Virulent outlook: expert slams federal government pandemic plans.

The Bush administration's plan for treating and stemming a pandemic outbreak in the United States will not work, said Barbara Billauer, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and a public health expert.

To prevent the spread of a pandemic disease, the government believes that mass vaccinations are the solution, but vaccines are disease specific, Billauer said at a Washington, D.C., conference on terrorism. The nation can try to inoculate the population against the one disease a terrorist may pick, but "it's akin to a portfolio manager telling you to put all your money in one basket and not diversifying. If we get it wrong by one effective DNA sequence, it's useless," she said.

Billauer believes the government is shortsighted in this way. She said the avian flu vaccine being developed today would be ineffective.

Mass vaccinations are a horrible idea anyway, Billauer said. If we line up people in a room to receive a vaccine, we forget that some of those people have already contracted the disease. This is the best way to spread a communicable disease, she said.

To stem spreading, two executive orders in place today enable the president to declare quarantine for nine specified diseases, including influenza, Billauer said. It can also be called for "any reemerging influenza that has caused or has the potential to cause a pandemic," she said. Yet there are no standards in place for imposing or removing quarantine.

"Quarantine will only work if people have trust in their government," Billauer continued.

Before the need for quarantine arises, the government could immunize 85 to 90 percent of the population to prevent a disease from spreading, Billauer said. However, she noted, there are two large populations within society that would most definitely not get the vaccine: prisoners and illegal aliens. Billauer explained that it is illegal to use experimental vaccines on prisoners, and the majority of illegal aliens are unlikely to come forward.

If a pandemic breaks out despite all its efforts, the Bush administration plans to increase hospital surge capacity, Billauer said. But hospital workers are most often diseased. If there is ever a major problem, hospital workers will be in short supply, she asserted.

So what can citizens do to protect themselves from a pandemic? Billauer recommended avoiding hospitals. She also suggested that the government create a database that would record when workers call in sick and track what disease they have contracted. Another idea is to pair cities together that would support each other in times of crisis and run training drills together for first responders and medical workers.