# 1174
Not exactly an upbeat appraisal of where we are as a nation in our pandemic preparedness, this story today in The Federal Times looks at the inconsistent levels of preparedness around the country.
This is just an excerpt, follow the link to read the entire article.
One quibble, why do reporters keep referencing ancient statistics?
The `200,000 could die in a pandemic' apparently comes from a paper published in 1999 entitled The Economic Impact of Pandemic Influenza In the United States: Priorities for Intervention by Martin I. Meltzer, Nancy J. Cox, and Keiji Fukuda Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
We estimated the possible effects of the next influenza pandemic in the United States and analyzed the economic impact of vaccine-based interventions. Using death rates, hospitalization data, and outpatient visits, we estimated 89,000 to 207,000 deaths; 314,000 to 734,000 hospitalizations; 18 to 42 million outpatient visits; and 20 to 47 million additional illnesses.
This is a factoid that apparently won't die. It gets dredged up about once a week by some newspaper reporter somewhere around the country, but doesn't represent current thinking about the likely death toll in a severe pandemic.
I'll do the math.
If 40% of the nation were sickened by a pandemic, as alluded to in this article, that would mean 120 million would become infected. If only 200,000 died, that would mean that the mortality rate would be 1 person in 600.
Compare that to 1918, when roughly 1 person out of every 50 infected died, and the numbers would seem not only overly optimistic, but laughably so.
Three times more people died in 1918, when the population of the country was only 1/3rd of what it is today.
The Federal government is figuring that a 1918 style pandemic could kill as many as 2 million Americans, a number 10 times higher than this article presents.
But other than that lapse, this is a good article.
October 15, 2007
When you ask federal officials around the country if they are prepared for a pandemic flu, the answers are unsettling.
“It is kind of a train wreck if we get into a pandemic because if it hits the entire country at once, if it spreads at lightning speed, it has the potential to overwhelm us,” said Ray Morris, executive director of the Minnesota Federal Executive Board. “I would agree that even though a lot has been done, a lot more needs to be done.”
The country is overdue for an outbreak of pandemic influenza, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warn. Concerns in recent years have focused on the possibility that the avian flu that has hit select parts of the world could morph into a deadly human-to-human disease for which there is no known cure.
CDC warns that such an outbreak could disable up to 40 percent of the federal work force — either by making them ill, killing them or forcing them to stay at home to care for ill relatives or as a safety precaution. In all, experts say, a pandemic could sicken as many as 40 percent of Americans and kill as many as 200,000.
