# 3576
As a Floridian, I’m used to looking towards the tropics for threats this time of year. August, September . . . and sometimes October are the months that brew the big storms.
We get a lot of false alarms, of course.
A lot of storms that try, but never coalesce into a real monster. And more often than not, the big storms weaken before they reach shore, or sometimes turn back out to sea.
But every once in awhile a really big storm manages to hold itself together long enough to strike a populated area. And when that happens, the damage and loss of life can be enormous.
Pandemics are a lot like hurricanes.
Both are extremely unpredictable, and it is impossible to gauge the damage either will do until the threat passes.
Right now, we appear to have a modest little pandemic going, sparked when a novel H1N1 virus jumped from pigs to humans.
The virus is spreading rapidly, particularly in the southern hemisphere. Surprisingly, it is also spreading pretty well north of the equator in what is normally a quiescent time for flu.
With fall, and school re-openings and cooler weather just around the corner, the expectation is that this virus will take off in the northern hemisphere over the next couple of months, and that we are in for a very bad flu season.
How bad? No one knows.
If the H1N1 virus remains as it is right now, and doesn’t pick up virulence through antigenic drift or shift, then we may get by with a mild or moderate pandemic.
Akin to what we saw in 1968 and 1957.
A lot of people will be sickened by this virus, but the number of deaths will be limited. This is the best-case scenario, and would be a Category 1 pandemic.
While the death toll of a Category 1 pandemic might be low, that hardly makes it a trivial event.
Up to 90,000 Americans could die in a Category 1 pandemic, or 2.5 x’s more than in a normal flu season.
And given the age shift we’ve seen with this virus, with it attacking those under 65 with a greater frequency and ferocity than it does elderly victims, many of these deaths are likely to fall among younger adults and children.
While deaths are the ultimate measure of a pandemic’s impact, like hurricanes, pandemics can cause a lot of damage without causing a huge loss of life.
A Low Mortality-High Morbidity pandemic (one that causes few deaths, but a lot of sickness) would place a huge strain on our economy, our society, and most particularly on our medical delivery system.
Hospitals, particularly Emergency rooms and Intensive Care Units, are likely to be deluged with flu patients, along with the `worried well’, this fall and winter. Most of our hospitals operate with very little built-in surge capacity and aren’t set up to deal with double or triple the number of patients they normally see.
And of course, the Health Care staff at these facilities are at an even greater risk of catching the virus than the general public, due to constant exposure to infected patients. With temporary staff reductions due to attrition from the virus, would come employee fatigue and a greater chance of making errors.
Even a mild-to-moderate pandemic would prove a serious challenge to our health care delivery system, and that could impact non-flu patients as badly as those with the virus.
Of course, we’ve no guarantee that this pandemic will remain a low mortality event. Flu viruses mutate. They can combine, or reassort, with other flu viruses and produce new offspring with different characteristics.
We could easily find ourselves facing a much more serious threat 2 months, or 6 months, or even a year from now.
Over the past 55 years I’ve prepared for a lot of hurricanes that never came, and rode through a number of storms that didn’t live up to the hype.
Of course, there have been a couple of notable exceptions along the way that left an indelible impression, which is why I respect these storms and stay prepared.
To that end, I recommend all of my readers to go to the HHS’s flu.gov planning page, and take seriously the advice contained within.
Until it is over, we won’t know what kind of viral storm novel H1N1 is going to produce.
Anyone who says they know right now, is simply guessing.
The smart money says you prepare as if it could be bad, and be thankful if it turns out to be less than feared. And that is a good preparedness policy, no matter what threat you are preparing for.
Hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, and floods are all serious threats, and we should all be prepared – all the time – to deal with the unexpected.
For more information on preparedness, you can go to any of these reputable sites.
FEMA http://www.fema.gov/index.shtm
READY.GOV http://www.ready.gov/
AMERICAN RED CROSS http://www.redcross.org/
For more in-depth emergency preparedness information I can think of no better resource than GetPandemicReady.Org.
And lastly, there has never been a better time to volunteer to help with the American Red Cross, The Medical Reserve Corps, CERT, or your Neighborhood watch. Individual preparedness is great, but you are only as prepared as your neighbors and your community.
