Nice try, but ...

Tell me you're surpised.

The Bush administration deserves credit for issuing a comprehensive plan to combat pandemic influenza and for seeking $7.1 billion to get it started. But the lengthy document recently issued by the Department of Health and Human Services looks like a prescription for failure should a highly lethal flu virus start rampaging through the population in the next few years. The plan sets lofty goals but largely passes the buck on practical problems. The real responsibilities wind up on the shoulders of state and local health agencies and individual hospitals, none of which are provided with adequate resources to handle the job.

[snip]

The voluminous document is mostly a laundry list of things state and local health agencies and hospitals should consider in getting ready. Professional groups and academic experts who have pored over the details find them disturbingly incomplete as a guide to action.

The chain of command is unclear, with myriad agencies and multiple levels of government playing a role. Medical or public health interventions are sometimes suggested without enough information to judge their likely effectiveness or downsides. Liability protection for health workers and compensation for those injured by vaccines are not addressed, nor is the issue of how the United States would respond to requests from other countries for vaccines and medicines. Health departments and medical institutions would be left to scramble for extra vaccines or drugs from private suppliers once stockpiles have been exhausted, setting off a race that should be averted by centralized purchases.

As usual, it only looks like results.