What might you gentlemen all consider best, maybe the Titanic
revisited, mothers and children first, younger able bodied people say
up to 30 next, and the rest might  be most interesting.  Noah calls the
shots!
And the Tamiflu stuff still remains in the maybe category!
What is the bet the political boys would get a boat!!
What is the bet the Tamiflu stuff is really being counterfeited with
great gusto!
I was under the impression that India was one of the major sources for
bogus drugs.
Merlin.

The recommended  dose to treat flu in general is 2 per day for 5 days, for  a
total of 10.  

It seems from experimental data that longer (and maybe a higher dose) would be
better for bird flu.

But you can also take it during the "flu season" to prevent flu.   It is
approved also for that purpose.  For that purpose,  the recommended dose is one
per day..    Some authors have advised planning on taking it throughout each of
the posited 3 waves of a possible pandemic.   That could take you to about 100.

There are two broad types of influenza (with many subtypes each - hence
the reformulated vaccine every year) A and B. All the available meds
are active against type A flu's but most flu medications do not cover
type B; which is not so bad because almost all flu that goes around
each year is type A. The Avian flu's that have been detected are type
A. The vaccine usually contains three strains - two A's and one B.

The fear of a pandemic is because the avian flu has the "H5" subtype
which is similar to the pandemic strain if 1918 and has had a high
fatality rate in the few humans who have gotten it. The good news is
that there has been little to no human to human transmission so far.
The bad news is that that capability may just be a mutation or two
away. The estimates I have seen usually suggets more like a 20%
mortality rate (which could still be a disaster of Biblical
proportions) but I think at this point they are all just guessing.

To answer Alison's question: Presumably if a pandemic hit the people
who are stockpiling the meds would want to use it prophylactally  -
taking one pill daily to keep the flu away - rather than just keep it
around for treatment. In that case 100 pills may not be enough.

To my knowledge none of the agents has been shown to be more effective
than any of the others. I can't imagine there has been enough human
disease for anyone to be experienced enough to really know. The main
advantage of Tamiflu is that it covers type B, which is not an issue in
this case. It is much more expensive that the other pills which makes
me wonder about the motivation of these people selling it.

Amantidine does have more side effects, particularly in the elderly
(mostly neuropsychiatric). Rimatidine would be a good compromise on
effectiveness, cost, and side effects. One should keep in mind that
while the vaccine is a biological that must be grown in culture and so
production cannot easily be started or increased this is not true of
the meds we are discussing. Considering that there are four different
meds available (in the US), that two of them are out as generics and so
have several manufacturers, and that as non-biological agents
production can be increased relatively easily I think the risk of not
having enough meds to treat the high risk groups at least is small. The
bigger risk is that there will not be a vaccine and the meds will not
be as effective as we would like.