Secretary Leavitt on Sean Hannity radio show

Last night I caught a few minutes on the radio of
Sean Hannity interviewing Secretary of Health
and Human Services, Michael Leavitt.

This may be a relief for some of you -- he says
that you don't HAVE to store tuna and powdered
milk under your bed.

He said you could store any food you wanted to.

But he certainly advises everybody to store at
least several weeks worth of food -- and says
that's something he would advise people to do
in any circumstances, to be prepared. His
family does that.

I've made the same point -- if people in New
Orleans had stored up some food and water,
they would not have been so bad off.

Leavitt also assured Hannity's listeners that
it's a mistake for local communities to assume
that in the event of a pandemic the federal
government is going to rescue them. It just
cannot rescue all 5000 cities in the United
States at the same time.

So his overall message was one of self-reliance.

That doesn't mean the federal government is
doing nothing.

He mentioned the 7 billion dollars going toward
developing a vaccine and toward developing
new vaccine technologies to speed up the
process.

But although he put a good spin on it, he
repeated that after the pandemic starts, it
would still take 6 months before the vaccine
could be developed, tested for safety and
then manufactured in quantities.

Hannity did not press him to point out that
in 6 months the pandemic will probably be
over.

My only nit to pick with what I heard (and I was
unable to hear the entire interview, unfortunately),
was his statement that if the pandemic began
outside the United States (which is most likely),
that it would take 30 to 45 days to reach the
U.S.

I think that's a very optimistic scenario. And
Hannity seemed shocked enough by the
potential hazard of the pandemic that he did not press
Leavitt on how he arrived at that estimate.

Leavitt did a good job on the interview I felt.

He managed to always be positive -- he emphasized
how much the administration is working hard on
the vaccine issue and to get states to prepare.

But he also emphasized self-responsibility, because
the federal government could not step in and solve
every problem of the pandemic at the local level.

And if you put two and two together, you should
understand that there will be no vaccination in
time to control the pandemic.

So -- store food. Leavitt gave a minimum of several
weeks. I think he really want to say several months
but controlled himself.

I say -- store 3 months worth of food and water, at
least.

Oh, yes -- he also pointed out that other prescription drugs
might be hard to obtain in the event of a pandemic,
so people should store up their medicines, if possible.

For more information, check out -- How to Protect Yourself and Your
Family From Bird Flu