# 1172
When I look back over the past couple of years on the pandemic front, I'm reminded of the hoary tale about the wealthy Englishman who, after traveling the world for many months, called home and spoke to his butler.
"Well James, has anything happened in my absence?"
"Well, sir. Your dog died."
"He died? Whatever from? He was a young pup."
"Probably from eating burned horse flesh, sir."
"Burned horseflesh? Where on earth did he get burned horseflesh?"
"From the stables, Sir. They burned to the ground two weeks ago."
"How did the stables catch fire?"
"Probably flames from the house, sir."
"The house burned down too! How did that happen?
"We suspect the drapes caught fire from the candles, sir."
"Candles! We have electricity. Why on earth were you using candles?"
"They were around your mother's coffin in the parlor, sir."
"Mum is dead! My God James, what happened?"
"We suspect it was from the shock of your wife running off with the gardener . . ."
You get the idea. At every turn, the news gets a little worse.
When you look back over the past two years, we've seen the same escalating pattern when it comes to pandemic news.
Twenty-four months ago, the WHO maintained that a pandemic `could kill between 2 and 7 million people worldwide'. Amazingly, those numbers are still bandied about today.
We were told, repeatedly, that while the H5N1 virus currently had a fatality rate of over 50%, it would have to give up much of its lethality to become an efficient pandemic strain.
A worst-case pandemic was likened to the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed between 2% and 10% of its victims.
And we were told that flu victims would miss a week, perhaps two, of work due to illness. That a pandemic might cause a `short but sharp shock to the economy'.
What a difference two years makes.
Today, we routinely hear estimates of 50 million, or 100 million deaths from a pandemic. Some scientists have suggested even higher numbers.
Fatality estimates that were called `alarmist' in 2005 are now mainstream. The `2 to 7 million deaths' promulgated by the WHO in 2005 were later admitted to being a `best-case scenario'.
In September of 2006, the WHO released a statement admitting that the assumption that the H5N1 virus must relinquish much of it's lethality in exchange for greater transmissibility simply wasn't based on fact. That it might attenuate, or it might not.
By this time, of course, pandemic planning had already adopted the 2% CFR as the `worst-case'. What we end up with, of course, is anybody's guess.
And over the past year we've learned that the H5N1 virus isn't just a `bad flu', it attacks multiple organs of its victims, and while Egypt has driven down the mortality rate to about 30%, it remains near 88% in Indonesia.
How much of this difference is due to different strains of the virus, and the speed and efficacy of medical care in Egypt vs. Indonesia, is unknown.
Either way, the idea that most victims will recover on their own, at home, and be back at work in a week or two just doesn't jive with what we have seen to date with the H5N1 virus.
So far, of the 100+ survivors of the H5N1 virus, nearly all required hospitalization and advanced medical care. Many of these survivors required weeks in intensive care.
But of course, nobody talks about that. Not yet, anyway.
For the past two-years we've been treated to a slow motion version of `The Dog Died', when it comes to telling the public what a pandemic could mean. The information has dribbled out, and worse, has often been sugar coated.
Sanitized for our protection.
After all, the next pandemic might not be so bad. It might not even be caused by the H5N1 virus. And if it does happen, it might not be for years.
All true. We won't know until we know.
The end result is that most people are unconcerned about a pandemic. Most businesses remain unprepared.
We remain vulnerable and oblivious.
But at least, by breaking the news gently and over time, nobody panicked.
And that's what really counts.
