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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."
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.