The Pandemic vs. the IT Department

ElsaBorzoi wrote to mention a Network World article suggesting some pandemic preparations for your IT department. From the article: "A survey last month of 300 Minnesota business officials found most thought a flu pandemic would significantly affect their business, but only 18% had preparedness plans in place. The poll sponsored by the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy found that close to two thirds said they were already prepared or somewhat prepared to move employees to remote locations or let them work at home, while 29% said they were not prepared. The H5N1 influenza virus, which originated in Asia, could hit the U.S. this fall, potentially causing an epidemic, the nation's chief avian flu coordinator warned."

Comments

Alaska is on the forefront of the Bird Flu

[core plexus]

According to this article, from the Alaska Department of Health & Social Services Public Health Division, Alaska has been watching out for problems associated with a potential Bird Flu pandemic for quite some time.

We would be one of the first to see it, but there are many questions to be answered.

Re:Alaska is on the forefront of the Bird Flu

[Anonymous Coward]

12 Monkeys?

Re:Alaska is on the forefront of the Bird Flu

[cluckshot]

I don't want to suggest we don't need to be careful. On the contrary the very idea that we should ignore disease is silly. However; the H5N1 virus is being used as a international bureaucratic shake down. Here is how you can know this:

(1) Are the authorities doing anything about the 50,000 people this year who will die with the flu except pushing their useless vaccines?(NO!)

(2)Washing hands stops all infections diseases and it is undeniable that we don't have to cure a diseas you don't contact. Are they pushing hygene measures? (NO!)

(3) Are the elite people avoiding the infected regions or are they touring to "study the flu"? (They are touring!) Skipping a lot more this is one grand shake down.

This is not to suggest that the flu is not a real threat. It is a real threat. It is very dangerous. We have real means and real measures none of which are being applied. All we see are very expensive stockpiles of drugs and vaccines certain to never be of any use what so ever. We see the elite UN types heading to study and air flights are not checked. SARS was checked and it was stopped. The whole thing is a UN induced fraud.

Re:Alaska is on the forefront of the Bird Flu

[ultranova]

(1) Are the authorities doing anything about the 50,000 people this year who will die with the flu except pushing their useless vaccines?(NO!)

What, exactly speaking, can you do about people getting a disease if the medicines are useless ?

(2)Washing hands stops all infections diseases and it is undeniable that we don't have to cure a diseas you don't contact. Are they pushing hygene measures? (NO!)

Washing your hands to stop infection is something we were taught at first grade of public school. Why push for something everyone knows to do anyway ?

(3) Are the elite people avoiding the infected regions or are they touring to "study the flu"? (They are touring!) Skipping a lot more this is one grand shake down.

The virus hasn't yet started to move from people to people, so it is easy to avoid it simply by avoiding birds. And no one said that the elite are smart.

We see the elite UN types heading to study and air flights are not checked. SARS was checked and it was stopped. The whole thing is a UN induced fraud.

This is the flu we are talking about. If it mutates to spread from human to human, it will be impossible to stop, period. If it mutates, there will be a pandemic; if it doesn't, there won't be (at least not one caused by it). No amount of checking will change that. Everyone will be exposed to it, and those whose immune system can't fight it off will be killed.

The only question is how many people are sick at once. The more people will, the harder the healthcare and other systems of society will be pressed. That's the purpose of the preparations - to try to ensure that there will be enough healthy workforce at any time during the pandemic to take care of the rest.

Re:Guess who has shares in the cure manufacturer

[Anonymous Coward]

I am totally convinced that Halliburton has a contract to spray everyone with bird flu. Big Pharma has replacd oil.

Isolation slows infection down

[Furmy]

prepared or somewhat prepared to move employees to remote locations or let them work at home,
It's important to remember that working from home (or remote locations) isn't going to prevent the illness from infecting everyone - it will just prevent everyone from falling ill at the same time.

The 'attack rate' (ranging from 10 to 35% in most 'plans') is cumulative. It would be much easier to handle 10% revolving ill over a few months than it would be to handle ~35% of staff ill for 2 weeks.

Remember, too, that if this virus mutates into a human-to-human transmissible form that you'll be just as likely to catch it at the grocery store/transit system than you will at work.

Wash your hands/keyboards/mice/doorknobs

Re:Isolation slows infection down

[T-Ranger]

I was specificly told we had nothing to worry about untill it goes bird to bird human back to bird and finaly back to human.

Re:Isolation slows infection down

[Furmy]

The general concern is that if it mutates into a form which spreads easily from human to human (like normal human influenza) that we're in trouble.

Read this

Re:Isolation slows infection down

[miskatonic alumnus]

Yes, and if Ebola mutates into a form that doesn't kill the host quite so rapidly, and is transmitted by sneezing, coughing, exhaling, then we'll all die from that. Am I the only one here who is sick and tired of the fear-mongering surrounding this stupid bird flu??? Christ, I'm ready for it to come already so people will STFU about it.

Re:Isolation slows infection down

[Saven Marek]

if it mutates into a form which spreads easily from human to human (like normal human influenza) that we're in trouble.

And if normal human transmissable flu mutates to be as deadly as h5n1 we'll be in trouble. and if ebola mutates to become more contagious over a long gestation time we're in trouble. and if aids mutates to be transmissable from touching a doorknob we're in trouble.

and if the moon turns into green cheese and falls to earth, we're in trouble.

not going to happen people. bird flu is a media beatup where less than 100 people have died from it in 8 years yet nobody says anything about the millions of people across the world who have died from normal influenza in the same time . Read that again. Millions of humans have met their deaths at the hands of normal everyday influenza in just a few years. hundreds of thousands are americans. No that no exaggeration. that's MILLIONS of people.

But you don't see the media beating that one up because it's not worth as much in sales.

Re:Isolation slows infection down

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I'd much rather take my chances with dying than have to put up with this shit for another few years.

Hell, if even half of the media fear-mongering had come true, the human race would have been extinct at least 30 years ago.

ND

Re:Isolation slows infection down

[thx1138_az]

When I get the bird flu I'm going to sneeze at CNN's office and then I goin to sneeze in FOX's office. It's because I'm the most trusted flu source to be fair and balanced.

Re:Isolation slows infection down

[beoswulf]

All it would take is the extremely lethal and difficult to treat strain swapping the right genetic material with the more common human to human forms and there will be a super lethal form created The history of birds spreading epidemic influenza diseases to humans is why this is such a concern.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_kong_flu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Flu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenzavirus_A

And the fact the avian flu was now found in cats in Germany makes

Re:Isolation slows infection down

[chrish]

I'm not really that worried, since we were all killed by SARS a while back.

Raaa... brains...

Stupid fear-mongering media.

Re:Isolation slows infection down

[Directrix1]

If it changes to that extent who's to say that it would even be as large a threat as it is currently? Maybe the genetic changes necessary will make it an almost inert virus that spreads really easily but causes little damage to the host? Who knows. Its gone all the way from east asia to west europe and its killed what, 100people??? Its just the media blowing yet another topic out of proportion because its convenient. Same with all this stupid mining disaster talks, what like people didn't die in mines before? Why is it all over the news with outcries for reform, when we didn't give a shit about it a month ago? Its just the topic of the moment blown out of proportion to make us feel all good and warm inside like we're helping somebody, while all we're really doing is ignoring just the right things that the people with just the right amount of money would like us to ignore.

Re:Isolation slows infection down

[khallow]

not going to happen people. bird flu is a media beatup where less than 100 people have died from it in 8 years yet nobody says anything about the millions of people across the world who have died from normal influenza in the same time . Read that again. Millions of humans have met their deaths at the hands of normal everyday influenza in just a few years. hundreds of thousands are americans. No that no exaggeration. that's MILLIONS of people.

The 1918 flu happened. It's not just hype. Flus can and do jump species. And given that the possibility that this avian flu variant could have a much higher mortality rate than normal flus should at least make you concerned enough to make some sort of preparation. Finally, it's worth noting that a lot of parties more in the know than slashdot posters (eg, medical professionals and governments) are stocking up on various unproven antivirals.

Frankly, I don't like the odds. They're probably under 10% that we see a high mortality pandemic, but I see this flu spread over a substantial wildlife population over a large portion of the world including some places that are incompetent at preventing disease especially in an agricultural setting (eg, some of the African countries).

Re:Isolation slows infection down

[rubycodez]

and it just as likely could mutate into a form that causes one day of sneezing followed by a bout of the ripping shits. Honestly, we could make a list 1,000 items long about horrible things that could kill you soon.

Re:Isolation slows infection down

[NumerusSpy]

I always though the idea was that we are meant to catch diseases and thus gain resistance for ourselves and our descendants with those that die being unlucky that they couldn't cope with a changing world/environment.
It was only a few years ago that researchers got all excited because they thought they had found that the common cold actually fought and stopped some cancers from occurring. Funnily enough, that research and its results seem to have dropped into a memory hole. I guess there's no money in it.

Re:Isolation slows infection down

[khallow]

I always though the idea was that we are meant to catch diseases and thus gain resistance for ourselves and our descendants with those that die being unlucky that they couldn't cope with a changing world/environment. It was only a few years ago that researchers got all excited because they thought they had found that the common cold actually fought and stopped some cancers from occurring. Funnily enough, that research and its results seem to have dropped into a memory hole. I guess there's no money in it.

Being an opinion provider on Slashdot is a thankless burden, but I'm up to the challege.

For your first point, there's no "idea" here. We've co-evolved with diseases, and generally the survivors build some resistance. That's just the way things work out. But given that valuable experience can reside in people with weak immune systems, it makes little sense to depend on natural resistance and the resulting elevated death rates from disease when we can do better with technology.

Second, I bet the prime reason you don't hear about the common cold fighting certain forms of cancer is because the initial report was deeply flawed, if not outright wrong.

Re:Isolation slows infection down

[NumerusSpy]

don't be so pedantic about my use of the word 'idea'. It should be dog balls obvious what I meant by it. Maybe I should have begun 'I always thought the way it is meant to work', I forgot the grammar/spelling/context nazis were alive and well on /.
As far as using technology and science to artificially keep alive those that wouldn't survive normally I don't think we are doing the race any favours at all.
I would prefer to bet we don't hear about it because the research can't be spun the right way. Like when the defense department did a study on flouride and spun the research to say the flouridated subjects had less cavities that the unflouridated group but failed to mention that of the group exposed to flouride most had no teeth left.

Re:Isolation slows infection down

[khallow]

don't be so pedantic about my use of the word 'idea'. It should be dog balls obvious what I meant by it. Maybe I should have begun 'I always thought the way it is meant to work', I forgot the grammar/spelling/context nazis were alive and well on /.

Don't forget meta-context nazis too! I believe my objection is more substantial than merely disagreeing about semantics or grammar. Basically, you are arguing that because diseases killed people with weak immune systems in the past, then diseases should continue to kill people with weak immune systems.

As far as using technology and science to artificially keep alive those that wouldn't survive normally I don't think we are doing the race any favours at all. I would prefer to bet we don't hear about it because the research can't be spun the right way. Like when the defense department did a study on flouride and spun the research to say the flouridated subjects had less cavities that the unflouridated group but failed to mention that of the group exposed to flouride most had no teeth left.

Why are we under any obligation to do the race any favors? You appear to claim that it's more important to cull people with weak immune systems than it is to preserve the value of those people. I think that's very short sighted. It should be obvious that's there's far more value in the knowledge and experience of a human being than in their DNA. Will human DNA be relevant in a few centuries? Our descendants may no longer use DNA at all anad may have immune systems that simply cannot be evolved to in a few centuries.

Bird flu preparations? Three letters:

[dudeman2]

VPN.

Business IT??

[bigberk]

Give me a break! If the virus mutates, spreads human to human and there is a full blown pandemic there is no way in hell I'll be coming to work. Seems wiser to avoid all public places. Facing 50%+ mortality rate, the last thing on my mind is how the damn servers are operating. I can continue tinkering on the MySQL server when we meet up in hell

Re:Business IT??

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

Exactly! no one is going to give a flying f*ck about IT if this thing becomes the next black death. They'll have to strap hookers to the server racks to get any geeks to the datacenter ... in fact that should be their back up plan.

Re:Business IT??

[Furmy]

Facing 50%+ mortality rate,

That mortality rate, provided by the WHO for their 'laboratory confirmed cases, only includes people who
a. became very sick from the infection
b. obtained medical attention which the WHO recognized
c. had blood samples tested and confirmed in a lab

Anyone that became infected and didn't exhibit symptoms wouldn't be included (why would they get tested?), and anyone that died in a remote area wouldn't be included either. The more 'infections' that develop in "1st world" countries the better able we will be to determine the true mortality/morbidity rate of avian influenza in humans.

Unfortunately that won't be able to predict the rate for 'pandemic flu' which would be a mutation of the current avian flu virus.

Re:Business IT??

[bigberk]

Right, we can't really predict what a mortality rate from a human bug equivalent of this would be nor can we guess how severe the illness would be. Again, let's hope that this does not materialize at all to begin with.

As a relatively advanced human civilization, we must take all the precautions we can -- minimizing infection, enforcing sound public health practices and education, maintaining sharp monitoring and reporting globally... but beyond that, it is up to God. And I'm not a religious person, but if you have read any accounts of the last pandemic (20 to 40 million people dead) ... wow, we must pray that this misfortune does not materialize again.

Re:Business IT??

[cgenman]

In hell, the servers all run Access.

Re:Business IT??

[flyonthewall]

In Access, all servers run like hell!

Re:Business IT??

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and Bush's kid will make president.

Oh. Wait a sec.

Re:Business IT??

[Anonymous Coward]

except that hookers are the kind of people most likely to get infectious diseases. and what the fuck is up with self censorship. don't write fuck if you don't want to, and if you do, then write it. goddamnit!

Re:Business IT??

[Bacon Bits]

No. In hell, all databases are Excel spreadsheets.

Re:Business IT??

[Anonymous Coward]

In Hell, there are no servers. There are only eternal rows of cubicles with systems in a disorganised workgroup.

Re:Business IT??

[penguinbrat]

Screw the hookers, keep the geeks on the terminals - I know that if a pandemic hits and Im told to stay home, I sure as better have a nice comfortable air-conditioned shack, all my cable channels running and those damn admins at WoW had better not be calling in sick either!!!

Re:Business IT??

[smoker2]

They'll have to strap hookers to the server racks to get any geeks to the datacenter ... in fact that should be their back up plan.

I don't think that's a good backup plan - tapes are more reliable and hookers are higher maintenance than dvds :p

Plus there's nothing worse than being in a crisis and finding your backups are fucked !

Phlegmy.

[Kittie Rose]

This could be very dangerous in the U.S. as most people tend to be "workaholic" to an extent. In europe people generally know that raw hard work isn't the best way to achieve something, so people know to take more sick days off when they need it. If I were an IT company, and this scare began to prove itself true, I would give extra paid sick leave, it might be the only way to avoid an epidemic.

Re:Phlegmy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh do they actually work in Europe? And US companies have nothing to worry about with IT workers as most of them are in remote locations anyway. Isn't India remote enough?

Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets

[nick_davison]

A survey last month of 300 Minnesota business officials found most thought a flu pandemic would significantly affect their business, but only 18% had preparedness plans in place.

I am pretty certain that a flock of winged monkeys, backed up by tap dancing midgets would significantly affect my business. We, sadly, don't have a plan for such an eventuality.

Just because the majority believe a pandemic would affect their business, that's not the same as saying they believe such a pandemic is likely to happen.

The last truly staggering flu pandemic was in 1919. Since then we've been about to get nuked, about to have planes flown in to us and about to all die of Sars, or possibly mad cow disease, or West Nile, or possibly flesh eating bacteria - oh, and our computers were all going to assplode on Y2K. It turns out there are lots of exciting panics the media likes to report and yet most of them are either over hyped of Jack Bauer manages to diffuse them before they become an issue for the masses.

Yes, a flu pandemic would be terrible. Yes, it's even possible - more possible, though less fun, than the winged monkeys. But it's not necessarily probable. Good risk management - as opposed to running around screaming at every perceived risk - involves calculating cost multiplied by probability and comparing options. It's possible most of those businesses, whether rightly or wrongly, just don't believe they need to panic about the latest shocking THREAT TO LIFE AS WE KNOW IT that is yet to do more in the west than make some German cats sick.

Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets

[Cheapy]

Please sir, elaborate on these flying monkeys and midgets.

Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets

[ajs]

Your reaction disgusts me! You should be ashamed! Here we are predicting the imminent demise of USENET, and you're.... what's that? .... Oh, a FLU PANDEMIC? Oh.... Nevermind.

Seriously, did you catch the last bit in the blurb:

The H5N1 influenza virus, which originated in Asia, could hit the U.S. this fall, potentially causing an epidemic, the nation's chief avian flu coordinator warned.

What's he supposed to say? "It's all poppycock, and I'm over-paid"? We're not that naive are we?

Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets

[vastabo]

yes, but what if Jack Bauer gets the flu?

Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets

[symbolic]

Just because the majority believe a pandemic would affect their business, that's not the same as saying they believe such a pandemic is likely to happen.

Interesting comment. Every time I see phrases like "when it hits the US," it makes me wonder - seriously. It hasn't "hit" anywhere else with significance, so why would it "hit" the US? Does the US have a special nation-sized bullseye on it? Is there something special about the genetic makeup of US citizens? It almost makes me think we're being primed for some kind of bizarre, self-fulfilling prophecy.

Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets

[Columcille]

no no it won't be him, it will be some less significant but lovable new character. It will be quite tragic and gut wrenching when she falls ill, dies, and in her last gasping breath reveals the truth that the virus was purposefully engineered by birds in communist china.

Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets

[Jeff DeMaagd]

It doesn't need to be "truly staggering" to cause significant problems and economic harm. Pandemics do happen, it isn't a matter of if or probabilities, but when, and how hard will the next one hit. By averages, the human population is a bit overdue for one and I don't see what we have done in the last few decades that would necessarily prevent one from taking place again. There doesn't really seem to be a good way to stop the regular flu very well.

Also, sequencing data has shown that the H5N1 to be a lot more like the 1918 bug than scientists seem to be comfortable with, and is spreading in ways that weren't expected at a speed that wasn't expected. While it isn't cause for alarm, it is cause for concern and should be considered as a part of any emergency preparedness plan.

Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets

[colenski]

I think it's worthwhile to note that the movement of people through air travel in the US would be a signifigant vector for the spread of an infectious disease considering that nearly 800 million people are expected to move through the US by air in 2007

That's 12% of the population of the planet

Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>The last truly staggering flu pandemic was in 1919.

That's part of the problem right there. The virologists, at least the ones who get quoted, think there's a natural cycle of breakout flu pandemics with a period of about 50 years.

Panic is bad planning but so is complacency. Why not do business continuity planning including a scenario where N% of employees can't come to work for M weeks? Then you've covered the possibility of a flu pandemic, plus the posssibility of a natural disaster that makes your employees evacuate to Texas, plus a nasty but normal flu season, plus labor disputes, and even road construction that cuts you off from the bedroom community where half your staff live.

Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets

[Jerf]

By averages, the human population is a bit overdue for one and I don't see what we have done in the last few decades that would necessarily prevent one from taking place again.

Times have really changed. I'm the first to reach for history when it's relevant, but I'm not sure it is in this case. In the plus column, we have incomparably better communication than we did in 1918, and incomparably better detection and tracking. (It is by no means perfect, but good lucking getting a gene sequencing done in 1918.) We are also in general somewhat healthier. (Yes, there's improvements to be made there, too.)

In the minus column, we circulate much more freely than in 1918, and given that we're talking "virus", that's very possibly enough to erase all of the above by itself. Thus, both the

But then again, it may not be. We really don't know, because the unknowns simply swamp the knowns. However, I have to admit that if I had to guess, that if there is a true cycle (and not a statistical anomaly), and we are "overdue", then as we become more and more "overdue", the correct conclusion is that the pluses outweigh the minuses, not that we are more and more likely to have a massive outbreak.

This is in part true exactly because we are vigilant, so this should not be interpreted as a call for less vigilance. This is a call for less pointless worrying. ("Vigilance" is very pointed worrying.)

We're "overdue" for a polio outbreak, but I'm not too worried about it. (I rate a flu outbreak at a much, much higher probablility; I just use this as a more clear example of the point I want to make.)

Note: This is a nuanced message, promoting neither panic, nor complancency. If you interpreted this message in a such a manner, please re-read. Also note the several preceding paragraphs were all predicated on "if there is a true cycle". My real guess is that there isn't; random events can often seem cyclic if you squint at them too much and try to force them to fit a pattern. This puts us even farther into the unknown.

Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets

[cpt kangarooski]

If it hits anywhere, it'll hit everywhere. The Spanish Flu hit all but a handful of the most isolated people on the planet, and that was in an era before people could travel as far and as fast as we can now. You really can't quarantine yourself against it effectively, especially given that it could take a long while to run its course (the 1918 pandemic lasted for around a year and a half).

Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets

[tigersha]

Oh God no, I am sitting here, reading this with my beloved cat Kalinka on my lap. And I live in Germany, close to a Sperrgebiet. This may be the last time I post here. Goodbye to you all.

Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets

[Anonymous Coward]

For what it's worth, I was told by a virologist last night that an H5N1 pandemic isn't just likely, it's inevitable. That surprised, and scared me.

History of the Spanish flu is here:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Flu

Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets

[NumerusSpy]

Also, sequencing data has shown that the H5N1 to be a lot more like the 1918 bug than scientists seem to be comfortable with,

This is in no way related to the fact that US war scientists have recently been involved in digging up bodies of those that died of the 1918 flu in an effort to reconstruct the original 1918 virus.

I am ready to be modded troll for pointing out a fact

preparations should include...

[TheSHAD0W]

...extra server bandwidth, since everyone affected will be stuck at home with nothing to do except surf and download stuff...

Lacking sense: priorities

[bigberk]

Let's get something clear, "pandemic" doesn't mean a flu that is afflicting employees, so they get a little sniffle and stay home from work until they get better. A mutated H5N1 or similar pandemic, that spreads human to human with something like 50% mortality rate means that public places become a death trap. If you catch the bug and are unable to recover from it, you need to be treated at a hospital... except the hospitals are totally full and there aren't enough health care workers. Have you seen how the major cities are trying to plan for a "pandemic" situation? They are talking about how to deal with piles of corpses once the graveyards are full.

PUBLIC DOESN'T GET IT. If there is a pandemic, you don't go to work. You don't go to the mall, you don't go to school and you don't go out partying on the weekend. This is serious stuff. It hasn't happened yet and let's pray that it does not happen (easy human-to-human spread of lethal virus) but the situation at the IT department is totally irrelevant. Go to your job if you want to die.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[scottv67]

If there is a pandemic, you don't go to work.

But what about those of us who work in the I.T. depts of healthcare providers? Wouldn't you want us to go to work during the "pandemic" to make sure that things keep running to handle the large influx of patients at clinics and hospitals?

Somebody's got to be at work to make sure that when you or a relative shows up at the hospital, your electronic records can be accessed, imaging applications are working correctly and medications can be dispensed.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is a pandemic, you don't go to work. You don't go to the mall, you don't go to school and you don't go out partying on the weekend.

This is why the current scare isn't so much about an actual pandemic as a way of driving demand for flu vaccine up several hundred percent.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Priorities you say?

On Slashdot we only talk about how it will affect Google stock. And I predict with everyone at home searching the internet Google will make a killing!

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[Baddas]

No, no they don't. You'd do no good.

You're dealing with so many patients that the hospitals won't have room to stack them, let alone time to look up their records.

There won't be enough Tylenol in the infirmary, let alone more exotic drugs like antivirals.

The United States has approximately 548 doctors, 280 hospital beds and 772 nurses per 100,000 people.

In a pandemic with 50% infected, each doctor would have to care for twenty people, and each nurse for twelve. Those hospital beds would be somewhat overloaded with twenty people in them, too.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[guruevi]

Back when I was young, when the Spanish Flu hit, we didn't have computers and still we contained it to Spain... and we had to go to work during the "pandemic" and we didn't have any cars, we had to walk, uphill, both ways...

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[scottv67]

No, no they don't. You'd do no good.

You're dealing with so many patients that the hospitals won't have room to stack them, let alone time to look up their records.

Ok, I'll give you that. When it gets *really* bad, things are going to get out-of-hand.

But how do I know when I need to stop reporting for work? Is someone going to announce the official start of the pandemic on CNBC or CNN?
What is the "high water mark" that I need to watch for so I know that it's time to stay home?

A local school was closed today because hundreds of students and dozens of staff have the flu (true story). Is this the start of the pandemic or just another flu bug making its rounds? I went to work today just like any other day to keep shoveling coal into the boilers.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's get something clear, "pandemic" doesn't mean a flu that is afflicting employees, so they get a little sniffle and stay home from work until they get better. A mutated H5N1 or similar pandemic, that spreads human to human with something like 50% mortality rate means that public places become a death trap. If you catch the bug and are unable to recover from it, you need to be treated at a hospital... except the hospitals are totally full and there aren't enough health care workers. Have you seen how the major cities are trying to plan for a "pandemic" situation? They are talking about how to deal with piles of corpses once the graveyards are full.

Exactly. Among humans who do not receive medical treatment,this virus appears to have a mortality rate of somewhere around 100%.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[TubeSteak]

Wouldn't you want us to go to work during the "pandemic" to make sure that things keep running to handle the large influx of patients at clinics and hospitals?

Queue the government.

They pay people to do disaster & contingency planning for situations like this.

In theory, the Fed/State Government stockpile antibiotics and/or vaccines, so that the people in charge of (and required to run) critical infrastructure will get taken care of. Those people include obvious and not so obvious fields and industries.

So whoever said "you don't go to work" is flat wrong. The people who are needed, get told to go to work. Both State and Federal Governments liase with businesses in the critical industries. In disaster situations, Big Business is your friend, because they are part of the Government's plan to save our collective asses.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

When do you stop?

John Titor was asked a question like that:

Q: "When will they stop putting people in jail for pot?"

A: "About the same time they stop responding to 911 calls..."

You'll probably figure it out, if it comes to that.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[wildsurf]

The United States has approximately 548 doctors, 280 hospital beds and 772 nurses per 100,000 people.
In a pandemic with 50% infected, each doctor would have to care for twenty people, and each nurse for twelve.

Check your math. That's 50,000 infected people (274 of whom are doctors, leaving only 274 to care for the patients); making over 180 patients per doctor, nearly 130 per nurse. The mere idea of a hospital bed with 357 patients and three nurses would tax even the Spice Channel.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[Columcille]

Keep in mind that with a pandemic, people are less likely to go out buying software. That means Microsoft takes a hit. And if they aren't buying software, they must be using the free stuff right? So if a pandemic hits, OSS skyrockets in popularity! These things are all a matter of perspective.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Another issue is that the medical and political community does seem to have some very sad questions on how they should perform triage. There is concern that health workers would have to decide who lives and who dies, and they are concerned about how the public would react to that, because lately, it is not often that a person is removed from life support just so they can transfer equipment to help someone that is more likely to live if they had that equipment. My understanding is that there isn't enough equipment to handle a significant outbreak and these hard decisions will need to be made.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[BigCheese]

Yes, not going out is the way to stop a virus from propagating too far. Unfortunatly in the US a significant number of people have jobs where if they don't work they don't get paid. Do you think the WalMart drones get sick time?. People won't/can't stay home. If the government screws up handling the early stages of a pandemic (ya think?) it'll spread like wildfire in the US.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[Baddas]

The disparity lies in the fact that some portion of the people who fall ill do not require (or recieve, however one looks at it) hospitalization, either through fast onset of morbidity and mortality (unable to get to a hospital in a town with even fewer ambulances than hospital beds), or through having a lower level of symptoms (not needing hospitalization at all).

For "normal" flu, this level is approximately 1%. However, if we extrapolate from the fact that pandemic flu (of whatever type, be it bird flu or the 1918 flu) often has a mortality rate 25 times that of normal flu (0.1% vs 2.5% for 1918) then you can see that perhaps a quarter of the people would be hospitalized.

Again, this is all guesswork, and either way it's entirely beyond any theoretical capability of the medical system to cope with.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[Baddas]

That's true, however, unless you're specifically, personally told to go to work due to being in a "critically needed" job, you stay home. During a pandemic outbreak, the vast, vast majority of people would be told to sit on their asses.

In fact, depending on the exact circumstances, martial law might very well become a serious consideration: When everyone including the police are quarantined, who is to stop the looters? Congress (from suitable distance as to not infect each other, surely) would have to void the strictures of the posse comitatus laws and send soldiers in biowarfare gear out, especially considering that looters would be spreading disease as they went, almost certainly.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[khallow]

Somebody's got to be at work to make sure that when you or a relative shows up at the hospital, your electronic records can be accessed, imaging applications are working correctly and medications can be dispensed.

Most people don't work at a hospital. And hospitals would be far better equipped to protect their employees from infection. The original poster is talking about people working at nonessential jobs, which frankly is most of the population.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

"Exactly. Among humans who do not receive medical treatment,this virus appears to have a mortality rate of somewhere around 100%."

Bullshit. People with sub-par immune systems will succumb, and of those,
50% are reported to have died. No one knows how many people were simply
carriers or shook it off. Meanwhile, all those who believe the standard media
BS about Echinacea, Glutamine, and Vitamin C will be putting their faith in
Tamiflu (which is a weakened version of the star anise plant, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_anise )
and other such nonsense, while ignoring treatments that might help.

In any case, the last thing I will do is get on the road and go to work.
Sheesh!

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[NumerusSpy]

Little Johnny was obviously talking about the US legal system. Here in South Australia I can have up to 400 grammes of personal stash before I start to look at even going to court over 'pot'.
I would still get fined for possession but it is in the form of an expiation notice and possession itself under the 400g limit is definitely not a criminal offence. In most cases the police wouldn't even bother to give me a ticket because they are realists and understand that even doing that is a waste of their time which is better spent chasing criminals.

Re:Lacking sense: priorities

[NumerusSpy]

Exactly. Among humans who do not receive medical treatment,this virus appears to have a mortality rate of somewhere around 100%.

Shenanigans

"revolving ill" not a useful concept

[Schlemphfer]

It would be much easier to handle 10% revolving ill over a few months than it would be to handle ~35% of staff ill for 2 weeks.

Yeah, except this isn't a garden-variety flu bug -- it's incredibly lethal. If this bug mutates to easily spread from person-to-person, you're not talking about revolving ill -- many of these people won't be "revolving" back to the workplace, they'll be dead. Of 34 human cases of H5N1 that hit Asia by February 2004, 23 were fatal.

Re:"revolving ill" not a useful concept

[Furmy]

Yes the virus can be lethal. As I wrote in this post the mortality/morbidity rate for the avian flu in humans is NOT known; the rate for the virus in a pandemic influenza will not necessarily be the same.

IIRC the 1918 pandemic flu mortality rate was ~2 or 2.5%.

Re:"revolving ill" not a useful concept

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the pandemic virus will not necessarily have the same mortality rate that the current HPAI H5N1 virus displays. However, it certainly can kill at the same rate. 1918 is by no means a worse case scenario.

Also, while the overall mortality rate was around 2-2.5%,as you mentioned, it killed young adults at a rate many times higher. Like the 1918 virus, H5N1 causes a cytokine storm, by which the host's immune system ends up destorying the body and killing the victim itself. These young, healthy adults are the people generally staffing IT departments, and in 1918 more than 10% of them would have died.

Re:"revolving ill" not a useful concept

[benjj]

That is 2.5-5% of the global population .

Re:"revolving ill" not a useful concept

[ultranova]

Of 34 human cases of H5N1 that hit Asia by February 2004, 23 were fatal.

Let me get this right. We are panicking over a virus that, in a continent with billions of inhabitants most of who are sleeping right next to the plague-carriers, handling them all day long, and propably not overly concerned with hygiene (based on their habit of selling live birds in the market), packed cheerfully right next to each other with barely room to breath and living in the middle of a festering jungle (at least some of them have), in short, a plagues paradise, has made 34 people ill enough to warrant notification and killed 23 ?

Considering the sheer number of people in Asia, if this virus is at all contageous, it must have infected orders of magnitude more people. So why do we not know about them ? The most logical explanation seems to be that they didn't get ill enough to go to a hospital.

And in any case, panicking about the potential fatality rate over a disease that does not yet exist is somewhat pointless.

Re:"revolving ill" not a useful concept

[earlgreen]

Yeah, except this isn't a garden-variety flu bug -- it's incredibly lethal. If this bug mutates to easily spread from person-to-person, you're not talking about revolving ill -- many of these people won't be "revolving" back to the workplace, they'll be dead.

My father is a retired virologist and used to work w/ avian flu, tracking its spread along bird migratory patterns among other things. He says when flu viruses mutate to spread more easily they almost always also become less deadly, usually significantly so. Every 100 to 150 years you have an exception like the 1919 pandemic, but in between you have thousands of mutations that didn't cause a terrible pandemic.

H5N1 could be the exception but it is much more likely to become a relatively minor flu as part of the mutation process.

Of course you never heard that on the news... god forbid people lose their sense of terror or get bored and read a book instead...

Bomb Shelters

[arrrrg]

And how many IT departments have nuclear bomb shelters, for when we the "the long war" produces an enemy pissed off enough to attack us? Or their own oil reserves and climate control systems, for when global warming makes the earth as we know it uninhabitable? Or for that matter, a God-shelter for when Jesus comes back and the Rapture happens? What about the fire and brimstone?????

Re:Bomb Shelters

[westlake]

how many IT departments have nuclear bomb shelters...

maybe more than you think. 9/11. Katrina. good reasons for backing up data to an anonymous vault in a half-forgotten desert salt mine.

This is interesting

[WindBourne]

I have been trying to get my work place ready for this. Back in 1981, I was working at CDC/Arthopod-bourne branch when we were aware of a new virus working in the homosexual world. My boss was asked to help out on this as the CDC was trying to get funding for prevention. Even back then, we were aware that a pandemic was starting (what was missed was that it took reagan and his crew several years to release funding for this, even though top CDC people were begging for the money to slow it down; this is stuff that few history books record). Obviously, that was HIV. I got to watch in 1983/4 time frame as the world became aware of this. The sheer panic that set in was amazing. I now see more of this, than I care to admit.
 
6 months ago, I tried getting my manager and manager's manager aware of this. I think that at that time, they thought I was talking crazy. They are only now realizing that this could be a wild ride that will make HIV look minor. As I have been pointing out, now is the time to move all employees from a dual desktop system to a single desktop/laptop. Likewise, we need the ability to communicate for long periods of time. Phone alone is not the answer. Basically, it has to be voip, video, and eWhiteboard. Why video? Because we have to see nuances on each others faces. In addition, it is possible that we will need long conferences with multiple ppl. Finally, the whiteboard make sharing code fragments much easier.
 
The final issue will be that some parts of the group will have no choice but to work closely (testing of aviation equipment). They will have to have anti bacterial hand lotion around as well as mask. In addition, if any of them develop a sneeze, time to go home. Now.
 
Kind of weird, but if this shapes up to have a 70% mortality rate, then it is what will be needed to survive. Not just for personal self, but also for our children.

Re:This is interesting

[VP]

Given that there are no known cases of the avian flu virus to be transmitted from human to human, what exactly are you preparing for? I think that the increased disease surveilance efforts are a good thing, but like others already have said, the likelyhood of anything serious coming out of this is not a cause for panic...

Re:This is interesting

[WindBourne]

Actually, CDC and WHO have already declared this a epidemic. In essence, there is no way to control this. It is with mathematical certainty that it will continue to spread and at some point will pick up the ability to do human-> human transmission. In fact, this is the perfect tool for Al-Qaeda to develop against America (and a relatively cheap and easy one at that). Make no mistake about this. It is coming

The issue is what is needed to separate ourselves for a period of time. Basically, if you are in a mixed environment with all sorts of people, it is like being a cat house without any condoms. Would you trust everybody who comes through there? Did not think so. So in the IT world ( and a number of other jobs), we will have the ability to keep apart from each other. By working out of home, you can lower the risk to yourself and others until a good vaccine is available in quantity. But to work out of home, separated from all the resources of work, will be difficult. The time to prepare for this is now, before it hits. Once it hits, the things that you will want, everybody else will want. In addition, the costs of getting it will be high. Finally, you will have little to no support.

Re:This is interesting

[TubeSteak]

Basically, it has to be voip, video, and eWhiteboard. ... Finally, the whiteboard make sharing code fragments much easier.

Offtopic, but there's a website called http://pastebin.com/ which you can use to share code. They do formatting for most programming languages.

They call it a "collaborative debugging tool"

I know that you wouldn't want to rely on a 3rd party website during a disaster, but it's pretty nifty. You can even make 'private' pastebins by typing in http://something.pastebin.com/ If you don't know what "something" is, you don't see the stuff.

Re:This is interesting

[angst_ridden_hipster]

Not quite sure what good that antibacterial soap will be doing you in a viral pandemic. Maybe reducing secondary infections?

Bleach is good for breaking up viruses. UV works well. So does ordinary soap, from what I've read.

Re:This is interesting

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Kind of weird, but if this shapes up to have a 70% mortality rate, then it is what will be needed to survive. Not just for personal self, but also for our children.

What exactly do you mean by this? You are aware that the entire worlds population could fit very comfortably in an area the size of Texas? I don't mean piled three high, I mean a house and land each. You aren't one of these people that think the population needs "weeding out"?

If you ever did work at the CDC, I sincerely hope they fired your ass long, long ago.

Re:This is interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

The person is saying that with a 70% morbidity rate, that now is the time to do things. He is more alarmist and wanting life to continue. What does having the world population fitting texas have to do with anything? Offhand it sounds like you want the weeding out, Walking Dude.

And Why should s?he have fired?

You sound like a troll.

Re:This is interesting

[VP]

How can an illness with less than 200 total cases worldwide and no easy vector of infection be called an epidemic? You are comparing that to HIV/AIDS, where a human interaction could lead to infection - and even then, it took years of disragard and neglect to make it an epidemic...

While it is true that a pandemic may eventual strike, it is a waste of resources to panic. Any bisuness needs to have an emergency IT plan if, for example, fire destroys the IT staff's offices. There is no need to go beyond normal emergency preparedness at this point. Panic has never solved anything...

The Glass Is Half Full

[Anonymous Coward]

View it as an employment opportunity.

Dual use

[Indigo]

Just remember, the same disaster plan that will keep the company going if half the employees die in a flu pandemic, will keep it going if those same employees are simply laid off. Which is more likely to happen?

Re:Dual use

[Farmer Tim]

Why bother laying people off when there's a possibility they'll die instead? It would save a lot in severance pay...

where do they get these numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read a lot of the avian flu news, and I have yet to see any credible simple math. Right now it is around a 50% mortality rate IF you get it, in those places that have had bad cases. Now, if it becomes human to human transmittable, they DON'T KNOW what the mortality rate will be, because there's nothing to look at yet.. Yet they constantly pull wild assed numbers out of their butts, and it always seems to be lowballed. I think it's to NOT scare people right now.

Let's look at at more realisticaly. If it becomes as easy to catch as the "normal" flu, use that as a baseline, it is around 1/3rd usually of the population every winter gets it, from mild to pretty bad. Even normal flu kills thousands yearly, BTW.. So, up to 100 million people in the US will get it within a few months. Worldwide, no idea, a lot, at least a billion to two billion. If the mortality rate stays the same as it is now, that's 50 million deaths in the US, not two million like they say in the article. Say it is only one quarter, that's still around 25 million deaths. Plus a lot sick all over needing a lot of care.

Does anyone REALLY think any "contingency plans to work at home over teh intarweb" are going to be worth anything at that point? How much of normal meatspace is going to be up and running? Delivery trucks, critical infrastructure like water/sewer/electricity/fuel deliveries, etc? food? Huh? This is a humongous unknown. This would be like 100 katrinas on top of panic city all over the place. Absolutely no one has much of an idea what might happen if when it becomes human to human. I'm just guessing but I can sure question their bogus math, it doesn't follow any other flu statistics, it is severely low balled all the time.

    And by most accounts lately, about zip of those anti flu drugs even work all that great either. It may be a big nothing, it may wipe out a huge percent of the global population. Who knows, they sure don't. The only thing real is, no place where it has been reported have they been able to eliminate it. *No* *Place* It's still being found all over asia and slowly going to other nations, it's in africa now and in places in europe. It has continued to spread. It is now found in various mammals. People do get pretty sick from it, and it has a high mortality rate.

Is it a scam? I don't think so. Could it get so bad that it would affect life as we know it (TM)? yep. Will it? Chances are eventually it will. The only good thing I have seen in the various reports is it seems to weaken slightly as it crosses species from birds. But not much. I will say this. The government used to have some pretty hokey civil defense info where they recommended having "three days" food and stuff at home, a total joke really. Now they are recommending *weeks worth*. This is a clue. I would translate that to *months* if it ever hits hard, total isolation, stay away from people, stick it out. Even then it might not be enough, who knows.

The solution where I work...

[Black Art]

If you take five unconnected sick days in a 12 month period, you are subject to disciplinary action. More than that and they can do anything, including firing you. No excuses. (Unless you qualify for short term disability.)

I work for a "Healthcare company".

Re: The solution where I work...

[Black Parrot]

> If you take five unconnected sick days in a 12 month period, you are subject to disciplinary action. More than that and they can do anything, including firing you. No excuses.

Well, if you get the flu be sure to show up long enough to infect your bosses and everybody at HR before you go home to bed where you belong.

Re:The solution where I work...

[VonSkippy]

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you my friend are a moron. My bad if you're making 200-300% above the going rate in your area, but if not, why oh why are you working there? It's obvious with a "rule" like that your employee expects to wring every last ounce of viable labor out of you without regard to your health, happiness, or well being. Take your talent and move on. Life is way to short to be shafted like that.

Re:The solution where I work...

[Black Art]

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you my friend are a moron. My bad if you're making 200-300% above the going rate in your area, but if not, why oh why are you working there? It's obvious with a "rule" like that your employee expects to wring every last ounce of viable labor out of you without regard to your health, happiness, or well being. Take your talent and move on. Life is way to short to be shafted like that.

I plan on it. I just found out about that rule today. (After coming down with the flu and not giving it to my co-workers. I will not be so stingy next time.)

Re:The solution where I work...

[advocate_one]

only 5 unconnected days in twelve months!!!... where I work, I only get disciplinary action if I have a suspicious pattern and more than twelve in a year... hell, I could be signed off sick for six weeks solid before the wheels are set in motion to assess my future position with the company.

Re:The solution where I work...

[stevey]

I could be signed off sick for six weeks solid before the wheels are set in motion to assess my future position with the company.

I'd guess that you'd be OK if you were really "signed off" - since that means that you've been to a doctor and they have attested to you being unfit for work, right?

I don't know about you, but over here in the UK there are some good rules in place for permanent staff (ie. not contractors).

Last year I was ill to the extent that I was signed off work for seven months by my doctor, and during that time I was initially concerned I might lose my job. It turns out there are some good rules in place where its practically impossible for you to be fired if you have a doctors opinion that you're genuinely unfit for work.

Sure things get harder and you start to lose money. (I think I went down to 75% of my annual/usual salary after three months and if I'd been off much longer I would have gone down more). But if you're genuinely ill and have a signoff from the doctor to cofirm/corroborate/agree with that you're pretty much OK.

Scary place to be, but not the end of the world.

And that shows TOTAL unprepardness

[WindBourne]

That is why so many places are unprepared. Most places think that a few small things are the solutions. VPN here, a laptop there. Not a chance. You have to have you comm in place. You have to have your laptops IN place. Why? Because there will be a general panic that takes ahold of society the second that anybody hears that this flu is spread from human-human. A big part of the issue is communication. Many can work with a simple phone call for couple of days. But that fails over a long haul. What is needed is voip, video, and ewhiteboard. If you need to understand it, then look at my earlier posting.

Epidemic? Maybe in birds.

[Anonymous Coward]

The H5N1 influenza virus, which originated in Asia, could hit the U.S. this fall, potentially causing an epidemic, the nation's chief avian flu coordinator warned.

An epidemic in birds. At the rate it's spreading I completely believe that it could hit the U.S. this fall. However it has yet to mutate into a form that spreads among people. In other countries the only people at risk are those who live/work in close proximity to poultry. Don't get me wrong, the birds will get it bad. The poultry farmers will lose lots of $$ when they have to kill off whole farms worth of birds just because they might be infected. But in its current form you're not going to see a bunch of human deaths.

The Keyboard

[qualico]

Those of us who repair computers for a living are exposed to a banquet of germs on every service call.

Exercising ones immune system, the keyboard has to be the heaviest load.

If there is a pandemic, the first thing to disinfect will be keyboards.

And why are we taught to sneeze and cough into the hands?
I bury my face into my arm to segregate the infectious spray.
The public would do well to be educated to do the same.

Re:The Keyboard

[MichaelSmith]

Exercising ones immune system, the keyboard has to be the heaviest load.

When I got my first job in the State Government I thought it was hilarious (being a fan of Douglas Adams) they we had telephone cleaners who came around once a month and disinfected the phones.

In those days you shared your phones so perhaps it made good sense. I won't make jokes about telephone cleaners again.

Re:The Keyboard

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because you can get better coverage with your hand(s), and ideally should wash it immediately.

So what do you do when you get one of those really messy sneezes, leaving a hanging string of mucus? Wipe it on your arm/sleeve? ew, may as well carry around a hankerchief.

Re:The Keyboard

[Farmer Tim]

ew, may as well carry around a hankerchief.

Because nothing beats keeping a germ-encrusted rag in your pocket for staying healthy...

Re:The Keyboard

[qualico]

lol,ewwwwww.

They need to put a soft pad on shirt sleeves, like the ones on the back of mittens. Then you can proudly wear your badge of honor. :P

Re:The Keyboard

[chivo243]

....but they are my germs... I might need them later. save'm for the stew.

Re:The Keyboard

[noamsml]

Uh, unharmful (and barely harmful) germs develop the immune system.

Preparation never hurts...

[smokes2345]

It never hurts to be ready, but consider the possibility. We know its out there and we're keeping a close eye on the movement. Maybe some readiness is sensible, but certainly not hysterics and considering the state of technology it should be fairly easy to keep things running from home.

Re:Bird flu preparations? Three letters:

[Anonymous Coward]

The story is about being prepared. I live in Hong Kong. I heard about a major corporation here that thought 'VPN' was the soluton during the SARS scare. Simple? not really. Their infrastructure wasnt up to the demand.

I hear they are now spending significant sums globally upgrading VPN capacity in preparation.

SARs is not very contageous, compared to flu. And having had a wake up call Hong Kong is taking it pretty seriously. I just wish I had any confidence that they were taking it seriously enough across the border.

Re:Bird flu preparations? Three letters:

[servognome]

VPN doesn't fix everything. It's difficult to put together a good plan. First you need to address internal corporate needs like how to communcate to everybody there is a problem, and have internal systems ready to handle the situation (did you make sure everybody is setup at home to use VPN?). A good disaster plan also needs to address supply and customer issues.

Does the company take into account possible quarantine restrictions/customs delays for spare parts from Asia? What about contingencies for outsourced tech support? There also needs to be an understanding of customer needs to prioritize if the company can't support business as usual.

You don't have to put together a detailed plan for every little thing that can come up, but you should at least think about them.

IT departments vs killer klowns from out of space.

[Reservoir Penguin]

Please just give the drug companies their vaccine money and university researchers their grants so they shutup about the stupid bird flue already. Every time I turn on the news for I'm thinking has the stupid thing turned airborn yet or do i have to endure the stupid news stories for another year?

vaccination through hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've seen the keyboards where I work, I should be immune to just about everything but a gunshot wound, (but I'm sure Dick Cheney's got a task force working on that one)

Offtopic

[arrrrg]

Mod, meet sarcasm. My point was that the article is offtopic ... what the fuck is the relation between the avian flu and the IT department ... if the flu hits that bad, who the fuck cares if the web server goes down for the duration? Wouldn't the preparedness of, say, hospitals or other critical services, be much more important? And the likelihood of a bird flu pandemic is any more than any other world-shattering potential disaster, which we are equally unprepared for. TFA is just the media trying to find a way to extend the bird-flu hype past its prime.

Re:Offtopic

[0racle]

How can the article be offtopic when the article is the topic?

Re:Offtopic

[FreezerJam]

> who the fuck cares if the web server goes down for the duration?

Your shareholders. You have a duty to care about their investment, not to ask them who the fuck cares.

This doesn't mean that safety doesn't come first. There are lots of dangerous jobs out there - manage the risk, and get the job done.

Furthermore, there are many businesses - things like banks, some public services - which people expect to be running no matter what. Telling a customer he can't get his money has the potential to make a pandemic situation even more severe.

Re:Offtopic

[mebollocks]

what the fuck is the relation between the avian flu and the IT department ...
The artice refers to bird flu specifically because its jsut the latest big thing happening at the moment, but, an IT deprtment should have a disaster recovery plan Anyway. Fire, water damage... anything can happen to mess up your building.
True, its not just the IT department that should have a disaster recovery plan but HR, Facilities/General Affairs should be involved. HR need to organise and inform the troops, in the case of an alternative site transport may have to be organised, facilities will be busy with a million little things.
Make sure you have an alternative site and a disaster recovery plan that everyone is aware of.
Make sure your PBX can re-route deskphone to user's homes like Asterix can.
Centralied computing solutions such as Citrx or Tarantella's make working from home as simple as possible.
VPN solutions can be distributed from a website in an emergency for home workers. Hardware 2-factor tokens can be tough to distribute in an emergency, software tokens are handy in these situations.
Make sure you know your telco's lead time to get a line up and running from your data centre to your site B.

...and so on.

Re:Offtopic

[petermgreen]

Make sure your PBX can re-route deskphone to user's homes like Asterix can.
nice idea but if you wan't to have this work for more than a few people at once you'r going to have to consider how to handle this routing. Will you use the internet (cheap but relatively fragile and you need to check you've got the bandwidth) or pots (lots of extra lines needed).

Centralied computing solutions such as Citrx or Tarantella's make working from home as simple as possible.
isn't this just putting yet more reliance on fragile infrastructure? laptops the user takes home with them could be more sensible.

Make sure you know your telco's lead time to get a line up and running from your data centre to your site B.
but remember if the emergency is an incident that doesn't just affect you then your telcos normal timescales could go out the window.

If there were a real pandemic

[Maxo-Texas]

This would be the least of our worries.

Some cities (not towns) lost 10% of their population in the last big flu pandemic.

Think what that means--

No food
Maybe no water
Definately not a lot of traveling about.
Hospitals completely overloaded

So if you are -really- worried about this...
Make sure you have 2-4 weeks of dry and canned food (pasta is decent).
Have some kind of power that doesn't depend on gasoline (don't need a lot- just some for radio).
Make sure you have 2-4 weeks of water (that's a lot- so maybe just have 25 gallons and be ready to fill extra containers if the water gets erratic).

The food is most critical- quarantines are possible- loss of food transportation is possible.
Water and power are less likely to be disrupted.

Mostly- just hope this doesn't happen- we run a lot closer to the edge than they did inventory wise. Even a mild disruption and there is no food on the shelves.

Re:If there were a real pandemic

[shadowbearer]

  Something else to note is that much more of the population back then was rural, and had better means of supporting themselves (gardens, livestock) than now. So that would make the food situation much, much worse.

  Stock seeds :-)

SB

Move?

[The Fanta Menace]

somewhat prepared to move employees to remote locations

You think I'm moving to a remote location in the event of a pandemic, to save your business? Like hell I will. I'll be bunkering up at home, while stockpiling tinned food and ammo.

Re:Move?

[Firehed]

You think shooting the birds is going to stop the disease spreading? I'd suggest an anti-scaling fence, seeing as you don't need to open (or blow a hole in) your window/front door in order for your home to be protected against unwanted intrusions.

Re:Move?

[Anonymous Coward]

You think I'm moving to a remote location in the event of a pandemic, to save your business? Like hell I will. I'll be bunkering up at home, while stockpiling tinned food and ammo.

If you plan to wait until the event of a pandemic to stock up on food, you're in for a nasty surprise.

Re:Move?

[The Fanta Menace]

It's not the birds I'll be using the ammo on.

Detrimental affect(s) = need for preparation?

[raylu]

A survey last month of 300 Minnesota business officials found most thought a flu pandemic would significantly affect their business, but only 18% had preparedness plans in place.

No duh it would affect their buinesses, but if I were a business official, I wouldn't be prepared either. Why? Because I don't consider it likely.

I think 100% of buisness officials think that an alien invasion would affect their buisnesses. How many have prepared for that?

Re:Detrimental affect(s) = need for preparation?

[Bacon Bits]

More to the point, it's going to screw everyone equally. It seems highly unlikely for, say, Ford and GM to expect significant market gains because half the labor force in Europe and Japan just dropped dead. In case you hadn't noticed, half your market just dropped dead, too.

National avian flu coordinator?

[The Wooden Badger]

This article was the first I heard of the post. I tried googling and the best I could come up with was a UN avian flu coordinator. And his statements that I found on the sites that came up does seem to dispell some of the doom and gloom so prevalent in the mass media. His own words seem to put a bit of perspective on the situation:

At the same time, I think it would be foolish for us to ignore the possibility that there will be another influenza pandemic. Indeed, there are many who say that it's certain that one day there will be a pandemic. We just don't know when and we don't know what will cause it. And this -- these pandemics do have major consequences.

So we do need, I think, to make the preparations in case the pandemic comes and try then to minimize its consequences. Of course, afterwards people might say why did you make all this fuss. But that, we're always facing that sort of comment when we do our public health work.

In one sense it is much ado about nothing. There is a potential for human to human transmission, but they're making a fuss about how devastating it could be. Basically trying to get people serious about the possibility of a pandemic caliber disease so it doesn't become a pandemic. Just throw in the media trying to one up their competitors and the death toll seems like it's already in the millions before it gets out of one or two regions.

This Virus Mutates to Humans You Won't Be So Smug

[Black-Man]

People are scared stiff that it might have mutated to a mammal. If so, human isn't far behind. Be careful what you scoff!

Obviously, you do not get it.

[WindBourne]

Pandemics occur all the time. HIV is occuring right now. Flu has struck all through history and will strike again. People will go to work, because they can not afford to not work. More importantly, ppl want a routine. That does not mean that you need to change 100%. But if you are wise, you will change a number of things.

Here are some thoughts for you:

• The cashier at 711 will great you while wearing gloves and a mask.
• The stores will pick up RFID in ahurry.
• If anybody was smart right now, they would invest heavily into GOOD education software (think about that OSS world; This is a VERY easy way to change every thing). Why educational software? because nobody wants their kid to die. And schools will be a death sentence. When this hits, schools will shrink in size. Parents will pull their kids and home school them (colorado has a nice long distance home school via computers that will take off).
• Computers will be more important than ever before.
• BTW, my bet is that Bush's ppl will use this to push federal IDS with RFID for all. Why? To track anybody who might have the bug. In any place that has outbreaks, the gov. will step in and set up check points through out the city. With federal troops and M16 to back it up vs. National Guards.
• I am also betting that Bush may issue orders that says that everybody must report to work UNLESS they are working out of home. i.e. you can not quit your job, just because you feel that you might catch the flu.

It will be an interesting time.

Re:Obviously, you do not get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

• BTW, my bet is that Bush's ppl will use this to push federal IDS with RFID for all. Why? To track anybody who might have the bug. In any place that has outbreaks, the gov. will step in and set up check points through out the city. With federal troops and M16 to back it up vs. National Guards.
• I am also betting that Bush may issue orders that says that everybody must report to work UNLESS they are working out of home. i.e. you can not quit your job, just because you feel that you might catch the flu.

While I realize "Bush bashing" is the new black, when, exactly, did they repeal the 22nd amendment? Or are you saying that these drastic changes will occur within the next two years?

Re:Obviously, you do not get it.

[jericho4.0]

While I realize "Bush bashing" is the new black, when, exactly, did they repeal the 22nd amendment?"

I think it was a few weeks before they started tourturing people in secret prisons and wiretapping without warrents.

Re:Obviously, you do not get it.

[NumerusSpy]

when, exactly, did they repeal the 22nd amendment?

They haven't yet. But, it isn't for want of trying.

Or are you saying that these drastic changes will occur within the next two years?

The 22nd amendment is nothing to a president with 'war powers' , or, hadn't you yet noticed?

Getting complacent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, they always warn us about the next big hurricane coming to New Orleans, and how it could flood the city, yadda yadda. Doom-and-gloomers. It's never as bad as they say, I'm not going to bother evacuating.

Well...

[Mr. Funky]

Our system-administrator is already a sick bastard (never there, always 'sick') so it won't affect our network, because it is already a big mess with event-logs full of errors.

Having said that (what a relief), I think that all 'important' IT-people (no, not the managers) but the real GOOD BOFH's (but not my mentioned colleague) should get a shot of H5N1-antibody first.

I wouldn't want electricity or other important primary stuff such as ATM's to fail, just because the sysadmins responsible are crowing around with birdflu.

False

[Anonymous Coward]

It is currently epidemic in humans. It is pandemic in birds. It is across half the globe already (beyond a location or a region). It is known that it will be in the americas over the course of the next year in birds.

Flu Scare to Maintain Political Control

[Anonymous Coward]

There's been no crossover of an air-transmissible virus or anything remotely similar to the Spanish flu of 1918-1919 and odds are far against it happening. Just as with "terrorism", the various governments are promoting concern about the "bird flu" merely to scare the populace into submission on security issues and to maintain political control.

The scare provides government dollars to public health officials, medical research centers and doctors, so they're not going to rock the boat.

But look at private industry's response: they see no problem and there's a reason for that - THERE IS NO FRICKEN PROBLEM! The drug companies don't see profits in making flu vaccines because they don't see a significant chance of a serious flu outbreak. If there were a chance, they'd be canning flu vaccine like mad and selling it for beaucoup $$. Prices and profits would be sky-high if a pandemic started, but the industry sector with the most to gain doesn't believe a pandemic will occur.

IOW the flu scare is yet another scam to (in the US) keep the people cowed and fearful, the homeland security dollars flowing and Republicans in power. In Britain correspondingly.

Re:Flu Scare to Maintain Political Control

[cruachan]

There's been no crossover of an air-transmissible virus or anything remotely similar to the Spanish flu of 1918-1919 and odds are far against it happening. Just as with "terrorism", the various governments are promoting concern about the "bird flu" merely to scare the populace into submission on security issues and to maintain political control.

If only that were true. In fact by comparison with H1N1 (recovered from 1918 victims) it appears that H5N1 is about 30 mutations off a human pandemic form. Usual scientific caveats apply, but the suprise to many virologists, frankly, is that we've not already had the pandemic.

It is of course quite possible that H5N1 burns itself out in birds without the necessary mutations occuring, but that is far from certain and in fact probably quite unlikely. One of the more interesting observations amout H1N1 1918 is that is seems to have broken out in several geographicaly disperate countries almost simultaniously, which implies it had mutated by random genetic drift in birds to be human-transmissible then jumped species, so it was probably around in birds quite a long time before randomly acquiring the necessary mutations. H5N1 isn't quite as widespread yet, but it will be within a year.

At a guess then H5N1 may be globably pandemic in birds for several years before we get a human pandemic. If we're lucky that is. Kepp your fingers crossed.

Re:Flu Scare to Maintain Political Control

[frank249]

In fact by comparison with H1N1 (recovered from 1918 victims) it appears that H5N1 is about 30 mutations off a human pandemic form.

Dude, where is your reference for that? How can you predict a mutation? Are not the odds many times greater that it will stay the same or mutate into something less contagious?

Mod Parent Funny

[The Wooden Badger]

Flu scare being pushed by the media (perceived as moderate if you are on the left of the political spectrum and liberal if you are on the right) is a ploy to keep republicans in power? That is pure comedic genius. I need to read more AC posts.

eats, shoots and leaves

[zxnos]

The H5N1 influenza virus, which originated in Asia, could hit the U.S. this fall, potentially causing an epidemic, the nation's chief avian flu coordinator warned.

i think homeland security needs to keep an eye on this guy...

What about zombies and staplers?

[mpaulsen]

Bird flu is a diversion from the REAL killers. Not to worry though, the feds and local governments are on top of this stuff.

The bird flu

[Z00L00K]

is here to stay. One big mistake that is made already is that when a farm gets infected every bird is killed. This will interrupt the natural selection that allows the individuals that can survive the virus to propagate their genes. It may seem cruel, but if I have a stock that is able to survive the bird flu at the next hit I will be better off next time. Of corse that the farms has to be isolated, but that is relatively easy in western society.

Humankind has survived several pandemics already, like the black death that had a large impact in Europe during the middle ages. Of course it had a general impact on society, but the long-time effects weren't serious overall. Today we have a better knowledge about how diseases spread, and a cross-species infection is generally accepted. Use that knowledge, but let also evolution have it's way.

MOD PARENT UP.

[Saven Marek]

Anyone that became infected and didn't exhibit symptoms wouldn't be included (why would they get tested?), and anyone that died in a remote area wouldn't be included either. The more 'infections' that develop in "1st world" countries the better able we will be to determine the true mortality/morbidity rate of avian influenza in humans.


And this doesn't include a potentially huge number of people who do contract H5N1 flu from birds and display nothing more than normal flu symptoms, get over it in a couple of weeks and go on with their lives.

In hong kong, india and parts of europe people showing non-acute symptoms while testing positive for H5N1 have been detected, and only because they were tested in parallel with those who showed more acute symptoms. Because of the concentration on people who get very very sick the statistics are skewed. It's like a self-selected survey or like saying "76% of people involved in fatal car accidents die" and attempting to use those statistics for car accidents in general.

My solution to the H5N1 Pandemic

[slashdot_commentator]

Dear Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni (Director, NIH):

I know American companies have to be more efficient, and workers need to handle more tasks and title responsibilities in order for productivity to increase. But I think if you stop forcing office workers to handle live poultry, you'll prevent the only known vector for contracting the disease.

We would be learning from the mistakes of other cultures; like China, whose individuals are known to raise their own poultry livestock at their residences. This is not as outlandish as it sounds. After all, America has seeemed to have learned from the French to avoid mandatory limits to hours worked per week.

Alternately, if you still think there is a credible concern for the H5N1 virus to mutate to a human communicable form, then I'd suggest taking care of the AIDS epidemic first. AIDS is incurable, and I'm sure you're worried about that virus mutating into a form transmissible by contact, sneezing, or become airborne. Will you be recommending mass cullings of AIDS sufferers? or merely enforced, indefinite quarantine?

I'm sure guys like Rumsfeldt and Frist would welcome gov't financing of vaccine research, but I think Iraq has taken away all of the money available for discretionary spending in the budget. I guess they'll have to take lobbyist jobs, like everyone else.

Re:My solution to the H5N1 Pandemic

[cruachan]

How did this get modded as insightful?

Alternately, if you still think there is a credible concern for the H5N1 virus to mutate to a human communicable form, then I'd suggest taking care of the AIDS epidemic first. AIDS is incurable, and I'm sure you're worried about that virus mutating into a form transmissible by contact, sneezing, or become airborne.

AIDS is an entirerly different virus family to influenza, and as such there is no expectation of a form transmissible by contact - there's probably something deep in the viral structure that means it cannot survive outside the body in an infectious form.

OTOH we know, by comparison with H1N1, that H5N1 is about 30 mutations off being human transmissible at a sufficiently high degree to form a pandemic. This is a perfectly credible threat - it's not certain to happen, but every time a human gets infected the odds increase. Actually the suprise is that we've not already had the pandemic.

Are they joking?

[OBeardedOne]

Company A CEO: "Thank god we spent all that time and money putting in place those safe guards for the bird flu pandemic when company B did absolutely nothing! Now let's use the advantage and sell lots of stuff!"

Company A COO: "Err... All of our staff and customers are dead. I'm afraid it's just you and me left in this $5 billion state of the art clean room.... Want to see me naked?"

Quarantine

[TheLink]

There will always be diseases you can't cure/treat in time. Quarantine works for these diseases.

Everyone stays in their designated areas, lives and dies where they are, for a set period. That way any pandemic will either die out or evolve and become sublethal or those that have inherent immunity would survive it.

The Gov has to make sure there's a sufficient stash of fuel, food and drinking water in the various locations so that people can survive for the set period.

Forget about hospitals. You get a critical injury, just assume you are dead, say your goodbyes etc.

If your telco, water and energy infrastructure can survive without normal maintenance levels for a few months then your country could survive. It would be in a very bad shape, but it could survive.

There would be a few people who will need to move about, they have to move about in special suits using special procedures so they don't catch or spread the disease. Example: those who have to move important physical material about - like blood samples from the various locations. Or important parts for water/energy infrastructure.

Proof?

[Anonymous Coward]

"likelyhood of anything serious coming out of this is not a cause for panic"...and pray tell, do you have a link to back this up? Actual data from some place? Or is this just a wild guess and *hope* on your part, or what?

    You are a trained world class bioresearcher? Because we could get your academic papers published world wide with the proof this will never be a bad pandemic and human to human transmission just will not happen and all the deaths so far didn't really happen and it hasn't spread, it's all an illusion-or what? What are you trying to say, better wait for it to maybe hit hard THEN think about doing something about it? That's the only two choices there are, prepare now, or later. Or, well, third choice, just completely ignore it.

Seems like ALL the other scientists looking at this are all issuing rather freaking severe warnings. They usually don't go quite this far. There's only been a few others even close or similar in the past several decades, ebola, west nile-mutated, and SARS. And all three of those killed people. None of them are as contagious as flu virus though, just a rough rule of thumb. "Flu" is actually pretty easy for humans to get, especially after it has been around for a spell and gets to mutating..

    The gist so far is it has spread to roughly half the globe. Wild birds carry it, and they fly wherever the heck they want to fly to. Just lately they are detecting it in mammals, some of them found deceased from the disease. That means it crossed over or they got infected somehow. Maybe they ate a bird, who knows. Humans eat birds too, sometimes maybe not every single bacteria or virus gets cooked, and they still have to be killed, processed, bagged up, taken home, handled there and cooked.. And so far, that doesn't look to be real safe, any step of the way.

    There have been numerous cases in the past where diseases started out in animals and eventually mutated to the point where it was easy for humans to get them. You admit this, or deny it?

Now, show us where you guarantee this won't happen, with some proof. Note: the other scientists haven't said it would and give dates or anything, just that it is *quite possible*, and that IF this were to occur, and that it sure MIGHT ocur, it just might suck OMG! bad. But you say otherwise. So, let's see the proof, or at least overwhelming evidence. And as to panic, maybe just call it get the thumbs out and do something now in advance with some speed and skill? Is that OK to say that? Because I haven't seen any calls to "panic", what I have seen is many many credible people saying get your assets in order and be prepared for some serious social changes if and when this occurs, because it WON'T be business as usual.

Oh, BTW, just for your info, you probably forgot, MOST of the previous flu related pandemics, like the "spanish flu" started out as AVIAN FLU and mutated until they became human to human transmissible.

Re:Proof?

[VP]

We know that there are less than 200 human cases of the avian flu over the last three years, any avian cases are being closely monitored, and there are no human-to-human transmission cases.

Compare that to the flu of 1918, where the virus had probably years to mutate, there was no surveilance, and on top of that there were 4 years of war and starvation, so an enormous number of people with weekened immune systems were exposed to it.

If you rationally compare the known evidence and history of epidemics and pandemics, it is not hard to see that at this point what is needed is good epidemiological sureveilance, and quick response if something more serious develops. And that is what the scientists are saying, not "Lock youreselves in!" as the originial article tries to imply.

It is too bad so many people fall victims of fear mongering, instead of trying to think rationally about world events...

2-4 weeks of food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, the 1918-1919 flu came in three waves over two years. I don't know what a month of food is gonna do. I guess maybe you'll last a month longer, but you're probably gonna need more than that.

Moreover:

The impact of this pandemic was not limited to 1918-1919. All influenza A pandemics since that time, and indeed almost all cases of influenza A worldwide (excepting human infections from avian viruses such as H5N1 and H7N7), have been caused by descendants of the 1918 virus, including "drifted" H1N1 viruses and reassorted H2N2 and H3N2 viruses. The latter are composed of key genes from the 1918 virus, updated by subsequently incorporated avian influenza genes that code for novel surface proteins, making the 1918 virus indeed the "mother" of all pandemics. /blockquote

Re:2-4 weeks of food?

[khallow]

From the article, it was over a 12 month period. Early 1918 to early 1919. An earlier epidemic starting in 1889 was longer (lasting 2-3 years) so the duration could be a real problem. The point I think is not that you can last the whole duration of the epidemic without stepping outside, but that you have a buffer if food transport breaks down. After all, society should be able to restore food transport after a time. But it'll keep you from having to search for food during the worst times to be looking for it.

Re:2-4 weeks of food?

[Maxo-Texas]

I agree with your basic point. It could be a lot longer than a month.

It's a bit hard to store and hide a year's worth of food (or two as you elude to). And if we truly did go a year without food- well we'd probably mostly be dead anyway (talking end of civilization type stuff there). We are way more concentrated away from farms than back then.

But having a month's worth of food- carefully hidden, would help a lot of no one else had those resources at all.

Definately recommend a gun, bullets, and a willingness to use them too.

Re:Government's plan to save our collective asses

[Anonymous Coward]

You americans are so lucky to have that kind of government. Here in the third world (England), when some fruitcakes blew some trains and buses up, we were told to keep our collective asses at work so as not to disrupt the government's fleeing to safety. Thanks, Mr Bliar, for your swift decisive action.

problem solved

[EvilStein]

hah. my boss would be the first one to call in sick, and the rest of us barely show up to work as it is.

Chances are, we'd never even notice little things like bird flu.. armageddon.. Hurricanes..

hard science

[Cally]

I made the mistake of digging for primary material last year, after an argument with my boss about the effectiveness of Tamiflu. (My employer's classed as 'critical infrastructure', so we have 500 full courses of Tamiflu stockpiled with our names on; the boss asserted that this meant we had nothing to worry about.) However, if you look for coverage in respected journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine or 'Nature', you will see that one of the major problems being planned for is the sudden disposal of millions of corpses. Sounds funny, huh? Go read the articles and tell me you still find it funny.

Re:hard science

[Anonymous Coward]

one of the major problems being planned for is the sudden disposal of millions of corpses.

We have a plan for that. It involves packs of hungry feral dogs.

If the dogs get flu too, then we're fucked...

general background information

[zogger]

just some official background from the government site (some removed to get it to post correctly, more at the URLs)

http://pandemicflu.gov/

related link and info

http://pandemicflu.gov/general/

A pandemic is a global disease outbreak. A flu pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus emerges for which people have little or no immunity and for which there is no vaccine. The disease spreads easily person-to-person, causes serious illness, and can sweep across the country and around the world in very short time.

It is difficult to predict when the next influenza pandemic will occur or how severe it will be. Wherever and whenever a pandemic starts, everyone around the world is at risk. Countries might, through measures such as border closures and travel restrictions, delay arrival of the virus, but cannot stop it

Health professionals are concerned that the continued and expanded spread of a highly pathogenic-and now endemic-avian H5N1 virus across eastern Asia and other countries represents a significant threat. The H5N1 virus has raised concerns about a potential human pandemic because:
Like other influenza viruses, it continues to evolve.

Since 2003, a growing number of human H5N1 cases have been reported in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Iraq, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam, and more than half of the people infected with the H5N1 virus have died. These cases are all believed to have been caused by exposure to infected poultry. The concern is that H5N1 will evolve into a virus capable of human to human transmission.

A pandemic vaccine cannot be produced until a new pandemic influenza virus emerges and is identified. Even after a pandemic influenza virus has been identified, it could take at least 6 months to develop, test and produce vaccine. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has made the establishment and expansion of U.S.-based manufacturing facilities for influenza vaccine a key component of its strategy to improve the security of the influenza vaccine supply.

Antivirals are drugs that may help prevent infection in people at risk and lessen the impact of symptoms in those infected with influenza. It is unlikely that they would substantially modify the course or effectively contain the spread of an influenza pandemic. See Vaccines & Medications.

A pandemic may come and go in waves, each of which can last for six to eight weeks. An especially severe influenza pandemic could lead to high levels of illness, death, social disruption, and economic loss. Everyday life would be disrupted because so many people in so many places become seriously ill at the same time. Impacts can range from school and business closings to the interruption of basic services such as public transportation and food delivery.

Pandemics Death
Toll Since 1900

1918-1919

U.S....

500,000+

Worldwide...

40,000,000+

1957-1958

U.S....

70,000+

Worldwide...

1-2,000,000

1968-1969

U.S....

34,000+

Worldwide...

700,000+

A substantial percentage of the world's population will require some form of medical care. Health care facilities can be overwhelmed, creating a shortage of hospital staff, beds, ventilators and other supplies. Surge capacity at non-traditional sites such as schools may need to be created to cope with demand.

The need for vaccine is likely to outstrip supply and the supply of antiviral drugs is also likely to be inadequate early in a pandemic. Difficult decisions will need to be made regarding who gets antiviral drugs and vaccines.

Death rates are determined by four factors: the number of people who become infected, the virulence of the virus, the underlying characteristics and vulnerability of affected populations and the availability and effectiveness of preventive measures.

The United States has been working closely with other cou

Originated...?

[loyukfai]

"...H5N1 influenza virus, which originated in Asia, could hit the U.S. this fall..."

Could "discovered" better fit for the word "originated" here?

Re:Originated...?

[Detritus]

No. Agricultural practices in many Asian countries make them a breeding ground for new strains of influenza. If it makes you feel better, call it the Pottsylvania Flu. They won't complain.

Re:Originated...?

[loyukfai]

I thought such practices were not originated in the Asia...?

Despite The Drama

[jaxon6]

So, if a pandemic does hit, that pretty much means life as we know it will come to a crawl. After Katrina, the entire nation (and the world, but as an American, I can only personally relate to the effect on the ol US of A) was in a world of hurt. Granted, it wasn't disastrous for the rest of the country, but it definitely put a dent in our paycheck.
Now, if something like this pandemic hits, then there will be an extreme need for IT folk to take care of the infrastructre that the entire modern medical community is dependent on. My original thought, if it can be called original, is that if some of us actually don the mask, take all the precautions that nurses, for example, take, then that will put us in a position where we would be able to help thousands, if not millions of sick and afflicted.
I don't know about you, but just the thought of that good that I could do would have me wearing a mask 24/7 as soon as the first news of epidemic comes out of SE Asia.
For all of those near a major city, it is only remedial that we realize that as soon as Singapore is affected, for example, then we are also affected, what with global travel the way it is now.

Ummm... yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the H5N1 virus goes pandemic, the people that bothered to write preparedness plans will be using that paper to light funeral pyres... no kidding. The employees they THINK are going to "work from home" will either be too busy hoarding food and ammunition or too busy dying. For some reason, exploring how prepared business IT departments are for a pandemic seems, well, silly. A typical town of 10,000 people will have a hospital with between 2 and 4 ventilators... and consistant procession of (at least) twice that number needing them. A better question would be, "Are hospitals prepared to keep people from dying if there is a pandemic"

Be prepared:

[Anne Thwacks]

Its absolutely essential to keep chickens and swans out of the server room. Get them out NOW!

Re:Be prepared:

[TeknoHog]

Fortunately, a true slashdotter will never have any contact with chicks.

Don't forget what happens...

[maybeHere]

... once you reach the remote location: the zombies are already there!

Immunize the kids

[Overzeetop]

Yes, yes, I know, there isn't a proven vaccine for H5N1 yet, but the likelihood of creating one is fairly reasonable to expect. So...

Get every shcool age child, especially those under 12, into a clinic to be vaccinated. From the view of protecting the public, the CDCs limits on vaccinations for the elderly, infant, and asthmatic make little sense. Yes, I know - those are the people most likely to die from influenza, they should get vaccinated, too. But little kids are such a strong vector for any disease - primarily due to their lack of proper hygene regimen - that they should really be the ones to target. Keep the kids from getting it and its far less likely to be passed from child to child in school/daycare/playgroup, and then to the rest of the family (including elderly relatives), and on through the chain of human interaction.

I would gladly give up my dose if I knew that every kid in every primary school would get theirs.

BTW - I heard that a bunch of flu vaccine went to waste this year in the US. I'm prat of the problem because I didn't get mine. Why? I wasn't allowed to until after a certain date. By the time that date came around, we were half way through the flu season. I suspect most of us in the "healthy" population figured that by the time we were allowed to get vaccinated and it take full effect, we would be through most of the flu season, and there would be no point. It's like buying disabiliy insurance when your a year or two from retirement...why bother? Good intentions (by the CDC), but poorly implemented. It will only make it harder for the companies making these (relatively) low-margin products to continue.

If it is not a big deal, then why all the panic?

[frank249]

Each year between 50 - 100 people per million of population die from the various forms of influenza that are commonly refered to as flu. Since 1997, only 50 people who had close contact with birds have died from Avian flu. The media is full of reports that this flu has the potential to become a pandemic. If so, it could kill between 5 to 250 million people. Most likely it will only be 5 people ... but it could be 250 million!

So wait a minute, doesn't every disease have the chance to mutate into something much worse not just avian flu? AIDs is incurable, has infected hundreds of millions and is transmited only by contact. What if it mutated so it was spread airborne? Everyday millions of bad things could happen but don't and we are not panicking over all of them.

So ask yourself why all the fuss? What is going on that could benefit from people being distracted?

Could it be the war in Iraq, scandals, economy, politics? Take your pick. We should be demanding the media to focus on the real issues and hold the politician's feet to the fire and not be distracted by nonissues.

Eradicate Asia

[Anonymous Coward]

Eradicate Asia and eradicate all those "we live with our pigs" diseases in one schwoop.

A new Dark Age

[Anonymous Coward]

1.)In 1918 every human on the face of the earth eventually breathed in the 'Spanish Flu' virus; only a small number of south Paciic islands were spared.
2.)Avian Flu doesn't just make one ill--it destroys lung tissue--destroys it.
3.)Being young and healthy made no difference to mortality rates in 1918- there are no reasons to believe it will in an avian strain.
4.) It does not appear the US Government has now or intends to have enough antivirals to isolate even a small area of the the country. (probably not even the intention of US stockpiles)
5.) There appears to be supperssion of information relating to natural medicinals such as Maitake and Reishi mushrooms.
6.)...

System Priorites

[jrmcferren]

If this is going to be as bad as people think and you are required to turn off one portion of your operationto allow the remaining staff to maintain the rest, which of the following would you shut down: -Phone System -Customer Database -Company Website Of those I would run over and pull the plug on the Company webserver and get back to work on the others. Some mission critical systems may need your attention and other systems will have to be shut down to allow for the mission critical systems to be maintained.

Y2K

[BroadwayBlue]

Just dust off your Y2K Survival Kit and you will be fine.

Who Said it was " pushed by media"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not I. Learn to read, you fricken dyslexic.

Re:Who Said it was " pushed by media"?

[The Wooden Badger]

The flu scare is being pushed by the media. How else are we hearing about it? Sure the government is talking about it, but it's being forced down our throats every night on the nightly news. I state the media is pushing it, not because you said it, but because the media is pushing it. Google news search for the bird flu and you find all kinds of venerable American news institutions on the first page of hits like Reuters, United Press International, ABC News, and the New York Times (can't accuse the NYT of being part of any republican conspiracy). If the above big guns in tne news media are part of a republican conspiracy then I am a fricken dyslexic idiot and reading is the least of my concern. So, yes, you are pretty funny, and, no, I don't need to learn to read. While I'm learning to read, check up on the grammatical rules Coward.

Mod Parent up, Please

[WindBourne]

You are correct. Mea Culpa. Sorry about that.

I left the bio world in '86 to code (a lot more interesting as I did not want to do DOD work). After leaving it, I stayed up on HIV, WEE, VEE, and West Nile research until about 94, when I ran out of time. More importantly, I have noticed that I have forgotten a lot of the stuff.

So wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

You can fit the world population in Texas? And with Land? Divide the world pop of 6 Billion (actually, much bigger, but we will be kind), by Texas Acre. There are 268,820 miles^2 in Texas. Multiple by 640 to get acerage., and you get 172,044,800 acres. So the final amount is 34 people / acre.

Not even close to what you suggest. Since, you seem to have math skills similar to Bush, I am guessing that you both attended the same schools? Offhand, I would fire you first, for being a total idiot.

Re:So wrong

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Well coward, that works out at 10m x 10m for every man, woman and child, or about 25m by 25m for every family of five. You can't fit in that, coward, you really are justifying the fat ass american cliche. Keep sucking down those cheeseburgers, baby.

Re:Guess who has shares in the cure manufacturer

[NumerusSpy]

Funny how you stated a simple fact and got modded down as a troll. Maybe you're one of those conspiracy theorists and you need to be modded down automatically as facts are hard to reconcile with the truth sometimes.

Dangerous my behind...

[dr_light]

All this fear mongering reminds me of the Y2K bug and all the disasters that were expected to happen. Which didn't happen. And if it's so lethal, how come there aren't millions of deaths? How much is the vaccine and how many suckers bought it? Even if it's just 10 dollars a dose, if 50 million people all over the world buy it, that's half a billion dollars in sales over a media scare tactic.

the entire worlds population could fit in Texas

[dr_light]

No kidding? If it's true, I'd like to see a valid source backing this up. Somehow though, I doubt it.