MYTH # 1 - Just Another Y2K
I hear this one used all the time, and frankly, it burns my grits.
In fact, even Mike Leavitt, our esteemed Secretary of HHS, who is going around the country to encourage local officials to prepare for a pandemic, frequently uses it in his message. He says it could be "another Y2K" in which scientists were concerned about something that didn't happen.
He really should know better. Sigh.
That's like saying concerns back in 1940 that the Nazi's were going to overrun Europe were unfounded, because it didn't happen.
It didn't happen because of the millions of men and women who drove back the Nazis. Their sacrifices, on the beaches of Normandy, and all across Europe are what turned the tide.
And the projected chaos of Y2K didn't happen because millions of programmers worked night and day for years to ensure it wouldn't happen.
I should know. I was one of them.
It's easy to laugh at our concerns back in 1997 about power outages and supply chain problems now, but nobody was laughing back then. And the fact that nothing bad happened is a testiment to those millions of unsung heros, the computer geeks, who managed to seek out and erradicate millions of date related computer glitches before the appointed hour.
It was a near thing. And it could have easily gone the other way.
But the world recognized the threat, and mobilized to defeat it. Something we could do with a bit of today.
Damn shame that our success back then is being used to water down the threat today, instead of pointing out that, by directing are nation's resources we can mitigate, and sometimes even eliminate, a national threat.
