Apologies for coming late inot the discussion with an issue that may already have been discussed.
One issue that I have not seen raised is the importance of taking opportunity costs into account when decision-making.
When countries make decisions about preparing for flu epidemics, they need evidence about the risks and benefits and costs of vaccines and treatments. And, they need to be able to compare these with the risks and benefits of other approaches (including doing nothing), the available budgets, and what would have to be sacrificed or forgone if additional money were to be spent on managing the threat of a flu epidemic.
I have the impression that a scare is very useful, because emergency funds can be spent. The result is that the opportunity cost of a flu scare is close to zero as far as usual healthcare budgets are concerned. Even if this rather cynical impression is mistaken, it still seems to me that decision-making at national level did not sufficiently take into account opportunity costs.
Michael Power
Clinical Knowledge Summaries http://cks.nhs.uk/
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