# 733
Benny that is. Jack Benny.
If you think it odd that I should mention a radio and television comedian whose heyday was, admittedly, more than 50 years ago, there is a reason.
In radio lore, the longest laughter recorded by a studio audience supposedly came when Jack, well known as the stingiest man in the world, was held up at gunpoint.
The gunman demanded. "Your money or your life!"
Jack squirmed. Hesitated a long time. The audience roared as his indecision grew.
The gunman repeated his demand. "Your money or your life!"
Jack finally says, "I'm thinking!"
Funny then, but today, we're facing the same question, and there is little to laugh about.
Preparing for a pandemic, or any large disaster, is expensive. It requires a large commitment of money, manpower, and resources.
And despite the dire warnings of scientists, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, many governments, corporations, and individuals still can't make that simple decision.
"Your money or your life".
It is easier to simply pretend the problem will go away, or that it won't happen on their watch. If we do fund pandemic preparation, we throw the bare minimum we can get by with at the problem.
It's the same philosophy that led us to neglect the Levees around New Orleans, which led to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. And it's the same attitude we use today when we fund public health agencies, and our overburdened Emergency rooms, and of course, pandemic preparations.
We do as little as we think we can get away with. If people die . . . well, people die every day. As long as they do so quietly, and not on the front page of the newspapers, or on the evening news, then it really isn't a big problem.
And all three are interconnected; Public heath, ER's, and pandemic preparedness.
U.S. Emergency Care System In Critical Condition, Emory ER Physician Says
(WebWire) 4/25/2007 7:37:56 PM
The U.S. emergency care system is ill prepared to handle a pandemic such as bird flu, a major terrorist attack or a widespread natural disaster, says Emory University emergency medicine physician Arthur Kellermann, MD, MPH.
Emergency rooms are already severely overcrowded with ill and injured patients, so there is little or no "surge capacity" to absorb a large influx of victims from a mass casualty event, says Dr. Kellermann, professor and chair of emergency medicine at the Emory School of Medicine.
Over the past several years, a number of ERs and trauma centers have been forced to shut their doors because there’s no funding to pay for the services offered to the uninsured and underinsured, he adds. The problem also has been compounded by aggressive "downsizing" of inpatient capacity in U.S. hospitals, leaving many admitted patients stranded in ERs for hours or days at a time, awaiting the next available inpatient bed.
"Our nation’s emergency care system is at a breaking point," Dr. Kellermann says. "This would be troubling in the best of times, but now that our nation is facing the triple threat of terrorism, natural disasters and pandemic flu, it is unconscionable. A 1918-style pandemic of avian flu would make Hurricane Katrina look like a rainy day."
Dr. Kellermann is right, of course. And most people know it. But few are willing to do anything about it.
In our last Federal Transportation bill, congress managed to squeeze in 6,500 congressional earmarks, pet projects for their districts that are commonly known as `pork projects'. They are good for the local economy, and they help insure re-election.
The cost? Roughly $24 billion dollars. Just for the pork.
We spend $20 billion dollars each year on our failed `war on drugs', which we've been losing for 35 years. And we've spent somewhere in excess of $420 Billion dollars, to date, on our war in Iraq.
Meanwhile, our Emergency Departments deteriorate, the CDC takes a budget cut this year, and funding for pandemic preparations remain woefully inadequate.
It isn't just at the Federal Level.
State and local governments give these issues short shrift, too. Few states are spending what they need to be spending to prepare for a pandemic. And corporations are failing to take the long view, and concern themselves more with this month's bottom line, than the risks they take by failing to prepare.
Last year, the World Bank estimated that a moderate pandemic, one that claimed 70 million lives worldwide, would cost the global economy $2 Trillion dollars. No one seems willing to talk about the economic costs of a severe pandemic, a repeat of 1918 or worse.
And yet, such an event is possible. How likely? We honestly don't know. Maybe we get lucky, and the next pandemic isn't a severe one. But we can't count on that.
But what we can count on is that we will see another major disaster, whether it be terrorism, a pandemic, or another Katrina. And we aren't anywhere near prepared.
The sad part is, we could be.
At least far better prepared than we are now. It just requires adjusting our priorities, and spending our money where it actually does the most good.
It's a simple question, really.
Your money, or your life?
