# 1599
Readers of this, and many other flu blogs, already know that the health care system here in the United States, and in most of the world, is incapable of handling even a moderate pandemic.
The plan is, for most people to be treated at home, by their families.
Normally, for seasonal influenza, that isn't a huge problem. Most people can recover at home without major incident. But with a novel, pandemic strain of influenza, the mortality rates are much higher than with seasonal flu.
And that means a lot of people who are likely to need medical care, won't be getting it.
And with hospitals over burdened, and health care workers affected by the flu as well, even non-flu patients may find medical care difficult to obtain.
A Hat tip to DemFromCt on the Wiki for posting this article from the Washington Post (highlighting mine). This is only part of the story, follow the link to read the entire story.
U.S. Flu Outbreak Plan Criticized
It Does Not Anticipate Strain on Hospitals, Local Health Officials Say
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 2, 2008; Page A03
The federal government's voluminous plans for dealing with pandemic flu do not adequately account for the overwhelming strain an outbreak would place on hospitals and public health systems trying to cope with millions of seriously ill Americans, some public health experts and local health officials say.
The Bush administration's plans, which run more than 1,000 pages, contemplate the nightmare medical scenarios that many experts fear, but critics say federal officials have left too much of the responsibility and the cost of preparing to a health-care system that even in normal times is stretched to the breaking point and leaves millions of people without adequate access to care.
"The amount going into actually being prepared at a community level is not enough," said Patrick Libbey, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. "We are still talking about rearranging with little additional resources the assets of a system that are built on such a thin margin now that you have significant amounts of people without access to care, and hospitals that are periodically shutting down their ERs and the like."
The Bush administration argues that it is doing a lot to help communities as part of its three-pronged strategy for dealing with the flu threat. It has doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in preparedness grants for hospitals and public health systems every year, subsidized the stockpiling of antiviral drugs, conferred with governors and encouraged resource-sharing plans among hospitals.
Its larger strategy involves partnering with other countries to quickly identify and contain potential outbreaks overseas, developing vaccines and other medical measures to limit the virus's spread if it reaches U.S. shores, and working with state and local officials to keep the economy and society functioning as normally as possible. But administration officials acknowledge that gaps remain.
"We're seeing substantial progress across the board in terms of various aspects of preparedness for flu," said William Raub, science adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. "But I won't sugarcoat this. In virtually every area, we have a good way to go. . . . It would not take much of an unmitigated pandemic to overwhelm the hospital system."
A serious outbreak and its fallout would probably overwhelm medical centers, cause lengthy delays in emergency and routine care, and trigger shortages of beds, ventilators, drugs, masks, gloves and other supplies, experts said. Unlike a hurricane or a terrorist bombing, the crisis would drag on for months and affect communities nationwide at the same time.
