Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
said that he would advise his family not to travel on subways or airlines, and many
citizens followed suit.
The most troubling characteristic of these viruses may be their unpredictability.
Public health academic Philip Alcabes, author of “Dread,” says that instead of looking
to physicians to predict epidemics, “... we should leave the job of seeing the future to
the mystics, prophets, and fortunetellers.” This level of uncertainty breeds anxiety.
Nonetheless, there are certainties in pandemics: pandemics will recur, and they
will have great impact on society. In a prescient statement in 2005, a Congressional
Budget Office (CBO) report stated, when referring to the threat of the H5N1 Avian
Flu virus, “... [the H5N1 virus] could evolve in a way that rendered it harmless,
and a pandemic could arise from an entirely different virus subtype.”
*
Although
the H5N1 Avian Flu virus cannot yet be deemed “harmless,” certainly the type A/
H1N1 Swine Flu virus became a public pandemic concern.
Community Continuity Concerns of Pandemics
The impact of pandemics goes beyond the health implications discussed. The entire
socioeconomic system is deeply affected, with effects being felt well beyond the
health community. “[Pandemics] expose existing weaknesses in these systems and,
in addition to their morbidity and mortality, can disrupt economic activity and
development.”
5
Nearly all facets of a community, or even a nation, can be affected
gravely, from mundane daily tasks to broad strategic operations.
These operations are disrupted on several levels. The people required for any
level of community activities—governance, education, healthcare, transportation,
food distribution—are the parts of the infrastructure that are affected profoundly.
Not only are there fewer people to conduct these vital activities, but the people with
appropriate skills are also affected in unpredictable ways. Although most experts
forecast high levels of absenteeism, the specific absentees themselves are not predict-
able. Although as much as 40% of a population may be unable to function because of
their own or a family member's sickness or death,
8
there is no way to predict exactly
which individuals would be affected. Critical functions might be affected to even a
greater degree, and overall continuity of operations could be compromised severely.
Communities need a plan for pandemic preparedness, but how do they know
when these plans must be put into practice? Several tools, or yardsticks, exist for
measuring the pandemic threat. Two of the best known are WHO's pandemic alert
*
Congressional Budget Office, “A Potential Influenza Pandemic: Possible Macroeconomic
Effects and Policy Issues,” December 8, 2005, revised July 27, 2006, www.cbo.gov/
ftpdocs/69xx/doc6946/12-08-BirdFlu.pdf. This report draws heavily on multiple sources,
including the World Health Organization (WHO),
Avian Influenza: Assessing the Pandemic
hreat
(Geneva: WHO, January 2005); Howell, Pugh,
Pandemic, The Cost of Avian
Influenza,
Contingencies
(September/October 2005), pp. 22-27; and Garrett, Laurie,
The Next Pandemic,
Foreign Affairs
(July/August 2005), pp. 3-23.
