A guest post from Walter, who's a disaster recovery planner for a Fortune 500 company -- and a very dear friend. A good counter to tabloidism, and complement for the terrific work being done by folks like Melanie on this stuff.
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For those of us who are paid to worry, a flu pandemic has been near the top of the list for years. We ought to be pleased by the media attention it's suddenly getting. I am not.
Like earthquakes, pandemics come at long intervals, but are as certain as rain. Their impact, when they come, can be limited or devastating, and there's not much we can do to predict which the next one will be. Preparations have to be long term. We can stockpile supplies. Some materials can be used to limit the spread of disease, like surgical masks. Medicines can now help the immune system combat even new forms of viral disease. We can maintain vaccine manufacturing capacity. We can plan for how to function with a sharp! ly reduced workforce. We can plan for how to function under voluntary or mandatory quarantines. We can plan how to limit the vectors for spreading a disease. None of these can be effective when undertaken quickly; bold stands are of limited use against viral mutation.
The national media had been reporting the spread of avian flu in a consistent but low-key way. The tone recently and abruptly changed. George Bush was returning from a visit to Louisiana and Mississippi, where the Department of Homeland Security and local agencies had failed spectacularly to communicate with horrifying results. Liberal activists were happily allowing the radical right to take up the task of questioning the propriety of a Supreme Court nominee whose primary qualification seemed to be extreme personal loya! lty to the President. The Iraqi constitutional process was becoming increasingly farcical. And when George Bush got off the plane in Washington, he had been reading a book about pandemics.
Well, the good news is that we now know that he can read. His reaction (at his news conference on the 5th) was typical: we can use the Army! But the most important effect was that the press began reporting on pandemics and avian flu in earnest.
It's a ready made story. The risk is real. Our inability to protect ourselves reliably from the serious risk of death is real. The "not if but when" quotes are real, and well founded (though the Secretary of Health and Human Services sounds remarkably taken aback in his statements; he's running Mayor Nagin a close second for surprised panic in the face of the long known). However, none of this is new. It is news only because it previously has gone unreported. Mostly, it has become headline news at a very convenient moment for George Bush.
I still want to know why we're in Iraq, and when we'll leave. I want to know what can be done throughout the country to at least approximate the level of coordination between federal and local officials maintained in New York City. I want to know why we're still pursuing policies that increase our dependence on petroleum. I want to know who the heck Miers is, and whether there's any reason to think she would make a decent Supreme Court Justice. And if we're going to talk about avian flu, I want to know why B! ush's proposal for funding the Gulf (of Mexico, not Persia) states' recovery includes funding cuts to the Center for Disease Control.
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