The front page of the Independent reports that
The world is failing to guard against the inevitable spread of a devastating flu pandemic which could kill 50 million people and wreak massive disruption around the globe, the Government has warned.
In evidence to a House of Lords committee, ministers said that early warning systems for spotting emerging diseases were "poorly co-ordinated" and lacked "vision" and "clarity". They said that more needed to be done to improve detection and surveillance for potential pandemics and called for urgent improvement in rapid-response strategies.
I have to agree with a post from Wat Tyler who asks
we're left wondering why this "inevitable pandemic" should cause so many more deaths than the last two?
50m deaths is 50 times worse than the last pandemic in 1968-69 (Hong Kong flu), and 12 times worse than the the one before that (Asian flu in 1957-58). It's even worse than the devastating Spanish flu in 1918-19.
Yet science and medicine have advanced immeasurably, even since 1968. And in general, we're all so much healthier, which is why life expectancy has gone through the roof: in 1919, life expectancy in Britain began with a 5 - today it begins with an 8
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