Scary Scenario: Pandemic

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A Dec. 12 USA Today article by Anita Manning describes the fear of a flu pandemic but quotes ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross striking a calmer note:

Some people say health experts are being needlessly alarmist.

"If all goes according to the most dire predictions, it could be devastating," says Gilbert Ross, a medical doctor and executive director of the American Council on Science and Health, a consumer education group that frequently calls attention to what it sees as health scares. "But the chance of all this occurring is small."

In an editorial in the National Review Online, Ross wrote: "It's a good idea to be prepared, as the recent scarcity of flu vaccine has demonstrated, but the dire warnings about billions sick and millions dead from an onrushing bird-flu pandemic seem overblown, to say the least."