# 2024
Today I went to a local print shop to order some new business cards for an event I'll be attending next week, and spoke with the lady behind the counter. She appeared to be about 40, well spoken, and well educated.
She saw my card which referenced `pandemics', and a curious look came over her.
What pandemic? She asked.
And so I told her, briefly, about the concern that we will someday face another pandemic. I explained how, historically, every 30 or 40 years a novel influenza virus comes out of the wild and spreads around the world. And I told her about the H5 and H7 bird flu strains currently circulating.
She said she was totally unaware of the threat. She had no idea the government maintained a pandemic flu website, and was astonished that they were recommending every family have 2-weeks of food, water, and supplies in their homes.
She did remember the term `bird flu' from a few years back, but assumed that threat was over and done with.
Needless to say, I rocked her world a little bit today. She was a bit indignant that the news wasn't telling her about the threat, and she vowed to visit www.pandemicflu.gov and this blog to keep informed.
The sad thing is, she probably represents the vast majority of the people out there, and not just here in America, but worldwide.
The pandemic threat for most people is surreal, the stuff of cheap disaster movies and Stephen King novels. Despite PSA's, and government websites, and hundreds of newspaper articles . . . the message just isn't getting through.
The fear, often expressed, that we might unnecessarily frighten people by talking about a pandemic is, I believe, misplaced. Most people, when confronted with the facts, seem to handle the subject without difficulty.
But first, you have to get their attention. And right now, we aren't doing that very well.
As a kid, I grew up in the age of Civil Defense. Bert the Turtle taught us to `duck and cover', we had fire drills, and practiced school evacuations every week. Bomb shelters, and Geiger counters, CONALRAD alerts were commonplace.
Duck and Cover
As an 8-year-old during the Cuban Missile Crisis I could tell you how much shielding you would need to protect yourself from alpha, beta, and gamma rays. And I knew the signs of radiation sickness.
Terrible you say, to subject a child to such things?
Well, that's the way things were in the late 1950's and early 1960's. And I don't think I, or any of my compatriots, was any the worse for it.
Fifty years ago we weren't afraid to openly talk about the threat of atomic annihilation. We actually planned and worked to survive it. Admittedly, some of the advice given back then may have lacked firm scientific basis, but the idea of informing the public was a good one.
Sometime in the 1980's it was decided that a nuclear war, with our bigger warheads, wasn't survivable, and the civil defense network was disbanded. Perhaps they were right about that.
But unlike a nuclear war, a pandemic is survivable. A well publicized `civil defense' posture makes perfect sense.
We need to be handing out literature in schools, and discussing with parents when schools will be closed at the PTA. We need PSA's running on all TV stations. And we need our politicians to talk openly about the pandemic threat.
In short, we need every family to become pandemic aware, and pandemic prepared. And for that to happen, pandemic preparedness has to come out of the closet.
If my generation could handle the prospect of atomic war in elementary school, I should think most adults could handle the idea of a pandemic preparedness today.
Let's face it, if people can't handle talking about a pandemic, they are going to be in pretty bad shape if it comes to actually dealing with one.
