Financial Services Firms Simulate Flu Pandemic

jcatcw writes "The U.S. Government is co-sponsoring a three-week exercise that will simulate the impact of a flu pandemic on financial services firms, including their ability to support telecommuters. The exercise is expected to be the largest in U.S. history and will involve more than 1,800 firms. From the article: 'The program will follow a compressed time frame that simulates the impact of a 12-week pandemic wave. Participants will be given information on how many absentee employees they can expect. Companies won't know exactly how hard they will be hit with sick-calls from employees until this data is made available ... In addition, participating firms won't be able to pick and choose the level of workforce reductions they get hit by.'"

How useful is that?

[Mr.Fork (633378)]

Why not simulate the impact of Paris Hilton going naked down the street with the words "Google RULES" painted onto her butt cheeks? I'm sure that will have a definate impact on their stock.

Re:How useful is that?

[Harmonious Botch (921977)]

Underneath the Hilton sarcasm, P has a valid point. How useful is this, really?

participants will gather in conference rooms and assess how their businesses would be affected if a bird flu outbreak or other pandemic resulted in major reductions in the number of available employees.

Note they are not doing any real-world testing of what would happen. No, they are sitting in conference rooms talking about what they think would happen.

Re:How useful is that?

[nuzak (959558)]

> participants will gather in conference rooms

This cracks me up like you wouldn't believe. Think about it for a moment.

Re:

[plague3106 (71849)]

So you'd rather they didn't even think about it?

Re:How useful is that?

[OriginalArlen (726444)]

Whilst I'm not quite so cynical about the value of such exercises (they will tend to bring SOME unexpected problems to light; it's just that you can't guarantee that they'll find all the bugs in the process) the major problem is with the realism of what they're simulating. I did a lot of research into this a couple of years back (our then head of security said "We don't need to worry -- we have a stock of Tamiflu", and I ended up reading the clinical trial results and the datasheets for the stuff, as well as the major respectable papers on the topic. The was a dedicated issue in, I think, Nature (or it may have be> Oh BTW: the mortality rate en Science, or the BMJ - I forget), and another which was genuinely frightening (without trying to be) in the New England Journal of Medicine. (Note to the cynics -- these are about the most respected non-specialist journals of record in the relevant fields. If you're one of those "Avian flu? Pffft, Duke Nukem will arrive first" types, I advise you to go and talk to virologists and epidemiologists before talking crap about a subject you know nothing about) - Suffice to say Tamiflu increases the survival rate to about 45% -- from 35-40% when untreated. So more than half the people who get infected will die. )

Where was I?

Oh yes - right - 12 weeks. 12 weeks is a reasonable time frame for a single epidemic wave to cover the nation and then subside again. However the duration of the emergency is unlikely to be less than a year (the 1918 pandemic lasted a couple of years), during which time there will be multiple waves of infection in a localised population. Bear in mind that when the second wave arrives, you have n-(i*m) staff at the start of the wave (n = number of staff, i = infection rate, m=mortality rate.) And as seeing 10-20% of one's colleagues dying unpleasantly from a highly contagious disease is unlikely to increase people's enthusiasm for coming to work in an office, it's likely there'd be a huge economic hit that would take years to work it's way through - even after a free vaccine's being distributed by the U.N.

Re:How useful is that?

[Angostura (703910)]

Suffice to say Tamiflu increases the survival rate to about 45% -- from 35-40% when untreated.

I assume that these figures are for human infection with the existing H5N1 bird flu. It is worth pointing out that we don't know what the mortality rate of the eventual human pandemic will be, since the virus isn't here yet.

Re:How useful is that?

[Maxo-Texas (864189)]

As an FYI,
I have read that Tamiflu is excreted essentially unchanged in your urine.
If it comes down to life and death keep that in mind.

Re:

[mazarin5 (309432)]

As an FYI,
I have read that Tamiflu is excreted essentially unchanged in your urine.
If it comes down to life and death keep that in mind.
--
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.

I can't help but to have a single mental image drawn from both your message and your sig.

Eww.

Re:

[greenguy (162630)]

So... you'd like them to do real-world testing of a flu pandemic...?

Flu

[ccs.gott (1144593)]

See, I used to simulate the flu all the time... I have found that it was quite useful, until my parents caught on.

Re:How useful is that?

[archen (447353)]

I've actually gone through a few scenarios with the flew outbreak. Where I work we've had times when our workforce has been cut by 50% by blizzard conditions. Our facility actually did function alright, however there's no way we could sustain that over say; two weeks.

I also did some thinking about how to punch holes in the firewall and allow people to work remotely from home and such. The problem is that the network is simply going to buckle and die - if not at our T1, before then. Sure test it all you want, but what happens when EVERYONE decides to telecommute in order to keep things working? It's like 9/11. We're a company in northern PA and were putting a new accounting system into production. Well we had problems and needed outside help from the programmers across the country - just phone support mind you. Unfortunately all phone lines were down. If you had told me that blowing up two buildings in NYC would take down phone access at our company I would have laughed at you - now I really have little hope that initially anyone would be prepared for any large scale disaster.

Personally I'm just trying to figure out what to do about keyboards. Someone is going to come in sick and cough crap up into these things. I mean it's a biohazard waiting to happen, and as an IT person you're going to have to touch more than most people. I guess gloves will be alright for a while, but we'll probably have to throw out keyboards for just about everyone in the end. Huge pain in the ass that will be.

Did a test like this years ago

[eaddict (148006)]

When I worked at a financial institution we had a disaster recovery test where when the employees came to work they drew a marble out of a bucket. One color meant go home - you were unavailable for work. The other meant you were OK and could work. Made for an interesting day. The IS dept I worked for at the time did have its stuff together and ran flawlessly at about 50%. Mind you, this was just to maintain business for the customers. We could NOT stay staffed at that level if ANYONE in the organization ever wanted to do more than just keep the boat afloat. I wish my existing employer would do something like this.

Re:

[MyLongNickName (822545)]

One color meant go home - you were unavailable for work.

I'd keep a pocket full of different colored marbles just in case a test like this came up again...

Employee: "Interesting, Mr. Smith, MyLongNickName has drawn a green marble 13 times in a row! What are the odds"
Mr. Smith: "Very Interesting. We've only had 7 disaster recovery tests."

Re:

[MyLongNickName (822545)]

And I'd also keep a spare closing tag just in case I run out...

Re:

[HUADPE (903765)]

and how does it work when one the person who is sent home is the one who is the guy who says yes or no to things or has the passworks do people who are still working brake the rules to get there job done even if that means that you have to hack a password.

It means that your disaster recovery is very bad, and the organization should give more people access to the recovery tools needed for these things.

Simulation we REALLY need to run

[StefanJ (88986)]

We need to see how companies can hold up during a zombie infestation.

"Awww, man, it's just a little bite. Let me finish this backup and . ." BLAMMM!

Re:

[bobetov (448774)]

For those who haven't heard it...

Re: Your Brains [jonathancoulton.com] by Jonathan Coulton.

Truly, an anthem for the modern age.

Wha?

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

We need to see how companies can hold up during a zombie infestation.

But, don't we already have zombies in the Customer Support lines?

Re:

[grassy_knoll (412409)]

It's funny, but you might be on to something.

If you could keep operating in, say, the environment of the movie 28 Days Later I imagine more realistic disasters wouldn't be a challenge.

What Pandemic?

[frank249 (100528)]

Why all this concern for something that might happen[but probally won't]? 10 people who live with chickens may die[it could be 1 million!] but likely 10. What surprises me is that 30,000 people die each year in the US from the regular flu but no one seems to be concerned. Millions have died from HIV/AIDS but yet infected people cannot be restricted from having unprotected sex with uninfected people. There is likely a greater chance to be hit by an asteroid yet NASA's sky watch program is being cut. My guess that all this pandemic talk is just more fear mongering to take the public's mind off of politics and the economy is more likely.

Re:What Pandemic?

[ScentCone (795499)]

My guess that all this pandemic talk is just more fear mongering to take the public's mind off of politics and the economy is more likely.

Are you REALLY that clueless, or are you just trolling because you think you're scoring some anti-the-current-administration points, somehow?

The last real doozy of a flu pandemic killed 50-100 MILLION people [wikipedia.org] - most of whom were young, and otherwise healthy. This isn't like a once every 50 millions years asteroid collision we're talking about. Plenty of people alive right now were around when the last one happened, and lost family members. It was real. And that one happened before ubiquitous air travel between continents. We now have vastly more dense population centers, and arguably a much more fragile "just-in-time" style economy. Pretending this isn't a risk is foolish. Pretending that it's only hype from your political opponents is childish.

Re:What Pandemic?

[Puls4r (724907)]

It goes beyond that. We have moved away from a farm-based economy. Back then, many folks new how to grow their own food, or had access to people who did. They knew how to save food, had access to well-water that did not need pumps, etc. If there was a flu pandemic that actually created a breakdown in services, people would begin to die within 2 weeks due to stravation. Sooner due to poison / bad water supplies - or worse if the power dropped out, NO water. The original poster has to be a troll. Us folks up in the Northeast understand a bit about what will happen - the blackout several years ago showed just how fragile modern society is. Without power - gas could not be pumped. Without gas, cars and trucks did not move. Without cars and trucks, NO one showed up for work, NO deliveries were made to the supermarket. Everything in your fridge rotted inside a week. If you were lucky, like me, you live in the country and have a well where you can get water from without an electrically powered pump. If you weren't lucky, you were stuck buying bottled water - then after that you were drinking out of the tank on the back of your toilet. That's only when a small PART of the country lost power. I can't believe these idiots are running this type of simulation. If there is a flu pandemic, NO ONE is going to be going to work. Army folks who are called back aren't going to show, and the country is going to go to hell in a handbasket.

Re:

[Xtravar (725372)]

If there was a flu pandemic that actually created a breakdown in services, people would begin to die within 2 weeks due to stravation.

Maybe people on the coasts, but not the midwest. Score one for fat people, wooo!!!! We're gonna ride this famine out!

Re:

[ScentCone (795499)]

Fear mongering and talking about the destruction caused by the Spanish lady without framing it in these terms does everyone a disservice.

Compared to, say, describing simulations that test a financial institution's ability to function with a partially absent workforce as some sort of conspiracy to distract the masses from politics? Come, now.

As for people being "weakened by war" in 1918... well, sure - that took a toll. But the deaths from that strain were mostly found in people with very HEALTHY immun

Re:What Pandemic?

[l-ascorbic (200822)]

I don't think the World Health Organisation is interested in scaremongering and taking the public's mind of domestic politics. Their take: "The risk of pandemic influenza is serious" [who.int].

During past pandemics, attack rates reached 25-35% of the total population. Under the best circumstances, assuming that the new virus causes mild disease, the world could still experience an estimated 2 million to 7.4 million deaths (projected from data obtained during the 1957 pandemic). Projections for a more virulent virus are much higher. The 1918 pandemic, which was exceptional, killed at least 40 million people. In the USA, the mortality rate during that pandemic was around 2.5%.

Think about it.

Re:

[sane? (179855)]

Google the phrase "cytokine storm" if you don't already know why pandemic flu is different.

Quant Question

[bloosqr (33593)]

There are 100 firms based in NY with an average of Z traders while only 30 firms (each with an average of W traders) based in SF. Assume the spread factor of a pandemic is \mu. You have a pandemic flu virus at your disposal, what is your winning strategy for basing your headquarters and why?

Followup question (assuming top question was answered correctly:

You have chosen to infect "the other city" with the pandemic flu, estimate how long your competitive advantage will last (assume you have X employees).

Why just Financial Service firms

[dragonsomnolent (978815)]

Seriously, surely they wouldn't have as great an impact as say food re-distribution. I work for a major food re-distributer and if something knocked out 50% of our warehouse workers and truck drivers, it would certainly trickle down to our customers, I hate to think what would happen if vital services across the country were knocked down to 50% of normal workforce for a long period of time.

Re:

[u38cg (607297)]

Warehouse staff and truck drivers can be replaced fast, by soldiers if need be, to keep distribution moving (if your government has a clue (not sure about this) it has a pretty detailed plan for this). Day traders are more difficult to replace at short notice. And before someone questions the neccessity of the latter over the former, try buying food when your pension fund just went belly up.

Re:

[gardyloo (512791)]

Thank goodness 50% of your customers will be out of commision too! There's always a silver lining :)

Re:

[R2.0 (532027)]

For a slightly less cynical take, how about the fact that financial services can survive if people don't, but the opposite isn't necessarily true.

After 9/11 in NYC, there was a mini panic because the ATM system was down locally for a while. Imagine if it was down for a week or longer. And the local branch is closed because the tellers are out sick. Do you carry enough cash to carry you through the week. Do you even HAVE checks? Many don't.

Also, the Feds maintain some level of control over the financial

Re:

[glwtta (532858)]

We do build a fair number of capitols, but I am not sure that trend really defines our society.

sounds incomplete

[khallow (566160)]

I think there's two further aspects to model here. First, what happens when people are sick, but show up anyway? Do the companies have policies in place to force these people home and will bosses and employees respect these policies? Second, do they have liability protection in case an employee (say a boss) forces people to show up and those people (or their families and many friends) get sick and possibly die? For example, if a boss forces a sick employee to stay in the department or forces an employee to come in (apparently the safest place you can be is to stay for a few weeks in a well-ventilated home or apartment with no contact with the outside world, showing up for work puts you at some risk, especially if you use public transportation or enter a public area like a store, say to pay for gas), there is the potential for the company to become liable for a large number of deaths, not just from the employees but also from the people they could infect down the road.

Re:sounds incomplete

[by Anonymous Coward]

It's even weirder than that. My organization has policies in place, including issuing surgical masks to employees to wear during work. When questioned about why N95 masks wouldn't be issued (seeing as they are proven to be more effective), I was told that, since N95's are technically respirators, special training would need to be given, and we don't have the resources. Else we were open to liability if someone with asthma or a heart condition dies. So I say, "well, that's fine, but I'm wearing my own N95"

Actual response: "You will be sent home, or disciplined if you refuse, on the grounds of wearing inapprpriate clothing, the same as if you came in wearing just a jockstrap. We can't afford to have other employees seeing you with better respiratory equipment and asking why you are wearing it and not them. It opens us up to liability of not providing proper equipment"

So they are unwilling to be sued for a random heart attack, but are wiling to be liable for an unlawful termination suit from me and hundreads, if not thousands, of negligence suits from everyone in the organization who dies while not wearing an surgical mask provided by their employer, which is known to be inadequate protection.

Fucking pussies.
(Posted AC because I think someone will figure out who I am - I actually do like my job, just not some of the idiots I work with)

Preparation isn't a waste of time

[R2.0 (532027)]

I work for a Very Large Charitable Organization in facilities construction, and our group has gotten involved in some of the pandemic flu planning. There are some truly frightening scenarios out there, from "Really Bad Flu Season", through "1918, Part II", to TEOTWAWKI.

The part where some of it hit home for me was when a coworker, who is our resident disaster junkie/survivalist, came back from his first panflu planning meeting. Normally he comes back from meetings grumbling that no one is taking a problem seriously. This time he was concerned that he himself hadn't been taking it seriously enough, and I've been to his bunker site!

Currently in Indonesia the mortality rate for bird flu cases is around 50%, and they are starting to see human to human transmission. If the lethality of the virus survives the mutation to a strain more transmissible between humans, one can assume that it will infect about 25% of the world populace - that was 1918 numbers, it will probably be more now with easy international travel and higher density in the cities.

So, if you sit in a pod of 8 cubicles, here's the breakdown (1918 transmissibility, current lethality)

1 of you is dead
1 of you is permanently disabled, or out for months of recovery

So now your workforce is reduced by 25% - oh, wait, 2 of you will also be out caring for sick loved ones, so that's half gone. And medical personnel are basically gone - they have been exposed multiple times and are either dead, sick, or not going to work because they don't want to become either (btw, that's not my projection, that's from the CDC).

Vaccine? Indonesia is not giving samples to international health authorities, for fears that any vaccine developed will be too expensive for them to afford (not a paranoid assumption)

Conclusion: Go buy some N95 masks and gloves (both cheap) and just pay a little attention. Neitehr will go to waste - use the gloves for working on cars and the masks for wood shop. And just pay attention.

Face masks are a waste of time

[Toffins (1069136)]

Most flu infections are not transmitted by breathing in airborne virus particles.
The commonest route of flu infection is actually

• by touching shared surfaces such as door handles, toilets, items of furniture, coins and notes, doors, windows and seats especially those in taxis and other forms of public transportation, and
  
  
• by not washing and disinfecting your hands afterwards before touching things that go in your mouth such as food, drink containers, toothbrushes, etc.

This is how most people get infected, and N95 face masks offer no protection against this.

Surfaces, especially damp or wet ones, easily become contaminated whenever a flu-infected person touches them or coughes or sneezes droplets of infected saliva or mucus onto them. Touching a flu-virus-contaminated surface is a very effective method of infecting yourself. It delivers a relatively massive dose of virus particles, several orders of magnitude more than by breathing contaminated air without wearing a face mask. Flu virus is extremely infectious by ingestion.

It is not true that flu is usually transmitted by airborne virus particles and that N95 face masks protect you against flu infection.

One of the countermeasures for a flu pandemic that is being considered is compulsory quarantine of infected people to prevent them coughing and sneezing their infected mucus and saliva onto public surfaces that would infect other people.

Just in tie for 911

[dattaway (3088)]

"The U.S. Government is co-sponsoring a three-week exercise that will simulate..."

I really don't trust our government doing simulations anymore.

Why are you assuming people are going to work?

[Puls4r (724907)]

I originally posted some of this as a reply to someone else, but I've seen so many folks posting things under the same assumption that I wanted to make a more generalized response.

Who, in their right mind, seeing 1/3 of the population dieing around them, in their houses, etc, is going to be going to work? Hospital workers will be dead. Military folks are not going to respond to being called-back, and frankly the close living quarters of the military is the best for spreading it around the force.

Folks, picture this. Your next door neighbor dies. The next day, co-workers start dieing. Are you going to go back to work?

Why are these "simulations" so naive that they believe folks will continue to work, rather than staying with their families? I'm not exactly and end-of-days kind of guys, but the folks on here discussing people telecommuting to work are insane. If half the people in the country are going to be dieing or caring for dieing folks, people aren't going to be worrying about how many strawberries are picked, cows are slaughtered, cars are made, or stocks are traded.

My company is doing the same.

[FatSean (18753)]

We got the call a few months ago that our systems need to be 'pandemic-resilient' by the end of the next devel-deploy cycle. Basically, your average multiple-geography high-availability solutions will serve. I guess the plan is that if one datacenter goes away, the others will pick up the work with no interruption.

Interesting stuff.

Re:

[Applekid (993327)]

The ulterior motive is to quantify how expensive it would be for the economy if a flu pandemic hits. That data could be used in cost-benefit analysis for vaccinations and vaccine stockpiles.

Though, that's not much of an ulterior motive. It sure beats releasing diseases into the populace to find out, that's for sure.

I mean, come on, nobody could be THAT evil.

(oblig. scene of Mr. Burns laughing at a worker hanging on for dear life outside his window)

Been there, done that

[Maximum Prophet (716608)]

1966 U.S. Army dispenses Bacillus subtilis variant niger throughout the New York City subway system. More than a million civilians are exposed when army scientists drop lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates.

http://www.rense.com/general36/history.htm [rense.com]
Not mentioned there, but at least one person died from this.

Ulterior Motive is to keep people afraid

[billstewart (78916)]

Sure, there probably are people in the US government who are actually worried about disease prevention, and they try to do their jobs even when the propaganda people aren't using them. Good for them, and it's too bad the politicians won't let them also deal with problems like needle-spread diseases like AIDS and hepatatis, or problems like VD and teenage pregnancy that require admitting that YOUR teenagers might be having sex.

But that hasn't been what the Pandemic Flu scares have been about, except for t

Not really

[WindBourne (631190)]

The disease tracking is showing that diseases spread fast when a population gets overpopulated. Within the last 5 years, WHO has shown that simple flu now moves through the world in a matter of 1-2 weeks. It is a real indication that mother nature is about to do what she does to the top of the chain; ravage it via hunger and/or disease. Most likely, it will be a flu as it is difficult to distinguish from a cold, and the ease of transmission. WHO and CDC feel certain that either this season or next will be a big hit. At that time, the only real way to slow the spread is to keep everybody seperate. Those who work in factories will be a very high risk, The same is true of stores (lots of ppl passing by) and office will be the worse. But in the office, most can actually telicommute. That will slow the spread until a vaccine is developed, assuming that the new all encompassing flu vaccine does not work.

The feds are simply acting responsibile, and seeing what will be the general reaction.

Re:

[Dan Ost (415913)]

Thank you for that great post. Wish I had mod points.

Re:Telecommute? Maybe... Maybe Not

[WindBourne (631190)]

The idea is to test all of this now. The telecommute will work fine if several things are in place:

• A way to access their work, securely. VPN, ssh, https are in places in a number of areas.
• A way to talk. VOIP and/or PSTN work wonders combined with IM and email.
• A willingness to accept it by all.

It is the last one that will be difficult for employees AND managers. A number of ppl like to separate their work from home. They will have to learn to set aside one room for work.

As to the power grid, I am not too worried about it. The plants will have to work to keep their employees separated by distance, as well as consider how to keep them separate from the general populace. As to the powerload, I think that it will actually be just a bit more, not hugely more. The reason is that there will be less driving. In addition, the offices will have to run their fans constantly, but will AC and even light far less (and most large office buildings run AC during the day even in the winter due to computer and human heat).

One issue that I can see is the current trend in offices is to do smaller and small binnies. That means that everybody is closer. When something starts, the companies will have to be willing to move quickly to telecommuting. If not, they could lose a SIGNIFICANT chunk of their office workers in a very short time. Here at Verizon, they are cramming ppl into 1/4 of the space that we had back in the late 80's.

Re:

[Red_Foreman (877991)]

Unfortunately this simulation is a bit... unsound. Not everyone that catches the flu shows symptoms, nor do they miss work. Instead, they just infect those that they work with, and I don't seen anything in the article that leads me to believe that they're factoring this in.

This might be an interesting study, but the money might be better spent just reminding people to wash their hands frequently. That simple act alone can save billions of dollars nationwide in time lost due to illness in the workplace.

It's

Re:

[Otter (3800)]

Unfortunately this simulation is a bit... unsound. Not everyone that catches the flu shows symptoms, nor do they miss work. Instead, they just infect those that they work with, and I don't seen anything in the article that leads me to believe that they're factoring this in.

This isn't a simulation of flu transmission, it's a simulation of how your company works when a third of the people are telecommuting and another third are dead.

Re:The real question

[networkBoy (774728)]

Not everyone that catches the flu shows symptoms, nor do they miss work. Instead, they just infect those that they work with,

True. In the case of a pandemic flu my employer has a policy in place that admittance to the workplace will be on a need-only basis. In other words, if you are HR, finance, marketing, engineering, etc. you don't come in. You work from home till the pandemic is passed. In my case I do machine maintenance and code development. I would work from home unless something was broken, then I would go in.
-nB

Re:The real question

[Orange Crush (934731)]

Is Slashdot ready for all these additional telecommuters?

Goofing off on Slashdot at work vs. goofing off on slashdot at home through while pretending to work via the VPN connection shouldn't affect traffic levels.

Re:

[Aladrin (926209)]

Yes, but they'd be 'aware' that they were screwed. ;)

I work at a small company with 2 other techs and they recently went to a conference for a few days... That was fun, I can tell you. If that happened for 2 weeks they'd probably come back as the only 2 techs left. ;)