The head of HHS was talking about antivirals and vaccines earlier today. This is my recollection and understanding:
Antivirals (such as Tamiflu) are very different from vaccines. Antivirals are taken to help reduce the severity of the viral infection. As such, an antiviral must be given as early as possible when someone is known to be infected with Avian flu.
The vaccine is manufactured from the virus, and the infectious virus must be at least very close to its final form to be used in vaccine creation. The vaccine is used to immunize a person so that they do not contract the disease. A vaccine does not include the active virus but rather "dead" nonreplicating portions of the virus. The human body uses the vaccine to immunize itself against infection by the active virus which would be transmitted from person-to-person.
My conclusions:
To minimize impacts of a pandemic outbreak of a human-to-human communicable viral disease (Avian flu, or another one to present itself later in history), the government will probably incentivize or pay for manufacture of a few billion (?) doses of antiviral medicine first. The antiviral will be the first defense for the first 6 months to a year following the outbreak. To prevent spread of the disease to a large proportion of the population, the vaccine must be designed and manufactured from the (nearly) final virus strain as quickly as possible and large manufacturing facilities must already be available to support the rapid manufacture and immunization of the population.
This is SCARY stuff, but I agree that the real investment opportunity MAY BE the companies that manufacture and produce large quantities of effective antivirals (Tamiflu, or tamiflu-like drug). Keep in mind that if Avian flu doesn't turn out to be the source of a pandemic (doesn't mutate to be human-transmissable), another may pop up in the coming years that is human-communicable.
However, if the company that owns rights to produce Tamiflu allows other drug manufacturers to produce it, somebody (government or private sector) will have to pay for the plants and many production lines needed to manufacture the stuff in sufficient quantities. The companies that own the rights to produce the Tamiflu (or BCRX's antiviral drug peramivir or some other company's antiviral) will get lots of work but the government will not allow any company or companies to rape America with their typical ridiculous pricing. The best thing the government could do would be to decide which antivirals to produce in large quantities and prenegotiate fixed price or cost plus fixed fee contracts. If the US government cannot manage to underwrite our own manufacture of these drugs, the drugs will probably be produced by other companies overseas. As an idealist, I hope that one purpose of the pharma meetings of the last few days (that "W" President attended) was to sell the idea of a cooperative approach and develop a comprehensive plan to protect the American population.
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