Sunday, October 16, 2005

When, not if

One of the most insightful and informative flu-bloggers I've come across is Crawford Killian at H5N1. His collection of links is great, and advice, though sobering, is very rational and intelligent.

First this link to an Observer (UK) story, "A tragic, wasted opportunity to avert disaster," with the following money-quote:
Much of the public discussion has been over the size of a stockpiling of the antiviral medication Tamiflu, and the threat from wild birds, rather than about how our society would cope over the likely four-month span of an epidemic.
With his response:
Take your problems to an architect and the solution will be a building. Bring your problems to me, and the solution will be writing a book about them. Take your problems to a bureaucrat, and the solution will be more bureaucracy. The planning has to come out of the in camera meetings and into the town halls and taxpayers' associations and churches and trade unions and business associations.
I think the one thing that's emerging for me from the past few weeks of reading up on this is that the reality of "when, not if" is sinking in. Frankly, my initial interest was (like so much else), purely shortsighted: I'm planning a trip to East, Southeast and South Asia this winter. A Taiwanese friend said, "oh no, don't go. This bird flu, it's going to be bad." I thought, well, this bears monitoring. Of course, the reality is that the avian flu has been a serious threat since it reemerged in 2002 in Hong Kong. It might not mutate into a pandemic-causing strain while I'm over there. My trip there is quite irrelevant. But it will, eventually, at sometime. Or if it doesn't, another variety will. When, not if.

Some more wisdom from Crawford Killian:


I can understand the reluctance to contemplate Armageddon. When I walk my dogs up and down Cove Cliff Road, I don't seriously expect to get hit by an SUV. Still, it's a possibility that keeps me on the side of the road until we get safely into the woods.

But we now have a good argument for contemplating the worst case: Katrina.
No one wanted to think about a Category 5 storm hitting the levees and Lake Pontchartrain. Well, they'd think about it, but it seemed so...extreme. So they went ahead and funded the levees for a Category 3.

We need to prepare for the worst case the evidence permits, just as we need to pay enough house insurance to cover the house's total destruction. It's not "moderate" to bet that we'll never see worse than a Category 3; it's stupid.
Be prepared! Preparedness will not avert the inevitable. It will help mitigate the effects. And this, I'm more and more convinced, is the responsibility of us all, and not just the nebulous, amorphous "They" of government. Even "They" are admitting the inevitability of this.

It's good that the mass media is keeping the topic in the public eye (Another great analysis of the media's role from Crawford).

As individual citizens we cannot do anything directly about bird culling. Or stockpiling the correct retroviral drug. Or work on the vaccination. Or even do disaster planning at the civic level. We can do stuff within our own circles -- friends, families, social organizations and churches.

Now, more than ever, I am resolved to bring this to the next parish council meeting. To go back to the Observer article, we can be part of figuring out "how our society responds" to this threat.

No comments: