CDC director interviewed on bird flu

You can find bird flu information all over the place, these days.

I just read a fairly good interview with Dr. Julie Louise Gerberding, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (better known just as the CDC) in STOCKS, FUTURES AND OPTIONS MAGAZINE, usually abbreviated just as SFO.

This is a large, slick magazine with good production values that always interviews a well-known person in business or government about macroeconomic and business issues that could be of interest to traders.

The WHO just came out with a report about all the money that would be lost in the world economy if bird flu becomes a pandemic, and it was not long ago that world markets went down on the news that there'd been chicken to human to human transmission of the virus in the family cluster in Indonesia in May.

Until then, I'd thought traders were pretty much ignoring the issue.

So it turns out that this interview is being published a very timely issue of the magazine.

It's interesting for giving some personal background on the world's most or second most important public health official, with pictures of her in case you're curious about what she looks like.

The interview is titled, DON'T PANIC! and she gives a fairly balanced overview of the situation.

Of course, it was done before the Indonesian family cluster . . . .

The interviewer is Russell Wasendorf, Sr.

She does come out with some words about leadership that sound weird to me, such as a new brand of leadership, collaborative leadership, meta-leadership, thinking vertically but acting horizontally . . .

I'm not sure what all that's supposed to mean.

As an outsider, I can't really say how effective she is. Since the United States government is doing a lot to prepare for an influenza pandemic, she likely played a role in advising President Bush (I have to assume he would at least consult with her) to take action. So assuming this is true, she deserves high marks for that.

I have to mention that I still think that she and other public health officials should be open to creating a place for "alternative" treatments. I think we should be stockpiling curcumin, injectable Vitamin C, selenium, zinc and other such supplements in place of -- or least along with -- Tamiflu.

Maybe it's true that anybody open to thinking that way would never achieve the position in the CDC that she has.

You can find the interview online here:

Dr. Julie Louise Geberding interview





CDC Director Interview on Bird Flu
CDC Director Interview on Bird Flu