Better to Have It and Not Need It...

... than need it and not have it.  US races to make vaccine against new bird flu – just in case

Less than two weeks after Chinese officials released the genetic sequence of a new type of bird flu, U.S. vaccine experts are well on the way to making a vaccine to protect people against it.

There’s no evidence the H7N9 virus would ever threaten the U.S. It’s been diagnosed in fewer than three dozen people, all restricted to eastern China. People don’t appear to be infecting one another, at least not in large numbers.

But it’s already killed nine of them. Scientists said Wednesday that the virus seems to have been the result of genetic reassortment of wild birds from east Asia and chickens from east China, Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency reported. Still, it doesn’t seem to be making birds sick -- which means authorities don’t have tell-tale die-offs of poultry to warn them when it’s circulating.

Great, so you don't know you have it nearby until people start dying.

And it takes months to make influenza vaccines, so every day may count.

“It puts flu back on people’s minds,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an emergency physician at the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

It’s just the kind of situation that flu experts have been been rehearsing for. They hope to do better than in 2009, when it took until October to deliver the first vaccines against the pandemic of H1N1 swine flu.

I'd rather have them guess wrong and make this and not need it, than have the Department of Homeland Security Bagpipe and Bugle Corps.