Chicken little says the sky is falling, part 2

Let me start by saying that there is no doubt that the bird flu has dangerous pandemic potential. I talked about this flu months ago, and it really is in our best interests to prepare for it. I'm getting more and more irritated by the scare tactics being used to publicize it, though. Take this fictional blog of a pandemic outbreak by Nature magazine, for example. It seems that its main goal is to blame an outbreak on the United States. It's secondary goal would seem to be to scare up funds. For example:

Pandemics move faster than governments or international bureaucracies, and the cost is hundreds of billions of dollars more than it would have been had we tackled avian flu in Asia in the first place, and invested in flu research. For millions of families, the cost isn't measured in dollars.

Watching all that military hardware on the streets made me think. We imagined we could encourage pharmaceutical companies to develop innovative vaccines and drugs by offering 'incentives' or modest subsidies. When the military knows it needs a fighter aircraft, it doesn't offer incentives to Lockheed Martin or Boeing. It pays them through procurement to develop the weapon to the specifications it wants.

I'm getting disgusted on several levels. First, if half as much effort went into preperation for the bird flu as is going into scaring people, we'd have nothing to worry about. Second of, this is smelling more and more like a heavy handed fund raising effort all of the time. Third, if there is a pandemic, the public panic could become a self fulfilling prophecy with these organizations and media outlets planting the seeds of panic.