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Running the Numbers on a US Pandemic
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Oct 25, 2007 02:54 PM
from the plz-stay-theoretical-k-thnx dept.
from the plz-stay-theoretical-k-thnx dept.
Lucas123 writes "A U.S. pandemic would exhaust antiviral medications, reduce basic food supplies, put ATMs out of service, shut down call centers, increase gas prices and up health insurance claims by 20%, according a test project developed by financial service firms. The pandemic paper planning scenario is used by 3,000 banks, insurance companies and security firms in preparing for disasters. The financial services groups are now sharing the pandemic flu exercise information, and all the scenarios are available for download."
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What are you going to do??? (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, essentially, what we have is an issue of upkeep. This world does not run itself and requires input to prevent things from running down, so it been said before, but amateurs discuss things such as strategy, but the experts discuss logistics. And it is logistics that need to be organized in times of planning and scenarios run to discover where the logistical chain breaks down. These weak links in the chain are those areas that need attention and typically those are the links that rely upon people to maintain the flow of information/goods/support.
The interesting thing to me is that they appear to have modeled this pandemic spread as originating in Lagos, Nigeria which would be a relatively slow introduction or pathogenic spread into the rest of the world until it hits an area like Beijing, Calcutta or any other rapidly growing supermetropolis where you have hordes of people living in less than ideal conditions right next to others who travel extensively throughout the developed world. Their exercise appears to miss China and Indonesia entirely which could if modeled in lead to much more rapid spread, involving potentially many more people or even invoke or enhance infective "ringing" where waves of infection or reinfection propegate through various large populations.
P.S. exercises like this are important to release to the public as most folks simply do not have any guidance or have given any thought to preparing for such a possibility. What are you going to do when the zombies show up at your door?
Re:What are you going to do??? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What are you going to do??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullets work on both kinds, right?
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Re:What are you going to do??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What are you going to do??? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What are you going to do??? (Score:5, Informative)
Lagos is a growing supermetropolis. At current rates, it is expected to be the largest city in the world by mid-century.
Try to outwit them as the last sane man in a world gone mad. After all, haven't you read I Am Legend [amazon.com] ?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I had 1 dollar on Monday, 2 dollars on Tuesday, 4 dollars yesterday, and 8 dollars today. At current rates, I'm expected to be the richest man in the world by mid-December. (Hint: some rates are unsustainable, especially without the infrastructure for sanitation and public health.)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't worry about zombies (Score:2)
Re:What are you going to do??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. When was the last time we had a pandemic of any kind? IINM, it was some time before the Great Depression. My 76 year old father wasn't even born. And there were no antivirals back then, and few antibiotics. Medicine was downright primitive. Hell, it was primitive when I broke my arms when I was seven in 1959; they used automotive starting fluid [wikipedia.org] as an anesthetic! When I had my eye operated on in 2006, the operating room was so science fictiony that Dr. "He's Dead Jim" McCoy would have been jealous.
We might as well be worried about asteroids* or terrorists. What? You ARE worried about asteroids and terrorists?
-mcgrew
*I had my assteroids [wikipedia.org] removed in 2002
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Re:What are you going to do??? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.worldwithoutus.com/index2.html [worldwithoutus.com]
It goes without saying, but so many things we take for granted would collapse, without the humans to run them. Manhattan, for example, would flood in a short 4 days, if not for people to run the drainage pumps. The book is awesome, I just have to plug it.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Interestingly we have the opposite problem here in Boston. A lot of our older buildings are built on wooden pilings. The pilings are driven into landfill and sit below the water table. Over the course of the Big Dig, they did a lot of pumping for the tunnels. The water table dropped and the pil
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What are you going to do when the zombies show up at your door? :-)
I can think of only one thing. [penny-arcade.com]
Re: (Score:2)
SKS assault rifle with bayonet, Check.
1000 rounds of ammo, check.
M44 Rifle with bayonet, check.
1000 rounds of ammo, check.
8mm Mouser sniper rifle, check.
1000 rounds of ammo, check.
M1911A1 45cal pistol, check.
5000 rounds of ammo, check.
Shotguns with cases of ammo, check.
Reloading equipment, check.
Lead, Check.
5 10lb kegs of powder, check.
Swords, check.
I am ready! Bring'em on GTA is boring and I am ready for a challenge.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
- Shaun of the Dead
What is interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, the places to be will be the cities with high connectivity. It will be possible to minimize our interactions with others. Netgrocers would take off during these times. Likewise, this report says that call center would fail. Yet, I think that the call centers that are using voip and have the ability to allow their employees to work from home will do great. In addition, any work that can be done with little to no interactions with others will continue to thrive. Where the problems will come from are those jobs that require you to interact large number of ppl. What I think will be the big issues will be our schools.
I find it funny that they believe that an epidemic will originate in Africa. I would expect most to come from extremely populated areas.
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Re:What are you going to do??? (Score:5, Funny)
Tell them no thanks; I've read their pamphlets and I wasn't impressed.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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This report is open sores (Score:4, Funny)
Just make sure you print your own copy out, the last guy who wanted to give it you didn't wash his hands.
Can you crunch some numbers? (Score:2)
Well... (Score:4, Funny)
Now what?
Are we that unhealthy already? (Score:4, Interesting)
I would expect that a pandemic would place a larger burden on the system than that. Or do they expect that so many of us will just simply die that it will average out to only a 20% increase in claims?
Of course the hyper-cynical side of me wants to point out that claims for dead people are seldom paid out, so I could see that as an explanation for the increase being at only 20%.
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If the U.S. really wanted to cut back the possibility of the spread of flu, the thing that needs to change is the corporate mentality of this country. That and some basic hygiene [wash your hands people and use a damn tissue].
Presenteeism is a major problem in the US. People co
US pandemic (Score:2, Interesting)
There is no such thing as a US pandemic, there is only a pandemic.
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That's not true (Score:3, Informative)
Inevitable (Score:4, Insightful)
H5N1 has been a blessing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sadly, influenza epidemics are a given. It's not a matter of "if", but "when". There were 3 in the last century and they all happened before good antiviral drugs were available. Stockpiling these drugs could very well save hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives. The short-term economic cost of a pandemic would be huge, but it would seem trivial compared to the long-term cost of the loss of 5-10%, or more, of the population.
It's good we're testing these kinds of scenarios, but my biggest concern was the stockpiling and availability of antivirals which, fortunately, seems to be getting much better...
Re:H5N1 has been a blessing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Care to point me to any scientific evidence that Tamiflu, Relenza, or any other such drug in the pipeline will save a single person from a pandemic type flu virus?
No such evidence exists.
Even for non-pandemic strains, the evidence that vaccines and antivirals have had any impact of flu death rates is extremely thin.
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Re:H5N1 has been a blessing... (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, because I have nothing better to do with my time than do the research you clearly haven't done yourself.
First of all, Tamiflu has been shown to not only reduce the duration and severity of flu symptoms, but used as a prophylactic, reduces the chances of catching the flu by 74%. Here are some facts to back that up: Go here [nih.gov] and enter these PMIDs: 17535069, 17253479, 17115954.
There's tons more out there and anyone willing to get off their butt and do the research can find it. Now granted, there haven't been any large scale trials with H5N1 in people because not that many people have had H5N1. That said, combination therapies in mice with H5N1 have proven quite effective. There's no guarantee it will work in people, but all the evidence suggests that H5N1 is susceptible to neuraminidase inhibitors like Tamiflu will be effective against H5N1. It won't be 100%, but based on the existing data, I suspect it will have a pretty significant impact.
Now, I've done some of your legwork for you. How about you back up this statement: "Even for non-pandemic strains, the evidence that vaccines and antivirals have had any impact of flu death rates is extremely thin." with some evidence of your own.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Care to point me to any scientific evidence that Tamiflu, Relenza, or any other such drug in the pipeline will save a single person from a pandemic type flu virus?
Sure. Search Google Scholar with "TamiFlu H5N1". The first link on the results page takes you to an article by Roche scientists, http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/55/suppl_1/i5.pdf [oxfordjournals.org]. They have a financial interest in TamiFlu, so don't just take their word for it - feel free to read the all 95 of the references. Flu antivirals are well characterized, and mutations that cause resistance are well understood. There have been plenty of animal studies, and multiple case studies in humans. For furt
Re:H5N1 has been a blessing... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's just wrong. Flu pandemics don't happen because of vaccines working or not working. Flu pandemics started before vaccines existed and didn't become any less frequent after their creation. In fact, they've only appear to be getting more common because of easier access to the world (flight) and increasing overcrowding in urban areas.
Flu pandemics happen because a particularly virulent strain of the flu evolves. Sometimes it's the evolution of an existing human-infectious strain (like the H1N1 subtype that caused the Spanish Flu pandemic from 1918-1920) or from crossing over from animals (like the avian H2N2 subtype caused the Asian Flu pandemic in '57). The former happened before flu vaccines existed. The latter, after flu vaccines.
Granted, coming up with a vaccine for a pandemic strain would be helpful, but it's unlikely to happen in time because they tend to spread faster than normal flu strains (because of their increased virulence). I don't want to get into the whole thing about how flu strains are chosen for a vaccine and how vaccines works, but suffice it to say, vaccines are usually for several strains that already exist and are predicted to be the most likely to be widely spread, but because it takes so long to incubate the vaccine, the flu must be relatively slow-spreading.
Pandemic influenza strains, on the other hand, spread very quickly. Far too quickly for a vaccine to be created in time. We worried about the H5N1 avian variant because it was very deadly. We can't start creating a vaccine for it until it has evolved into a variant that is easily spread from human to human. Well, that's not entirely true. We could, but it probably wouldn't be effective against the easily spread variant. The vast majority of cases in people (if not all) of H5N1 were from direct contact with infected animals, but it was not easily spread. Had it evolved into an easily spread form (and it still could), then it would very likely become a pandemic influenza variant.
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But what about WoW (Score:3, Insightful)
Bah.
What a bunch of BS (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone hears "flu pandemic" and they think 1918, which was the worst in history. But there have been pandemics since then and they haven't been that bad. Just cause it's a pandemic doesn't mean it's the worst pandemic in history. That's like thinking that every recession is going to be the Great Depression.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well only if you don't count the black death, which killed 30-60% of the population of Europe, or the Small Pox pandemic which possibly killed upwards of 70% of Native Americans and advanced faster and was more ruthless than the conquering European armies.
The Banking System Would be in Trouble? Oh Noes! (Score:2, Troll)
Re:The Banking System Would be in Trouble? Oh Noes (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, sarcasm can be a really elegant tool, when it isn't used in the service of ignorance.
You think the economy would suck if a whole lot of people couldn't physically go to work or handle food? How much MORE do you think it would suck if everyone who was still participating in a wounded economy had to also drive around wheelbarrows of barter goods in order to get anything done? A well-oiled electronic banking system could well be one of the most important assets in preventing social collapse in the event of a particularly ugly pandemic. So, what will YOU be bartering? Copies of Ubuntu on cool purple DVDs? Your three extra pairs of clean socks? Your ability to dig out latrines? Hmmm. Many a modern economy is more convenient than a medieval one, and worth protecting. No banking system, no modern economy.
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Report did not get classified? (Score:2)
On the upside... (Score:5, Interesting)
- fresh water reserves
- dwindling oil supplies
- food crops already threatened by global warming
- natural resources such as forests
so it's not all bad.
Actually... not really. (Score:3, Insightful)
yfluk (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Would we hear... (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, sometimes when people warn you about potential dangers, they aren't just trying to alarm you, scam you or hijack the world back into some kind of pre-industrial state. Sometimes they are trying to do you a damn favor, idiot.
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Re:This would allow GW Bush to declare marshall la (Score:2)
Not even WWII stopped presidential elections in the US. Just not going to happen and no evidence that it could.
Bush got the powers in 2006 (Score:5, Informative)
President George W. Bush said last week he would consider using the military to "effect a quarantine" in response to any outbreak of avian influenza, but provided few details.
Bush at the time also suggested he might place National Guard troops, normally commanded by state governors, under federal control as part of the government's response to the "catastrophe" of such a flu pandemic.
Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said quarantine law historically has been under the primary jurisdiction of states, not the federal government.
"And my expectation is that any quarantine measures that would be put in place would likely involve a substantial employment of the National Guard, probably under command and control of the governor of an affected state," McHale told a group of reporters.
"However, we are looking at a wide range of contingencies, potentially involving Title 10 forces (federal troops) if a pandemic outbreak of a biological threat were to occur," McHale added.
The H5N1 avian influenza virus has killed or forced the destruction of tens of millions of birds and infected more than 100 people, killing at least 60 in four Asian nations since late 2003.
Experts fear that the virus, known to pass to humans from birds, could mutate and start to spread easily from person to person, potentially killing millions worldwide. Experts have questioned America's preparedness.
McHale said he believed there would be a clearer understanding within a few weeks of the military role in response to pandemic bird flu as part of a broader federal response. Pentagon officials were meeting on Wednesday to discuss the department's role in a flu pandemic.
One issue that could face the U.S. government in the event of an outbreak is whether or how to cordon off parts of the country to prevent the disease from spreading.
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, enacted during the post-Civil War reconstruction period, prohibits federal military personnel from taking part in law-enforcement within the United States. But a president can waive the law in an emergency.
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