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It's not that better preparations couldn't have been done. Case in point, Britain. It's that these guys didn't do it. God knows what they have been doing....A number of other countries are ahead of the United States in preparedness. Britain finalized its plan in March, has created a Cabinet-level coordinating office, ordered enough Tamiflu for 25 percent of its population and put in place a system for rapidly producing and distributing a vaccine once one is developed.
Critics complain that the Bush administration has ordered only enough Tamiflu to cover less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, despite a 2000 recommendation by the U.N. World Health Organization that governments cover at least 25 percent.
Swiss-based Hoffmann-LaRoche, the sole maker of Tamiflu, says that with 25 other countries ahead of it, the United States must wait until the end of 2007 to buy enough of the drug to cover 25 percent of its population.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America says even that isn't enough; it wants HHS to stockpile enough Tamiflu to treat 50 percent of the U.S. public.