The horrifying scenario, which also foresees 40 percent of U.S. workers sidelined if the flu hits with full fury, was followed by immediate reassurances that planning for the worst is not the same as predicting it.

"There's no guarantee that the H5N1 virus is going to lead to a pandemic," Dr. Rajeev Venkayya, special assistant to the president for biodefense, told CNN.

"Just to be clear, it's a bird virus, not a human virus. But because there's a chance it could become a pandemic virus, we're taking these steps to prepare."

The plan also calls for quarantining affected Americans and sending out the National Guard if panic occurs.

In other consumer-health news:

-- Type 2 diabetes in people age 35 to 54 raises the risk of death threefold compared to their peers, according to a new study quoted by the BBC. Type 2 diabetes is linked to weight and diet, meaning lifestyle improvements could significantly cut early mortality.

But those trends are heading in the opposite direction.

"With people being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes younger and younger, the figures are going to get worse," study author Henrietta Mulnier of Surrey University told the BBC. "We really do need to focus on early detection and treatment."

The study of 264,000 people is in the new issue of the journal Diabetic Medicine.

-- One way to cut down on the risk of type 2 diabetes is to cut out sugary sodas that kids love, and a deal announced Wednesday is designed to do just that.

Most of the nation's top soft-drink manufacturers agreed to a plan brokered by former President Bill Clinton to stop selling non-diet sodas in America's schools.

"This is a truly bold step forward in a struggle to help more than 35 million American young people live healthier lives," Clinton said.

-- Upwards of 40,000 Americans with HIV are on "salvage treatment" because new drugs are slowly losing the battle with the virus that causes AIDS, The Wall Street Journal reports.

That's sobering news, given the general impression that new-generation protease inhibitors have turned AIDS from a death sentence to a chronic, manageable disease. For many of the 1 million Americans believed to be infected, that is certainly truer than it was a decade ago, but time appears to be running out for some.

"We've only changed the slope of the disease progression, not halted it altogether, and eventually they do run out of options," the Journal quoted Harvard professor Daniel Kuritzkes as saying.

Related Links
-