There’s a short-but-good article on The New Republic Online (You can read this article without a paid subscription, but you have to register.) about the Avian Flu. Essentially it points out that while the Bird Flu was a huge headliner for all news sources last year, its danger has only increased over time while its media coverage has dropped to almost nothing.
Idiocy over the Bird Flu isn’t restricted to the media, however. I am a member of a large organization’s committee on Health Care. Last year there was a lot of talk about the bird flu, but ironically whenever my fellow committee members opened their mouths (including a member who is a practicing doctor) it was obvious that none of them had the most fundamental understanding of the issue. I had made a point of reading articles from Newsweek to Wired to the official White House strategic publications, and I’ve got to say almost all of my fellow committee members would have failed a basic factual quiz on the topic.
One example question, the most basic, would be “True or False: The current strain of the Bird Flu is deadly because it is very contagious between humans.” Hopefully all of you readers would immediately say “false”, and then follow-up with the observation that the concern is with the possibility of a mutated strain developing that make it easily contagious to humans. It’s probabilistic time bomb.
What amazes me is the fact that nobody runs a comparison between the threat of the Avian Flu and Hurricane Katrina. Note: Katrina, or more specifically, the levee-failure that followed, was a very well-known danger. National Geographic published a prescient and auspicious article a year before the catastrophe hit. It was a well-known issues. The problem was that it was a “what if” scenario, and dedicating the resources to fix it was hard to justify when our government didn’t know if it would hit that year, the following year, ten years or fifty years down the road.
Another similarity between an Avian Flu (or other) pandemic and Hurricane Katrina is the type of response needed. Last year there were many brilliant articles in Wired magazine that showed the conclusions of many scientists: the rapid responses of local governments and their ability to coordinate with the state and national agencies is the biggest factor in mitigating the deaths of millions of people.
The White House publications actually say the same thing. Stockpiles of Tamiflu are a good idea, but a small part of solution. The best role of the Federal Government is planning and coordination with State and Local governments. We all saw the breakdown of coordination in New Orleans. The Feds could prepare the resources and training, and if money were to be spent, that money would be best spent in providing a support mechanism for the thousands of city governments.
Now, what if George Bush had mentioned this in his State of the Union address last month? (His administration had published the cogent paper on the realities of our Pandemic preparation.) What if he had said, “Hey, this topic isn’t sexy, but it’s one we can prepare for today, and it’s something we really learned a couple years ago.”
I know the biggest effort on our radar is Iraq, but a focus on local government infrastructure could have demonstrated a huge show of Good Faith act or penance and reconciliation from an administration that suffers one hell of an image problem. Bush could almost appear to be pragmatic, and this solution wouldn’t require massive funding (like a trip to Mars) or undeveloped technologies (bio-fuels from switch grass) or bipartisan cooperation (health care).
No, it wouldn’t become a panacea for Bush’s dismal standing as “arguably the worst President in history”, but in twenty years, maybe in 2012 when the mutation hits and millions of people die, Bush could go down in the history books as the man whose leadership and insight helped save tens of millions of lives.
Note to readers: you really should call up your City Hall and ask your city council members how your Pandemic Preparedness planning is going. There was a frightening report in Los Angeles last year that surveyed the local hospitals and found that something tiny like 15% of hospitals had even thought about planning for what to do with a possible Pandemic. I mean NO contingency planning.