Avian Flu

A week or so ago, Atrios had a discussion about coverage of the Downing Street memos. Essentially, the pundits and columnists claimed it was covered exhaustively, but essentially just because Russert discusses it on one show a bazillion days later doesn't make for exhaustive coverage. I think something similar is happening with coverage of the Avian Flu. There has been media coverage about how serious a disease this could become, but you have to look hard to find it. PBS' News Hour had something on it about 3 weeks ago. Tonight, Lou Dobbs did a segment on it. It seems the Chinese have been giving their birds Amantadine to counter any possibility of getting Avian Flu. Oh, and they won't admit it. This has disastrous consequences.
Anthony Fauci, of the National Institutes of Health, says that testing up to a year ago of Amantadine against the virus shows that the virus is immune from the drug. The Chinese (remember how forthcoming they were about the mere existence of SARS?) officially have not admitted to this (they say they did not officially as a government encourage this), but apparently everyone from veterinarians to KFC operators (my exaggeration) admit this happened.
Why should you care? Avian Flu has warnings from all those people who are not in MSM as being the next possible pandemic. The influenza pandemic of 1918/19 killed what? 20 million people? Sheer population numbers, combined with the fact that there is no vaccine yet, throw in migratory birds, the mobility of the population, yadda yadda, and this is shaping up to be a deadly pandemic. I have to figure that if the National Security Council is talking about it, then maybe we ought to. And China should pony up some truth once in awhile, when it concerns the health of the population.