SEATTLE--Former Bush administration Health Secretary Tommy G. Thompson warned an insurance executives' conference here yesterday that the coming of a flu pandemic is a certainty and they need to take steps to be ready.
"Yes, we are going to have pandemic flu," Mr. Thompson said, noting that such an event has occurred on the average of every 30 years, with the last big epidemic occurring in 1918. "We're on borrowed time. It's not if; it's when."
Mr. Thompson, who left his secretary's post a year-and-a-half ago and is now chairman of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, which works on health care and public health issues, said once a fatal flu mutates to transmit from human to human, "it is going to be lethal."
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