1C82INT 1 Heuristics and Biases (II)

Ministers are preparing for a flu pandemic that they believe poses a far greater risk to Britons than a terrorist threat. Government statisticians have warned that a worldwide outbreak of flu is overdue, leading ministers to consider contingency plans for inflatable mortuaries, quarantine facilities, and the evacuation of big cities…The arrangements follow the outbreak of a bird flu virus in south-east Asia, which has killed 32 of the 45 humans it has infected…in the worst-case scenario, ministers are preparing for mass evacuations of healthy people from cities…Meanwhile, the Department of Health is assessing how many antivirals it should stockpile. The new class of drug works by blocking the action of a key flu protein and stops sufferers passing the virus on…giving antivirals to between 50 % and 75 % of the population would check a virus along the lines of the 1918-19 outbreak, when 280,000 died in the UK and 40 million worldwide