Financial Services Firms Simulate Flu Pandemic 150
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.'"
Huh? (Score:0, Interesting)
My company is doing the same. (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting stuff.
Did a test like this years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
What Pandemic? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How useful is that? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
sounds incomplete (Score:5, Interesting)
Preparation isn't a waste of time (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:The real question (Score:4, Interesting)
-nB
Re:sounds incomplete (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
Re:What Pandemic? (Score:5, Interesting)