The illusion is that help (from the federal government) will be there minutes later, which is really not the case.

We're only missing one more piece before it becomes a pandemic and that is the ability to be transmitted from person to person as opposed to simply from birds or fowl to humans.

What we are looking at are extremely grim prospects for the future. This is a very overwhelmed system.

We started from zero five weeks ago to all this hot, hot spotlight on pandemic flu, but we're not going to be ready.

The translation of this is martial law in the United States.

We are profoundly unprepared to manage a pandemic flu threat right now.

I would like to see a new national discussion about what prepared means, how it's measured and what we should expect. Since 9-11, the nation has spent tens of billions of dollars on preparedness, yet we can account for very little and can hardly say what actually has been accomplished.

If the infrastructure breaks down, ... and officials are saying, `Here's what we need you to do,' but they can't even tell people where their next drink of water is coming from, then there's going to be a complete breakdown in trust, often followed by anger.

The lethal capacity of this virus is very, very high, so it's a deadly virus that humans have not been exposed to before. That's a very bad combination.