Some Flu For You??
Imagine 'The Stand', Only We Don't All Die As Quickly
I attended a conference this week dealing with pandemic influenza. Not your usual corporate conference, despite the hotel setting and the ghastly broiled chicken breast lunches.
The overall message delivered by the speakers and panelists was that a global outbreak of a highly contagious version of a human-to-human transmissable virus was not very likely. We've already got dozens of strains of flu residing in your average wild bird & poultry population, and it's quite uncommon to have one mutate into a lethal form.
OTOH, the viruses mutate quickly, and each new version is a roll of the genetic dice. Sooner or later, we're gonna roll snake eyes, and half the world will die.
A lot of references in the conference were made of the "Spanish Flu" pandemic of 1918. Estimates of the worldwide deaths range from 50-100 million people. Most of the speakers at the conference thought those estimates were on the low side.
Despite our advances in medicine and viral research, we're also now in a global society. The 1918 virus was kept in check partly due to the oceans limiting travel time. That barrier no longer exists. A tourist visiting Vietnam can get sneezed on by a chicken farmer, then catch connecting flights home via Osaka, Honolulu, Seattle and Chicago, and potentially infect thousands of people heading in hundreds of different directions.
Add in a rapid incubation time and a high mortality rate, and you could have a worldwide pandemic inside of a week.
Most of the conference dealt with maintaining the civic infrastructure in the event of an outbreak. In other words, how do you keep the power and water flowing when half your staff and suppliers are bunkered up in their homes, or too sick to move.
There were subjects discussed that I had never envisioned. For example, how do you address the need to suddenly inter 200,000 dead bodies? Not that many coffins in our spiffy new Just-In-Time delivery chain! Better fire up the incinerators, assuming the natural gas is still flowing. If not, we'll be commandeering the lumber yards for fuel. Uh oh... your religion demands a burial by sundown? Too bad, so sad. Your dead kid might just get roasted in a big pile. Take up your grievance with the ACLU, assuming they're still alive after the pandemic dies down.
How do you maintain a delivery system for bottled oxygen, antivirals, food and bodybags if you're under a restricted-movement quarantine? Before you say "Let the government take care of it", you better remember that the Army might not be able to help. Living in barracks really helps that virus jump from soldier to soldier!
If the order comes to close the schools ('cause kids are just little virus-geysers of infection), all those parents who need to take care of the kids just disappeared from the workforce. Believe me, if they ever close the schools, there won't be any open daycare centers!
Remember how many people bitched and complained about the lack of planning and foresight in the Hurricane Katrina/Rita disaster? I can assure you that there's an incredible amount of manpower and resources devoted to planning for an influenza pandemic. The problem is, it may not matter. With the right circumstances, we could be phucked with a capital 'F', and no amount of planning will prevent a complete breakdown of society.
So, what can you do? Get your flu shot. Stockpile some food & water. Wash your hands a lot. Cross your fingers. Beyond that, there's very little you can control. Fortunately, the odds (for now) are on our side.
Oh, one more thing... Epidemiologists have *no* sense of humor... During a tabletop exercise, we were discussing possible options should an extremely nasty version of a flu virus erupt on a remote island in Indonesia.
My suggestion of "Nuke 'em from orbit... It's the only way to be sure!" was not met with any enthusiasm at all...
I attended a conference this week dealing with pandemic influenza. Not your usual corporate conference, despite the hotel setting and the ghastly broiled chicken breast lunches.
The overall message delivered by the speakers and panelists was that a global outbreak of a highly contagious version of a human-to-human transmissable virus was not very likely. We've already got dozens of strains of flu residing in your average wild bird & poultry population, and it's quite uncommon to have one mutate into a lethal form.
OTOH, the viruses mutate quickly, and each new version is a roll of the genetic dice. Sooner or later, we're gonna roll snake eyes, and half the world will die.
A lot of references in the conference were made of the "Spanish Flu" pandemic of 1918. Estimates of the worldwide deaths range from 50-100 million people. Most of the speakers at the conference thought those estimates were on the low side.
Despite our advances in medicine and viral research, we're also now in a global society. The 1918 virus was kept in check partly due to the oceans limiting travel time. That barrier no longer exists. A tourist visiting Vietnam can get sneezed on by a chicken farmer, then catch connecting flights home via Osaka, Honolulu, Seattle and Chicago, and potentially infect thousands of people heading in hundreds of different directions.
Add in a rapid incubation time and a high mortality rate, and you could have a worldwide pandemic inside of a week.
Most of the conference dealt with maintaining the civic infrastructure in the event of an outbreak. In other words, how do you keep the power and water flowing when half your staff and suppliers are bunkered up in their homes, or too sick to move.
There were subjects discussed that I had never envisioned. For example, how do you address the need to suddenly inter 200,000 dead bodies? Not that many coffins in our spiffy new Just-In-Time delivery chain! Better fire up the incinerators, assuming the natural gas is still flowing. If not, we'll be commandeering the lumber yards for fuel. Uh oh... your religion demands a burial by sundown? Too bad, so sad. Your dead kid might just get roasted in a big pile. Take up your grievance with the ACLU, assuming they're still alive after the pandemic dies down.
How do you maintain a delivery system for bottled oxygen, antivirals, food and bodybags if you're under a restricted-movement quarantine? Before you say "Let the government take care of it", you better remember that the Army might not be able to help. Living in barracks really helps that virus jump from soldier to soldier!
If the order comes to close the schools ('cause kids are just little virus-geysers of infection), all those parents who need to take care of the kids just disappeared from the workforce. Believe me, if they ever close the schools, there won't be any open daycare centers!
Remember how many people bitched and complained about the lack of planning and foresight in the Hurricane Katrina/Rita disaster? I can assure you that there's an incredible amount of manpower and resources devoted to planning for an influenza pandemic. The problem is, it may not matter. With the right circumstances, we could be phucked with a capital 'F', and no amount of planning will prevent a complete breakdown of society.
So, what can you do? Get your flu shot. Stockpile some food & water. Wash your hands a lot. Cross your fingers. Beyond that, there's very little you can control. Fortunately, the odds (for now) are on our side.
Oh, one more thing... Epidemiologists have *no* sense of humor... During a tabletop exercise, we were discussing possible options should an extremely nasty version of a flu virus erupt on a remote island in Indonesia.
My suggestion of "Nuke 'em from orbit... It's the only way to be sure!" was not met with any enthusiasm at all...
posted by El Capitan | 12:49 PM
<< Home