Even after hearing all of the news about the coming avian flu pandemic I was still not worried. Concerned yes, but not worried.
That was until I stumbled across this article from Reuters about the U.S.'s plan for dealing with a avian flu pandemic. It also had the handy link to "The official U.S. government Web site for information on pandemic flu and avian influenza." To say that we are unprepared is a gross understatement.
PandemicFlu.gov has PDFs with everything you'd like to know about the government's publicly released plans for dealing with the possible pandemic.
From what I can tell it doesn't appear like there will be much we can do.
It is unlikely that there will be sufficient personnel, equipment, and supplies to respond adequately to multiple areas of the country for a sustained period of time.
In the absence of intervention, it is estimated that 1.9 million Americans could die and almost 10 million could be hospitalized over the course of the pandemic, which may evolve over a year or more.
And while that seems bad enough, worst case scenarios are more ominous.
...mass casualties and deaths among children... economic collapse or acute shortages of food, water, electricity, or other essential services...
So in short, things could get pretty bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment