Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Pandemic crises are recurring on average three times per century, and preparing
for “the next one” should be continuous. Dr. David Nabarro, former Senior United
Nations System Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza and a senior expert
at the World Health Organization (WHO), said in 2005 that he believed a major
pandemic would erupt soon, and predicted that it might kill roughly 5 million to
150 million people.
4
Clearly, the threat is real, and preparedness is imperative.
In each major pandemic, the most devastating impact was in the area of health
care. The scores of people sickened and killed by the infectious diseases affected
families, communities, and even entire countries or global regions. The diseases
placed “sudden and intense demands on health systems,”
5
and overarching com-
munity structures also were often broken.
The illness and death caused by these pandemics resulted in societal disrup-
tion. The “psyche” of populations was so severely degraded that the outlook of
those citizens was not simply depressed—the pandemics colored the very future
of their societies. As Figure 17.2 shows in stark terms, the toll can be devastating.
Continuing cholera pandemics have killed staggering numbers of people world-
wide (although no reliable estimates are available, particularly for the early chol-
era pandemics, roughly 33,000 deaths occurred in a
single day
during the second
global pandemic of 1829-1851
3
), whereas the worst single pandemic, the “Spanish
Flu” Pandemic
*
of 1918-1919 killed an estimated 20 million to 40 million people
globally (with some estimates as high as 50 million to 100 million deaths), and as
many as 675,000 in the United States alone.
6
Numbers like these take a heavy toll
on affected populations not only in terms of treating the sick and dying but also in
dealing with mass burials in a culturally acceptable way and tending to the associ-
ated mental health impact.
In fact, in absolute terms of sickness and death (or morbidity and mortality), the
recent “Avian Flu” potential pandemic associated with the type A/H5N1 virus was
relatively minor: only 549 cases resulted in a relatively high mortality of 320 deaths.
7
However, the effect that these cases had on society worldwide was chilling: the “wor-
ried well” continued to tap valuable health resources, and the fear generated by the
disease spanned many countries and continents, disproportionally affecting behav-
ior. Similarly, compare these effects with those caused by the 2009 to 2010 “Swine
Flu” (correctly referred to as type A/H1N1 influenza virus) pandemic: in the final
analysis, the virulence of the disease might or might not be less than some of the
more profound historical pandemics, but the resultant worldwide fear and anxiety
affected many aspects of society. For example, Vice President Biden at one point
*
The pandemic was referred to as the “Spanish Flu” pandemic, although the disease is believed to
have possibly started at a military base in Kansas (note that other research indicates that it might
have begun in the Far East or Austria) and been carried by World War I U.S. troops to other parts
of the world. Because Spain was a neutral country during the conflict and had no wartime censor-
ship in place, it was one of the few news outlets reporting on the pandemic (particularly when it
moved from France to Spain)—hence, the term “Spanish Flu” might have been coined as a result.
The variant of the influenza virus dominant in the Spanish Flu pandemic was H1N1.
