows that more severe pandemics are possible, and probabilistic estimation of virus characteristics incorporating the recent H5N1 suggests that there is a one in five chance of a pandemic that is more severe than that experienced in 1918.

[Avianflu.typepad.com] Avian Flu - What we need to know: Even as the World Health Organization presses China and other countries to share bird-flu data for the public good, the WHO itself runs a database limited to a select group of scientists and containing a massive trove of data -- some 2,300 genetic sequences of the virus, around a third of the world's known sequences, according to two people familiar with the database's contents. Any one of those sequences could hold clues to an effective human vaccine or drugs that could kill the virus, or help scientists determine how great a threat it poses.

Reflected tags on Technorati: Blog, ,