Re: Commissioner says bird flu grant money is nonsense

[Guest guest]

It's good to see all in government have not lost their sanity. Now

if we could just get the press to report on Rumsfeld's stock in

Gilead Sciences, we might be getting somewhere.

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> http://www.winonadailynews.com/articles/2006/07/30/news/3news30.txt

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> Published - Sunday, July 30, 2006

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> Commissioner

says bird flu grant money is nonsense

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By Brommerich For the Winona

Daily News

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> The federal government is giving Buffalo County $7,200 to

prepare for a possible bird flu pandemic, but one county supervisor

wants no part of it.

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> The Buffalo County Board agreed to accept the grant and decide

how to spend it. A resolution introduced by the county's finance

committee passed 14 to 1 last week with one supervisor absent.

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> Brach Seitz of Buffalo City, the lone member voting against the

resolution, said the grant is nonsense.

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> " I don't believe it will ever turn into a pandemic, " Seitz said.

If it did, he said, the federal government would come in and take

charge of it.

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> Most of the money — $5,245 — will be used to buy three laptop

computers, a portable vaccine cooler, a digital camera, a couple of

cell phones and a pocket computer. The other $2,000 will be used

for staff training and planning for response to a pandemic.

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> " It's a waste of federal tax dollars on items that aren't going to

be used for this, " Seitz said. " It's a scam. "

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> Though the flu strain H5N1 is a threat to birds, the current

virus lacks the ability to spread from human to human, which is

necessary for a pandemic. Since 2003, 230 humans worldwide have

become ill with the virus, resulting in 132 deaths, according to

the World Health Organization.

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> The last domestic pandemic to inflict mass death was the " Spanish

Flu " of 1918, which killed an estimated 40 million people worldwide

and 8,400 in Wisconsin. Buffalo County had 18 deaths in that

epidemic, according to state health records.

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> Buffalo County Administrator Bruce Cornish said the grant money

has to be spent by Aug. 30 or the federal government wants it back.

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> The county wasn't told how much the grant would be until July 1

and then was told it had to make plans on how to use it by the end

of July. .

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