Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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.
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%.
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.
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.
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.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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.
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.
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).