IF WE ESCAPE a full-blown calamity from the new strain of swine-avian flu that has paralyzed Mexico, we'll never know if it's because quick government action prevented it - or if there was no real danger of a pandemic in the first place.
But here are a few things we will know:
When it comes to contagious disease, it's a small world after all. Airplanes have become primary "carriers" of disease, and can make it nearly impossible to "contain" epidemics. Within days of learning about severe illness and death in Mexico, at least 64 cases of the same strain of flu (if milder) were reported in at least five states, with more surely to come. The flu also has been tracked to Canada, central and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
International organizations serve a purpose. Those who want to kill the United Nations, take note: One of its core agencies, the World Health Organization, is coordinating international efforts to deal with the disease, just as it did with SARS, AIDS and malaria. It has aided substantially in the tracking of the spread of the disease and assessments on its relative seriousness.
There's more to an economy than can be measured in dollars and cents. In yet another example of criminal foolishness, we are facing a possible flu pandemic without $870 million to fund preparedness. Among other provisions of the stimulus package, preparedness spending was called "reckless" by Republicans and - in an extremely poor choice of words in retrospect - "porky" by Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. It was stripped from the final legislation passed in February. Now, the lack of money has reduced state and local governments' ability to cope with the spreading infections, according to Robert Pestronk, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
This short-sighted move was made by a so-called moderate Republican, Maine's Sen. Susan Collins - who took credit for it on her Web site but now, not so much. At the time, Collins said she couldn't see how fighting the spread of flu could jump-start the economy.
Maybe not jump start it, but an outbreak of flu like this one could very do the reverse and slow down the recovery. Global stocks were down this week, in part because of fears of a global pandemic. Check out Mexico City, which has been nearly entirely shut down to avoid contagion. Think that's affecting their economy?
Don't bite the hand that holds the vaccine. Less than two weeks after he spoke admiringly of a provision in his state constitution that supposedly allows it to secede from the Union, Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Monday requested 850,000 courses of antiviral medication from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(Note to the governor: CDC is an agency of the big, bad federal government, paid for by those tyrannical income taxes. )
Beware the Law of Unintended Consequences. Republicans held up - until yesterday - the confirmation of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services, supposedly because she got a campaign contribution from an abortion doctor but mostly because they could. So the country faced a public health emergency without the Cabinet official in charge of the nation's health and with an interim CDC director.
The Obama administration says the slowdown in filling the jobs until now hasn't hampered the U.S. response to the flu epidemic. But could Sebelius have made it function better?
Guess we'll never know. *