[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 163 (Saturday, December 17, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13948-S13949]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               AVIAN FLU

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, 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. If we act with action now, we will be 
prepared. Preparation means much less destruction or potential 
destruction by such a pandemic.
  The avian flu over the last couple of years has spread from East 
Asia, to Romania, to Turkey. It looks and acts more similar to the 
virus of 1918 than either of the other two pandemics, the one in 1957 
and the one in 1968. If it achieves the final step in what becomes a 
pandemic, that is, human-to-human transmission--the first couple of 
steps are that it is a novel virus, a new virus, and that it spreads to 
other species, multiple species, and the third big step is 
transmission, human-to-human transmission. In that case, the 
consequences could be catastrophic both in loss of human life as well 
as in economic meltdown in many ways.
  Recently, in the last several weeks, the Congressional Budget Office 
released a study which I had requested specifically on the economic 
impact of a serious and a mild pandemic of avian flu. Their report 
demonstrated--much higher than I expected--a 5-percent decline in our 
gross domestic product over the course of a year. That is about a $675 
billion hit if we were to have a severe pandemic of this avian flu. The 
clock is ticking. If a pandemic occurs and we are underprepared, if it 
were to occur today and it were severe, the Congressional Budget Office 
predicts, with their best economists and access

[[Page S13949]]

to public health officials, that is what would occur.
  We need to put the wheels in motion, so when and if that avian flu 
hits, we are prepared. If we are prepared, we diminish the economic 
impact dramatically. If we do not act and that avian flu pandemic comes 
to our shores, we in this Senate will be rightly blamed for failing to 
do our best to protect the American people, given what our scientists 
and public health officials say today. That finger will be pointing 
straight at the Congress if we do not act. The good news is we will 
act. We plan to act in the bills that have come before the Senate in 
the next couple of days. We need a six-prong approach. We need to 
address communications, we need to address surveillance, we need to 
address the appropriate research, we need to address the whole issue of 
antiviral agents, the Tamiflu, we need to address vaccines. Right now 
we do not have any vaccines specific to a virus that would be 
transmitted human to human. That has to be created after we identify 
the virus. And the sixth component is what we call surge capacity, the 
stockpiling of antiviral agents and vaccines.
  It may sound like a lot of moving parts, but between our researchers 
and public health officials, our entrepreneurs, our private sector, we 
do have the intellect, the ingenuity, and the knowledge to get the job 
done.
  Our job as elected officials, my job as an elected official and my 
job as a physician is to see this thing through to make sure we are 
adequately prepared, and we can look our constituents in the eyes and 
say we have done everything possible to see that we are prepared for 
such a pandemic. Our economy, our country, and our lives may depend on 
whether we take action.
  The President has laid out a comprehensive plan. It is our job to set 
aside the appropriate resources but also to give the appropriate 
incentives to tackle this looming threat.
  I refer to our colleagues to put aside partisan differences, to hold 
together, to protect the American people. The flu virus does not know 
who is a Republican and does not know who is a Democrat. The people who 
suffer will know who did not get the job done.
  We do not need to panic. What we do need is to prepare ourselves. 
Preparation means action, action in the Congress. The American people 
are counting on it. That is exactly what we will do over the next 
several days.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coburn). The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes as 
in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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