Bird flu

I was at a meeting yesterday where someone told me that a local university had begun planning for what to do in the event of a pandemic. The plan, I hear, is to shut the university down almost immediately and send everyone home. They are expecting a huge number of deaths in the first two weeks despite this measure. Part of the planning was determining which dormitory would be used as a morgue. The belief is that those who survive the first few weeks will have immunity and can be called upon to bury the dead. The whole thing sounded as if it came out of the Middle Ages. Hard to believe that we sophisticated 21st century folks could be so vulnerable to a tiny snippet of a virus.