The White House released its much-anticipated plan for responding to an outbreak of pandemic influenza. As expected, the strategy calls for local officials to play a key role in responding to any outbreak, on the assumption that a pandemic would spread before it could be contained. Critics complained that strategy does not include enough details, leaving up in the air, for example, who should receive vaccinations first.
The report estimates that if the H5N1 virus does go "human to human," in the worst-case, "a third of the population could become infected, two million people could die, 40 percent of employees might be absent from work during the height of the outbreak, and $600 billion in income could be lost nationwide."
- see this article from The New York Times
- read the full text of the White House's plan (.pdf)