The Disaster of the Month Club?
Anderson Cooper 360 and the Paula Zahn had pieces on CNN earlier this evening about the growing publicity and concern over the Avian flu. Dire warnings of the coming possibility of a "pandemic" killing millions and stretching our US health care system to its extreme. (This doesn't include the worldwide disasters and deaths in countries where health care is even more difficult to obtain.) Think the AIDS epidemic in Africa alone multiply it many times and you will get an idea of what they are talking about. Then on Google News I saw these stories: First from the Chicago Tribune via the SunHerald.com:

Researchers remake 1918 flu, look for answers to avian flu
BY JEREMY MANIER--Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO - (KRT) - Government researchers have remade the deadly "Spanish flu" virus responsible for the 1918 global outbreak that killed up to 50 million people, a resurrection they hope will reveal weaknesses of the modern bird flu strains that threaten a new pandemic.

And what have they found? Here from the New York Times:

Experts Unlock Clues to Spread of 1918 Flu Virus
By GINA KOLATA- Published: October 6, 2005

The 1918 influenza virus, the cause of one of history's most deadly epidemics, has been reconstructed and found to be a bird flu that jumped directly to humans, two teams of federal and university scientists announced yesterday.

The shrieks and volume of all this is enough to make one think it's just another one of those worst-case scenarios that we don't really need to worry about. Someone just wants more money for research or the TV news has to keep ramping up new disasters as the old ones fade into the past. You know what I mean- Katrina is so last month. To their credit, both CNN hosts raised that in a round-about way. Their guests said, No, this is not just some disaster need on our part. It will happen. Maybe sooner, maybe later, but it will happen.

I know. We've heard that one before. You know the one we used to hear about the Big Hurricane that would hit New Orleans, for example, causing destruction and flooding.

Worse-case scenarios and disaster planning (and prevention?) have a purpose. Simply put:

Disasters Happen!

And they will continue to happen. If it's not Avian Flu it will be torrential rains in Minneapolis in October. Or perhaps the BIG ONE earthquake in California. Or perhaps mysterious respiratory illness deaths in a Toronto nursing home. They are varying degrees of disaster, of course. But sooner or later the BIG ONES will come. The planning is important. I hope we don't become immune to their threats because there always seems to be another one waiting in the wings.