Monday Morning Quarterbacking

My quick and dirty review last night of Dateline NBC only covered the highlights of what I found lacking in their presentation. This morning, having had the benefit of a few hours of sleep, and some time to ponder the situation, I’ve decided to go a little more in depth.

First, I will grant the producers that trying to present a clear picture of a future event, particularly one as devastating as a pandemic, is no easy task. Tell the truth, and you open yourself up for heavy criticism. Skeptics are already crucifying ABC for their Bird Flu disaster movie coming up next month. And there are conflicting theories as to how a pandemic would pan out. So a certain amount of CYA is to be expected.

So, based on these variables, I will grant they did a fair job.

A pandemic is a hard concept to get across to people, particularly to a population that still believes `it can’t happen here’. Our faith in our technology, and in our national immunity to anything really, really bad happening, is a tough hurdle to overcome. Even when you add 9/11 and Katrina into the mix, compared to other countries, we’ve led relatively disaster free lives. No wars on our soil in more than 140 years, no bloody revolutions, no dictatorships, and no pandemics of consequence since 1918.

Except for the bad old days of the cold war, when nuclear annihilation was perceived as a real threat, we’ve been unusually blessed.

So the idea that a virus could sweep around the globe, killing millions, is a hard concept to sell. We have modern hospitals, miracle medicines, and Yankee ingenuity on our side. Surely we could fight this.

But, of course, a virus is no respecter of national borders. And our hospitals are already at full capacity. There is no vaccine, and there is unlikely to be any vaccine for a long time. Our stockpile of antivirals is not only inadequate, it is also unknown if they will be effective. For all intents and purposes, our ability to fight a pandemic is not much better today than it was in 1918.

Our only advantage over what happened in the Spanish Influenza is that we can see it coming this time. Or at least we believe we can. We won’t be blindsided. But all the warning in the world will do us no good if we don’t use it to prepare.

And while my biggest complaint with the show was the advice to stockpile 2 weeks worth of supplies, I understand why they came up with that number. Two weeks is better than nothing, and to tell Americans to stock up for 3 months or 6 months would result in one of two things happening. Disbelief and apathy, or a run on supplies that would cripple the economy overnight.

No one asked Mike Levitt how much he has stockpiled. But I’ll wager it’s more than 2 weeks worth. Dr. Robert Webster, head of virology at St. Judes Hospital and a world-renowned `flu hunter’, has 3 months stockpiled. The two-week recommendation was obviously a political compromise. Hopefully, those who watched and paid attention will see that it would be totally inadequate.

Although not explicitly stated, it was implied that hospitals would cope, although they showed patient’s being treated in hallways. The scene they should have showed was of people being turned away from hospitals. Told to go home and ride it out there. That’s the real plan, and the one endorsed by most doctors. And for most people, the level of care they will receive at home will far surpass anything an overrun hospital is likely to provide.

The `gentle economic recovery’ (I’m still not sure what that means) alluded to in the show was designed, I guess, to soothe an already nervous public. How they came up with that phrase is beyond me, but as no one really knows how badly this will affect the economy, I guess they had to say something. I would expect any pandemic to have far-reaching and long lasting effects on the economy. But once again, to say too much could frighten the herd. People might sell their stocks, or cash in their 401K’s.

While the Dateline NBC show indicated the worst would be over in a year, the 1918 pandemic went on for 18 months. With more than one clade (version) of the virus out there, it’s anyone’s guess how long, and how many waves, of the pandemic we’d be in for. Americans have notoriously short attention spans. To most, I guess, a year seems like forever. While misleading, I suspect the impact of saying 18 months or two years would not have been appreciably greater.

So, despite my misgivings, I will give credit where credit is due. They at least did the show, and tried to convey the idea that the problem was serious. Dateline is, after all, what is known as a magazine news program.

One can’t really fault them for being slick and glossy.

It pretty much defines the genre.