Post-Katrina, Pre-Pandemic America

ll analogies havetheir faults,” ca-utioned Anthony Fauci, director of the Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NationalInstitutes of Health (NIH), when BillMoyers interviewed him for “H5N1—Killer Flu,” a September 20, 2005, PBS broadcast. Fauci made the warn-ing when he and Moyers drew a parallel between the Gulf Coast hitby Katrina, a hurricane like it had“never experienced before,” anda human body infected with apandemic strain of influenzavirus, not the familiar seasonalvariety. Both men—one, a pol-ished spokesperson on publichealth; the other, a veteran journalist and ordained minister—reached for just the right image torelate a technically obscure butpublicly grave matter: emergenceof a novel virus lethal to largenumbers of people.