One one hand, health authorities are worried that bird flu may jump to humans and mutate to an easily transmitted variety. This could happen if a person with normal flu were to come into contact with infected poultry.
On the other hand, the manufacturers of the flu vaccine that could help protect poeple exposed to bird flu say they must honour existing contracts and although their vaccine will be available in a couple of weeks time, there will be none left over for those most at risk - the Vietnamese (at least 5 people have already died in Vietnam from bird flu).
Worse still, if a new mutation of bird flu does emerge which can easily infect humans, it will be necessary to produce a new vaccine using reverse engineering techniques and genetic sequences (plasmids) owned by several different patent holders. At the moment there are unresolved issues associated with payment for use of the patents, which will prevent rapid response to the new flu strain. Only if a pandemic occurs, will it be possible to override the patent issues and produce the vaccine - by that time millions may have been infected.
Somethimes humans can be remarkably short-sighted…