The book and *Movie, Of Days to come, * starring Raymond Massey.

Oh dear, here we have a scenario that would be fascinating to watch,
but apparently our Bush clone wants to do the same:
Bush wants US army to enforce flu quarantine

By Michael Gawenda
Washington
October 6, 2005
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/bush-wants-us-army-to-enforce-flu-quarantine/2005/10/05/1128191785889.html
An Indonesian laboratory worker tests samples for avian flu.

THE US military might have to be used to quarantine parts of America if
there is a serious outbreak of the deadly avian flu, President George
Bush says.

Mr Bush told a White House news conference that he was very concerned
about the dangers avian flu posed to the world and to the US.

"I am just suggesting that we better be thinking about it," he said.
"And we are. And we're more than thinking about it, we're trying to put
plans in place."

Mr Bush said a regional quarantine would raise difficult policy
decisions and legal issues but he was convinced such a possibility had
to be discussed.

"It's one thing to shut down your aeroplanes, it's another thing to
prevent people from coming in to get exposed to the avian flu," he
said. "To do this, we might have to use the military, which is able to
plan and move."

This is the second time in two weeks that Mr Bush has suggested that
Congress pass special laws to allow the military to perform what
amounts to civilian policing, which has been unlawful in the US for
almost 80 years.

In the wake of hurricane Katrina, he suggested that Congress give him
the power to send in the military to take control in the event of a
major natural disaster or terrorist attack.

The response from Congress to this suggestion was lukewarm, while state
governors said they would oppose any move to bypass their power as
first responders to any disaster.

The fact that Mr Bush raised the possibility of a military-enforced
quarantine in the event of an avian flu epidemic indicates that US
health authorities and the Administration are increasingly concerned a
worldwide pandemic could kill millions and inevitably hit the US.

There have been 65 confirmed cases of avian flu, with a mortality rate
of 50 per cent, but the fact the virus has spread through chickens in
South-East Asia and been found in migratory birds, has alarmed many
health experts.

Last week, following a closed-door briefing by US health officials, the
Senate passed legislation providing $3.9 billion in emergency funds to
develop an emergency response to a major avian flu outbreak.

Mr Bush said he was not trying to alarm people, but made a point of
saying that he had recently read a book about the 1918 flu pandemic
that killed millions of people. That pandemic, scientists believe, was
a new and lethal virus against which most people had no immunity.

Many speculate that the avian flu virus, which so far has not proved to
be easily transmitted from bird to humans and from human to human, will
eventually mutate into a virus that does spread easily from birds to
humans and then becomes capable of affecting millions of people.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the head of infectious disease unit at the National
Institutes of Health, said Mr Bush was right to raise the dangers posed
by avian flu, but he was not sure that quarantine measures could work
in the case of a major outbreak.

"The region or state would have to be identified quickly and then
quarantine measures would have to be put in place," he said. "It is
much more likely that by the time avian flu cases are identified, it
will have spread to several states.

"You can't quarantine half the states of America."

Thought just to keep it on topic, would add PLM's excellent translation
of:
Traité des fardemens et confiture.
Part 1 Chapter VIII -- it's the important one giving Nostradamus's
famous plague-remedy! To make the basis for a perfectly good and
excellent aromatic powder whose perfume is not strange, but confers an
agreeable and long-lasting sweetness, though it can only be prepared
once a year: Take one ounce of the sawdust or shavings of cypress-wood,
as green as you can find, six ounces of Florentine violet-root, three
ounces of cloves, three drams of sweet calamus, and six drams of
aloes-wood.
Reduce the whole to powder before it spoils.
Next, take three or four hundred in-folded red roses [the recent
Bloomsbury version entitled 'The Elixirs of Nostradamus' repeatedly
translates 'rose rouges incarnées' as 'black orchids'!!], fresh and
perfectly clean, and gathered before dewfall.
Pound them vigorously in a marble mortar with a wooden pestle.
When you are half through pounding them, add to them the above
mentioned powder and immediately pound it all vigorously, while
sprinkling on it a little rose-juice.
When everything is well mixed together, form it into little flat
lozenges, as you would pills, and let them dry in the shade, for they
will smell good.
And note that from this mixture may also be made aromatic soaps,
cypress powder, violet root powder, aromatic balls, perfumes, 'Cyprus
birds' and perfumed waters.
And in order to make the mixture even more excellent, add as much musk
and ambergris as you either can or wish.
If these two are added I do not doubt that you will produce a superbly
pleasant perfume.
Pulverise the said musk and ambergris, dissolving it with rose-juice,
then mix it in and dry in the shade.
Quite apart from the goodness and scent that this mixture lends to the
items and mixtures mentioned above, you only have to keep it in the
mouth a little to make your breath smell wonderful all day.
Or if the breath was stinking, whether as a result of the teeth being
rotten or because of bad smells emerging from the stomach, or because
the person involved had some stinking ulcer somewhere, or some other
odd case that obliged him to flee people's company, keep a little of it
in the mouth without chewing, and it will give out such a good smell
that nobody will be able to tell where it is coming from ['Whence is
that goodly fragrance blowing.'?!].
And in time of Plague, keep it often in the mouth, for there is no
smell better for keeping away the bad and pestiferous air.

[The French original of the following is split into only about three
sentences -- and certainly no paragraphs -- and mainly joined together
with 'and's!! I have split it up in order to make it even half
comprehensible!] And as proof of this, in 1546 I was recruited and
hired by the city of Aix-en-Provence, whose senate and people installed
me there to save the city at a time when the Plague was so great and so
horrific.
It started on the last day of May and lasted nine whole months, and
from it died an extraordinary number of ordinary, walking, talking [the
original says 'eating, drinking'] people of all ages, such that the
churchyards were so full of dead bodies that nobody knew of any further
holy ground in which to bury them.
Most of them fell into a delirium on the second day, and those who went
into a delirium did not get any spots.
Those who did get the spots died suddenly in mid-sentence, without any
change in [the position of] their mouths, but after death their whole
body was covered with black spots.
And the urine [the Bloomsbury translation has 'drinking wells'!!] of
those who were dying in delirium was thin, like white wine, and after
they died half of all their body was sky-blue and gorged with purple
blood.
The infection was so violent and malignant that one had only to
approach within five paces of one of those with the Plague to be
infected.
Many had bright red spots ['charbons' = carbuncles] in front and
behind, and even all over their legs.
And those who had them on their backs found that they made them itch,
and most of these escaped, but of those who had them on their fronts
not one escaped.
There were a few who has the marks behind the ears in the early stages
of the outbreak, and they lived up to six days, and I was at a loss to
know why they should have died on the sixth day rather than the
seventh, other than because of the severity of the disease.
Towards the beginning and middle [of the outbreak] not one escaped.
Neither blood-lettings, restorative medicines, sacred hymns nor
anything else had any more effect than doing nothing at all [So much,
then, for all the claims that Nostradamus 'refused to bleed his
patients'!], and [even] the Tyriac of Andromacus [a patent medicine? --
the Bloomsbury version suggests 'Venetian treacle', but in view of its
other her.bloomers.] correctly and truly prepared, had no role to play,
for the disease raged with such violence that not one of them escaped.
Once the whole city had been visited [by me], and the Plague victims
had been thrown out, there were even more the next day than before, and
no medicine in the world was found to offer better protection against
the Plague that this composition [above].
All those who carried and retained some of it in the mouth were
protected, and towards the end there was clear evidence that it a lot
of people were preserved from the infection.
And although this fact is not relevant to the subject that we are
discussing, it is nevertheless not a bad reason for reporting how
helpful it was for us in time of Plague.
For this particular Plague outbreak was so malignant that it was a
sheer horror.
Many insisted that it was a Divine punishment, for at a distance of a
league all around there was nothing but good health, yet the whole city
was so infected that a mere look from someone who had been infected
would quickly give it to another.
There were plenty of provisions of every kind at virtually dirt-cheap
prices, but death came so suddenly and so frenziedly that fathers paid
no attention to their sons, and many abandoned their wives and children
as soon as they realised that they had been hit by the Plague.
Many who were covered with Plague spots threw themselves down wells in
their delirium, others threw themselves down from their windows on to
the cobbles, others who had carbuncles behind the shoulder and on their
breasts suffered violent nosebleeds that lasted day and night to the
point where they died, pregnant women aborted and at the end of four
days died, and the child, too, died suddenly, and its whole body was
found to be stained a purple colour, as if the blood had spread to all
corners of the body.


In short, the desolation was so great that even with gold and silver in
their hands, people often died for want of a glass of water, and if I
prescribed some medicine or other for those who were afflicted, it was
taken to them, but badly administered, such that many died with it
actually in their mouths.
Among the [most] admirable things I saw, I think, was a woman who, even
while I was paying a visit on her and calling to her through the
window, replied to what I was saying -- still through the window --
while sewing herself unaided into her own shroud, starting with the
feet.
And when the 'alarbes' arrived (which is what we in Provence call those
who take the Plague victims away and bury them) and went into this
woman's house, they found her dead, lying in the middle of the house
with her sewing half-finished.
The above is what happened in three or four parts of the city, one of
which I saw for myself.
And I would happily have recounted more about the whole Plague outbreak
that happened in the city, but this would be to confuse the present
work [!!].