Day By Day© by Chris Muir.

Friday, April 01, 2005

Glad to know our government is finally starting to pay attention to those darn birds

It looks as if the U.S. is slowly taking steps to prepare for a bird flu outbreak:

President Bush signed an executive order on Friday authorizing the government to impose a quarantine to deal with any outbreak of a particularly lethal variation of influenza now found in Southeast Asia.
The power is pretty narrow, but it seems to be a step in the right direction:
Mr. Bush's order added pandemic influenza to the government's list of communicable diseases for which a quarantine is authorized. It gives the government authority to detain or isolate a passenger arriving in the United States to prevent an infection from spreading. The authority would be used only if the passenger posed a threat to public health and refused to cooperate with a voluntary request, the Department of Health and Human Services said.