Q&A: Lessons from the HHS secretary who ran Bush’s bird flu response

WASHINGTON — Mike Leavitt is in the small club of government officials who’ve led an avian flu response.

The experience is still fresh in his mind nearly two decades later. When he first heard about the avian flu outbreak in 2005, he had been secretary of health and human services in George W. Bush’s administration for just a couple of months.

The looming threat alarmed him so much that he bought and distributed 200 copies of a book on the 1918 influenza pandemic, including one he personally delivered to the president.

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