Reply #11: As usual, the American "news" media distorts the story [View All]

[depakid]

This is why I try NEVER watch or listen to anything they have to say- and even I slip up, I make certain to ALWAYS confirm with credible sources and fact check, before passing anything along. Otherwise, you end up being misinformed.

From what I can discern, by "beaten" what this "correspondent" Ned Colt is trying to say is that is that either that:

1. Influenza viri reassort and recombine, meaning that you constantly have to develop new vaccines (based on educated guesses as to what next years antigens will look like). Well, duh. H5N1 isn't any different than any other influenza variant in that respect.

2. That the reservoir of disease (in this case birds) is so widespread that culling poultry stocks or killing waterfowl won't eliminate it. Another duh. That was probably not a realistic option even when the strain first crossed the species barrier in 1997.

Unlike NBC's puppetmasters at the Bush administration- other nations are in fact preparing rational contingency plans to "beat" H5N1, or at least protect as many of their citizens as they can. But will NBC ever report on that? Will they ever honestly compare and contrast public health policies? Unlikely.

If anyone is interested in what a rational plan looks like, here's the

UK Health Departments’ Influenza pandemic contingency plan