# 261
This past week has seen the inevitable flurry of year-end articles about the failure of a bird flu pandemic to appear, and skeptical, often mean spirited jabs at those who would promote pandemic preparedness. Since it seems that critics of pandemic preparedness have some difficulties reading for comprehension, allow me to make an unambiguous point here.
NO REPUTABLE SCIENTIST PREDICTED THAT A PANDEMIC WOULD OCCUR THIS YEAR.
Not one. Zero. Nada.
And for the record, no reputable scientist is predicting a pandemic in 2007, either.
What scientists are telling us is that our odds of seeing a pandemic over the next few years are heightened, due to the emergence of the H5N1 bird flu virus. And that history tells us that pandemics tend to occur about 3 times each century, and so we should be preparing for the next one.
A simple enough message, despite the fact that many people get it wrong. Instead, they have morphed this message into something it isn’t, a doomsday prediction, in order to take shots at it.
For decades, the residents of New Orleans worried about their levees, and their inability to hold back a storm surge from a major Hurricane. National Geographic ran a fictionalized account a couple of years ago about what would happen should the levees fail, and forecast with amazing accuracy the events surrounding hurricane Katrina. The New Orleans Newspapers had, for many years, railed against the cities inadequate defenses should a hurricane strike.
And yet, most people called it fear mongering.
Fixing the levees was too expensive, they said. A hurricane of the magnitude required to breach them might not occur for 100 years. The city’s defenses were `adequate’ for a category 3 storm, and that was sufficient in the eyes of the government. Talk of the levees failing, and of massive flooding and loss of life was `doom saying’ and bad for the economy.
And so nothing was done. The problem was ignored. And each year that passed, when no hurricane appeared to wipe out the city, those that delighted in denigrating the `alarmists’ pointed their fingers and smugly said `I told you so!’
Then Hurricane Katrina waltzed up out of the Gulf of Mexico, and changed everything forever.
After the fact, nearly everyone admitted a disaster was inevitable. The city was, after all, built below sea level. It was surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River, and it was exposed to one of the best breeding grounds for tropical storms in the world. Add in an inadequate levee system, along with a non-existent evacuation plan, and you had a recipe for disaster.
Anybody could see that. In retrospect, anyway.
Today, those of us in the world of pandemic preparedness are walking in the same path as those who pointed out the fragility of New Orleans in the face of a major Hurricane. We are accused of fear mongering, of wanting to waste scarce resources on a threat that hasn’t yet arrived, and of being ghoulish doomsayers of the highest magnitude.
In reality, we simply see a major threat, and understand that our `levees' against a pandemic are not only inadequate; they barely exist at all.
With proper funding, and a concerted effort, we could over a period of years be far more ready to weather a viral storm than we are today. But that would take a commitment by our government, and our citizens, to prepare.
And for that to happen, we all need to accept the idea that we are indeed, vulnerable to a pandemic; and then commit to changing things.
It can be done. We can, if we use the time we have remaining wisely, do many things to mitigate the effects of the next pandemic. We can erect levees against this threat, in the form of new vaccines, antivirals, and an improved public health system.
But denial will get us no closer to solving these problems. It will only add to the body count when that day does arrive. And make no mistake, whether it happens in 2007, or 2008, or sometime in the future, another pandemic will come: just as they have in the past.
And when that day comes, people will look back and say it was inevitable, and a damn shame we weren’t ready for it.
Just like we did in New Orleans.
