Bush Considers Using Military to Quarantine Cities In Event of Avian Flu Outbreak

President George W. Bush asked Congress on Tuesday to consider giving him powers to use the military to enforce quarantines in case of an avian influenza epidemic.

He said the military, and perhaps the National Guard, might be needed to take such a role if the feared H5N1 bird flu virus changes enough to cause widespread human infection.

"If we had an outbreak somewhere in the United States, do we not then quarantine that part of the country? And how do you, then, enforce a quarantine?" Bush asked at a news conference.

"It's one thing to shut down airplanes. It's another thing to prevent people from coming in to get exposed to the avian flu. And who best to be able to effect a quarantine?" Bush added.



A Health Expert Warns of the Increasingly Real Possibility of an Avian Flu Pandemic and What We Can Do To Prepare.

- It’s not as if those at the highest levels of government are unaware of the threat. So why haven’t we done more to prepare?
My response to that depends on my mood in a given moment. There are times when asking that question will get steam pouring out of my ears and I’ll be a raving lunatic. And at times I become more cynical… When [former President Bill] Clinton ordered a multi-agency study on emerging threats, pandemic flu was number one. It is not new that the scientific community has been warning about it. What is new is that we are well past a warning. We have got [figurative] ambulances rolling through the streets with sirens wailing saying: Get out of the way, there’s trouble coming!

- What can we do now?
There are various stages of government preparedness plans underway in Washington now. You’ll see some released to the press in the coming months. They will be controversial and there will be arguments and there will be changes well into the middle of 2006. But the real bottom line for Americans is that … there won’t be Tamiflu or hospital beds for everybody, or vaccines. We will be in a situation where, to a tremendous degree, every community will have to take care of itself. It’s an eye opener for all of us.