[citation needed] On November 1, 2005, US President George W. Bush unveiled the National Strategy To Safeguard Against The Danger of Pandemic Influenza[1] backed by a request to Congress for $7.1 billion to begin implementing the plan.
[4] According to The New York Times, due to the H5N1 threat, as of March 2006: "governments worldwide have spent billions planning for a potential influenza pandemic: buying medicines, running disaster drills, [and] developing strategies for tighter border controls.
[6] This changes the valuations of trillions of dollars worth of stocks worldwide as investors move assets in accordance with both fears and hopes.
[9] Financial ruin for poor poultry farmers, that can be as severe as threatening starvation, has caused some to commit suicide and many others to stop cooperating with efforts to deal with H5N1; further increasing the human toll, the spread of the disease and the chances for a pandemic mutation.
"[11] H5N1, like many other topics, is subject to political spin; wherein every interest group picks and chooses among the facts to support their favorite cause resulting in a distortion of the overall picture, the motivations of the people involved and the believability of the predictions.
[citation needed] Donald Rumsfeld, formerly United States Secretary of Defense, is a past board member and current minor shareholder of Gilead Sciences which owns intellectual property rights to Oseltamivir (also called "Tamiflu").
According to the CDC article H5N1 Outbreaks and Enzootic Influenza by Robert G. Webster et al.: "Transmission of highly pathogenic H5N1 from domestic poultry back to migratory waterfowl in western China has increased the geographic spread.
"We have asked the government to give us tax exemption on income from the poultry business for at least 10 years to meet losses caused by the bird flu scare", Abdul Basit told DPA.
Basit, vice president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) in the country's commercial hub of Lahore, was part of a delegation of the Pakistan Poultry Association, which met food ministry officials to present their demand.
For the moment, we cannot by any means count on a potential vaccine to prevent the spread of a contagious influenza virus, whose various precedents in the past 90 years have been highly pathogenic.
[20] Self-help groups have organized to provide news and information about resources, aid and relief efforts in preparation for avian flu.
[21] British reports warn that in response to an influenza pandemic local groups will not be able to rely on the armed forces, widespread infection could occur in days not months, an effective vaccine can not be counted on, and the huge death toll could swamp mortuaries so "A key point for local planning is likely to be the identification of potential sites for the location of facilities for the temporary storage of bodies".
"[27] One study concludes that a pandemic that reduced the available dock workers by 28% would cut the throughput capacity for containers arriving at American ports on the West coast by 45%.