Bird Flu

They're talking about the gravest possible chance of a global pandemic that will kill millions. Nothing Al Qaeda is plotting can rival that. But I haven't heard anything from the Department of Homeland Security on this one. (Loose bird flu and loose nukes--if the government just solved those two, who cares about Al Qaeda?)

I have questions:

• What is the value of the Asian poultry industry? Is it conceivably affordable to just buy all their damn chickens and kill them? Grotesque and expensive, I know. But if there is a global pandemic, we'll be kicking ourselves...
• There is talk of a vaccine. What's stopping us from just giving this to anyone who has contact with high risk poultry in Asia?
• I'm not a fan of big government programs solving all of our problems. But when the flu vaccine shortage came up earlier, it occured to me that massive vaccine production plants would be a good thing for taxpayers to own. This would be real defense against many of the things that might be threatening us in the era of Al Qaeda and globalism.