Political Quotes

“I want to make a very brief statement on an issue that I believe requires action before we leave. It is something we have addressed on the floor of the Senate, actually in several different capacities, but I want to restate the importance of that. It has to do with a potential pandemic of an avian or bird influenza--the so-called bird flu. In the 20th century, we have had three influenza pandemics. Remember, about 30,000 people in this country die every year from the seasonal flu. But superimposed on this seasonal flu, on three occasions in the last 100 years, there have been these pandemics. What our public health officials and what our scientists say is, for sure, we are going to have another pandemic. The time is in the near future, and a pandemic is going to occur, but we don't know exactly when. The worst of the three pandemics in the last 100 years was in 1918, the so- called Spanish flu--although it was called the Spanish flu, it probably started actually in Kansas--but that flu went through our population in a period of weeks and killed about half a million people; worldwide it killed somewhere around 40 million people. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary Leavitt, warns if past is prologue, the world is overdue for another flu pandemic. I agree with that assessment. The pandemic will occur. We do not know exactly when. But we know we are drastically underprepared; not unprepared but underprepared.…”