More about bird flu prep

The New York Times weighs in this morning with its take on how businesses are preparing for a possible bird flu pandemic.

From that story: “I tell companies to use their imagination to think of all the unintended consequences,” said Mark Layton, global leader for enterprise risk services at Deloitte & Touche in New York. “Will suppliers be able to deliver goods? How about services they’ve outsourced — are they still reliable?”

Seems the Times assignment editors are reading Network World once again, as our story on IT preparations for a flu crisis was published Monday and discussed in this blog on Tuesday. A Priceline executive also shares his thoughts on the matter in this Network World interview from Tuesday.

Some of the discussion around these stories and others about the flu risk has centered on whether the media is making more of all this than is warranted.

It’s a legitimate question — but one that is almost always impossible to answer until after the fact (see Jan. 1, 2000).

Given the potential consequences here, however, I can live with the idea that bird flu hype is going to crowd out a certain percentage of celebrity babble over the coming months and years.