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DoD Declassifies Flu Pandemic Plan Containing Sobering Assumptions
An anonymous reader writes "The Department of Defense has just declassified a copy of its 2009 Concept of Operations Plan for an Influenza Pandemic. Among the Plan's scary yet reasonable assumptions are that in the United States, such a pandemic will kill 2 percent of the infected population, or about 2 million people. The plan also assumes that a vaccine won't be available for at least 4 to 6 months after confirmation of sustained human transmission, and that the weekly vaccine manufacturing capability will only produce 1 percent of the total US vaccine required. State and local governments will be overwhelmed, and civilian mortuary operations will require military augmentation. Measures such as limiting public gatherings, closing schools, social distancing, protective sequestration and masking will be required to limit transmission and reduce illness and death. International and interstate transportation will be restricted to contain the spread of the virus. If a pandemic starts outside the US, it will enter the country at multiple locations and spread quickly to other parts of the country. A related document, CONPLAN 3591-09, was released by DoD in 2010."
I guess all the Preppers will have the last laugh as they eat their freeze dried food in their bunkers, with gun in lap, waiting for vaccine to become available.
I prefer the swine flu over the bird flu. Bacon tastes so much better coming back up.
It's really scary because I work for an Internet startup. Without any technology to let us communicate and collaborate without being in the same room, we are forced to come into our open plan office every day and be exposed to contagious disease.
I don't find this scary at all. It's the reality of the world we live in. What would be scary is if the people in charge of managing such a crisis didn't have a plan, and instead choose to stick their fingers in their ears and sing "glory glory halleluja" while the country died. Literally. Why do people always seem to think things like this are "scary"? That kind of attitude is what creates truly scary situations: The kind nobody was prepared for and is now ravaging the population unchecked. That is scary. A plan... that's reassuring.
Or maybe I'm just from some bizarro alternate universe where being prepared is frightening and living in ignorance is bliss.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
While such plans do have potential practical value, isn't the usual thrust "what new pet program do our sponsors want funded?"
The way we create vaccines is overly calendar time long (but sidesteps questions about safety of new techniques).Also our general anti-viral stocks are low.
Sponsors from either (or both) camps may be influencing both the generation and now the distribution of the report.
The last great US flu epidemic only killed so many because of the crude state of medicine at the time and uneven sanitation in large U.S. cities. Even a virulent flu would be unlikely to rack up such a death toll in a first world nation.
That's correct. Instead of a 3-5% mortality rate they're expecting a 2% (TFA) rate.
Progress as promised!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
This is all fine and good but what happens AFTER the Pandemic could be just as important.
After millions of people dying the social upheaval politically would be insane. The current order of things would be put on it's head, and what it settled out to be could be anybody's guess.
For example, assuming that most infections happened in cities that could dramatically change voting patterns.
For reference, the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 is estimated to have killed anywhere from 3 to 6 percent of world population. It presumably would have been worse in more densly populated areas.
You'd like to to think we've gotten a bit better at treating the flu in the last century or so. However, I don't think you could seriously argue that 2% is too high for a worst-case scenario. It might be too low.
I find it disturbing how many redacted gray boxes are found on something clearly marked "unclassified".
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
World Population > The Infected Population.
The article is calling out a 2% mortality rate for the infected population, not the population of the world.
This is far less than the 3-5 percent mortality of the world population seen during the 1918 pandemic.
--
BMO
Actually, the 2011 Steven Soderbergh movie Contagion is a fairly realistic depiction of a pandemic and the reaction in the US and around the world. Well-researched, keeps the fearmongering to a minimum while still depicting a scary scenario. Takes into account the role of fringe media in spreading panic/pseudoscientific "cures," among other clever touches. A public health organization arranged for a free screening in my area, with a Q&A period afterward, if that gives you any indication of its accuracy.
Breakfast served all day!
I'd say 18-24 months for a vaccine, and 12%-14% population loss due to a real influenza pandemic.
And your credentials, sir? Internet pundit. Okay, how about a citation? Don't have one of those either. Okay. Well thanks, but I think I'll go with the formerly classified document released by actual experts over your knee-jerk "I think it's optimistic, and here's some numbers I think are more realistic!" post.
Purely for shits and giggles, I went and looked up what unclassified documents had to say about the likely timeline. Those numbers look similar to what's been revealed in this document. They, uhh, don't look like your numbers. According to WHO, it would take 5-6 months to produce a vaccine. Not nearly two years. If you were right, we would never have a flu vaccine available, yet every year like clockwork they show up at hospitals and clinics with those reminders to get vaccinated before the season starts. So I'm going to go with the DoD, CDC, and WHO's assessment on that timeframe, thanks.
However, it's just re-arranging deck chairs on the titanic either way. Our vaccine production, whether optimistic, or pessimistic, won't matter; From start to finish, the entire pandemic would last from 6-8 to perhaps 12 weeks. That's about as long as it takes the vaccine to take effect. In other words, even if we developed a vaccine the same day as patient zero showed up, and completely eliminated the production side of the equation and assumed limitless vaccines available to everyone, and that somehow, by magical fairy dust, everyone got the vaccine that same day... over a third of the population would still get infected and still suffer whatever the casualty rate is. Knock that timetable out by a month and it's everyone. Vaccine is useless.
In other words, the strategy outlined by the DoD -- containment and isolation, remains the only effective strategy. A vaccine being put in development would be there to prevent secondary infection and to have confidence that it is safe to end quarantine procedure. That's all a vaccine buys you; Some after-action security. Vaccination is not a priority. Even under super-optimal conditions, it's of limited value to us. We could throw billions at the problem trying to create a rapid response infrastructure and it would amount to exactly dick at a huge cost.
Now as far as your population loss numbers... There's just no way to predict that with confidence. The numbers they quoted are based on a historical evaluation of data over the last 50 years... which seems reasonable from a statistical standpoint... but the Pandemic of 1918 killed over 90% of the population. It was on par with the Black Death. That's pretty much the worst-case scenario -- the average case is much, much more mild. But we do know it can happen... and it's just a gamble as to when.
So I'm with the CDC and DoD on this; Containment. Isolation. Quarantine. That's our strategy, and given our current level of technology... it's the only viable one.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Umm, no.
The 1918 pandemic killed 10-20% of the people infected.
Note that that particular flu infected ~25% of the world's population.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Sealand!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
To further support your statement:
The global mortality rate from the 1918/1919 pandemic is not known, but an estimated 10% to 20% of those who were infected died. With about a third of the world population infected, this case-fatality ratio means 3% to 6% of the entire global population died.[29] Influenza may have killed as many as 25 million people in its first 25 weeks. Older estimates say it killed 40–50 million people,[4] while current estimates say 50–100 million people worldwide were killed.[30]
You mean, fictional, SO FAR.
Consider the progress of biotech. Then give it another 5-10 years, and imagine the biotech equivalent of a script kiddie. Playing with, for example, rabies. Then imagine some angry bio-scriptkiddie releasing an airborne, virulent rabies variant with a very short incubation period.
No, it's not the hordes of the Living Dead, feasting on human flesh. But the effects might well be similar. . .
Shutting down interstate travel, social distancing, sequestration. Seems like I may need to start stockpiling that water, food and ammo.
They said infected population, not total population. They are assuming that about one third of the population could get infected.
Proverbs 21:19
Knock that timetable out by a month and it's everyone.
Is your assumption that nobody has more than a month's worth of supplies? You should try visiting middle America sometime. Heck, especially Utah.
There are millions of people who will stay home for six months; some you'll see two years later.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
...films depicting chaos and societal breakdown aren't that far off, aye?
Yes they are. Look at what happened in the US during the 1918-1919 flu pandemic. It wasn't all pretty, but it certainly wasn't Zombie Apocalypse 17-1/2.
a. When was the Department of Defense put in charge of health matters? Aren't the CDC, NIH, and (of course) NSA supposed to handle that?
b. Why was the country's response to the flu classified in the first place?
for the movie Contagion?
In the case of a real pandemic on such a scale, I think you'd see labs working around the clock for a cure, and many of them. Not only would governments be putting a lot of pressure, the people working there would very likely feel the pain themselves (relatives, friends, etc.). Plus, for all the money grubbers, making a vaccine that needs to be used on millions of people is a surefire way of getting rich.
It's not labs though, it's raw materials. There's only so many chickens and chicken eggs you can get to grow vaccine from, it can only be done so fast and there's a definite lag in converting existing production lines to create a new vaccine (since everything has to be isolated and grown up).
with a very short incubation period.
You actually want a long incubation period so that the infected stay symptomless (but infective) for as long as possible. If the symptoms are severe and the incubation time short (e.g. flaviviridae like marburg or ebola) they kill the host before they have time to infect enough people. In essence, the virus is *too* virulent that it goes through the available susceptible people too quickly.
More deadly would be a virus that has is lethal but does not show symptoms for a period that exceeds its infective period. A good example is the early years of the HIV era -- lethal virus, long time before symptoms start, and infectious much earlier than any symptoms start to show up.
-- The Genesis project? What's that?
No need for script kiddies, Ebola's symptoms can be described by a zombie like state in its later stages. Apart from multiple organ failure prior to death (walking dead), you experience "sludging" of the brain leaving you incognizant but retaining motor control. Then, the sloughing off of tissue in the esophagus leads to spewing of infected blood. All in all, a nasty way to go, but very comparable to a classic slow zombie.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Frank Herbert's 'The White Plague'
You know you're in trouble when Sealand is the answer to a question.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Ebola kills TOO fast. For an honest-to-god Zombie Virus, you want one that deactivates/destroys higher mental functions and possibly ups aggression.
Which I why my script-kiddie scenario suggested a rabies variant. . .
You know, I was thinking of saying something to the effect of, 'are we actually trying to work out the most effective way to engineer a zombie plague?'
Then I remembered what crowd I'm talking about... that said, carry on.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You know you're in trouble when Sealand is the answer to a question.
You know, that statement seems scientifically sound enough to get it's own title.
The Sealand Conjecture: anytime "move to Sealand" seems like a wise and/or appropriate response, you're already completely fucked.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
They didn't have to contend with FEMA being run by a horse show judge with connections.
Really ??
http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/
Rabies is a preventable viral disease of mammals most often transmitted through the bite of a rabid animal. The vast majority of rabies cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) each year occur in wild animals like raccoons, skunks, bats, and foxes.
The rabies virus infects the central nervous system, ultimately causing disease in the brain and death. The early symptoms of rabies in people are similar to that of many other illnesses, including fever, headache, and general weakness or discomfort. As the disease progresses, more specific symptoms appear and may include insomnia, anxiety, confusion, slight or partial paralysis, excitation, hallucinations, agitation, hypersalivation (increase in saliva), difficulty swallowing, and hydrophobia (fear of water). Death usually occurs within days of the onset of these symptoms.
Except that rabies wouldn't make people start eating other people. It just makes them hallucinate, delirious, causes partial paralysis and fear of consuming water or fluids (and a few other things, but none of which are eating people.)
AJ Henderson
no, I will not mock earthquake planning, but a disease passing from birds to humans I will mock any day, and the same for fearmongering
Then you are grossly ignorant of zoonosis and where "new" diseases come from. Most human pandemics come from animal hosts. Humans are very rarely the host in which initial mutations develop, and pandemic deaths are generally a sign of a disease with poor evolutionary fitness in its new human environment (because it destroys its primary ecosystem too fast to effectively spread in perpetuity).
Influenza A is a pathogen regularly crosses between species. Birds & swine are the most common crossover species, but flu can also infect dogs, horses, and bats, among many other species.
It's by far not the only one. West Nile virus has birds as a primary reservoir and is a major issue for horse owners. Mice are the origin for hantaviruses like the Sin Nombre virus (aka "Four Corners disease") as well as the most common carriers of Lyme disease (not deer). The black plague persists to this day in rodent populations including rats, squirrels, and chipmunks. Shellfish can act as reservoirs for cholera. SARS came from bats, and they're our best lead for where Ebola came from. Snails are the carriers between human hosts for schistosomiasis. Salmonella comes from bird and reptile hosts (especially turtles).
Birds, as warm-blooded creatures, are an excellent host for many human pathogens. They are also nigh ubiquitous, have a relatively fast breeding and replacement cycle, and migratory species can pick up and spread diseases over an amazingly wide area. Scoff all you want, but the only thing that's more of a threat to humans as a source of infectious disease than birds are bats, because bats are the second most diverse order of mammals after rodents and have many of the same flying habits of birds.
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