Check the PBS website for the American Experience program Influenza 1918 to see how a viral pandemic works. I think you'll find you are badly misinformed about how serious this sort of thing can be. The program doesn't deal with what might be in store for us; it shows what has already happened in the past. Watching this program will be a good use of an hour of your life.

Some details ... At the same time, the president wants to put more money into a handful of areas--notably artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum information science (QIS)--to create the new technology needed for what the budget request calls "industries of the future." Here is a rundown of some of the numbers from the budget request's R&D chapter. (The numbers reflect the portion of each agency's budget classified as research, which in most cases is less than its overall budget.) 1. National Institutes of Health: a cut of 7%, or $2.942 billion, to $36.965 billion. 2. National Science Foundation (NSF): a cut of 6%, or $424 million, to $6.328 billion. 3. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science: a cut of 17%, or $1.164 billion, to $5.760 billion. 4. NASA science: a cut of 11%, or $758 million, to $6.261 billion. 5. DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy: a cut of 173%, which would not only eliminate the $425 million agency, but also force it to return $311 million to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. 6. U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Agricultural Research Service: a cut of 12%, or $190 million, to $1.435 billion. 7. National Institute of Standards and Technology: a cut of 19%, or $154 million, to $653 million. 8. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: a cut of 31%, or $300 million, to $678 million. 9. Environmental Protection Agency science and technology: a cut of 37%, or $174 million, to $318 million. 10. Department of Homeland Security science and technology: a cut of 15%, or $65 million, to $357 million. 11. U.S. Geological Survey: a cut of 30%, or $200 million, to $460 million.