DoD Declassifies Flu Pandemic Plan Containing Sobering Assumptions 337
An anonymous reader writes "The Department of Defense has just declassified a copy of its 2009 Concept of Operations Plan for an Influenza Pandemic. Among the Plan's scary yet reasonable assumptions are that in the United States, such a pandemic will kill 2 percent of the infected population, or about 2 million people. The plan also assumes that a vaccine won't be available for at least 4 to 6 months after confirmation of sustained human transmission, and that the weekly vaccine manufacturing capability will only produce 1 percent of the total US vaccine required. State and local governments will be overwhelmed, and civilian mortuary operations will require military augmentation. Measures such as limiting public gatherings, closing schools, social distancing, protective sequestration and masking will be required to limit transmission and reduce illness and death. International and interstate transportation will be restricted to contain the spread of the virus. If a pandemic starts outside the US, it will enter the country at multiple locations and spread quickly to other parts of the country. A related document, CONPLAN 3591-09, was released by DoD in 2010."
Sounds like an episode of Doomsday Preppers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sounds like an episode of Doomsday Preppers (Score:4, Insightful)
Plan for the worst, Hope for the best.
Sadly, the plan would be the same for a zombie apocalypse.
Re:Sounds like an episode of Doomsday Preppers (Score:4, Insightful)
More sadly is that you are comparing a flu pandemic to a fictional zombie problem which hasn't and most likely never will.
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a fictional zombie problem
Hush, don't say this to all the man-children praying for a zombie outbreak so they don't have to finally get a job.
Re:Sounds like an episode of Doomsday Preppers (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's so that we finally have an excuse to go on a shotgun rampage without guilt.
Plus, we're already all zombies anyway so it doesn't matter much anyway.
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If it's good enough for the CDC (who deal with things like flu pandemics), it's good enough for us:
http://blogs.cdc.gov/publichealthmatters/2011/05/preparedness-101-zombie-apocalypse/ [cdc.gov]
Think again. . . ."zombies" aren't what you think (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean, fictional, SO FAR.
Consider the progress of biotech. Then give it another 5-10 years, and imagine the biotech equivalent of a script kiddie. Playing with, for example, rabies. Then imagine some angry bio-scriptkiddie releasing an airborne, virulent rabies variant with a very short incubation period.
No, it's not the hordes of the Living Dead, feasting on human flesh. But the effects might well be similar. . .
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Funny you should mention zombies and rabies in an article about a flu pandemic.
John Ringo just published a fictional book about a zombie apocalypse involving a customized rabies virus hiding in a flu stain
Under a Graveyard Sky - http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/9781451639193/9781451639193.htm?blurb [baenebooks.com]
Re:Think again. . . ."zombies" aren't what you thi (Score:4, Informative)
Really ??
http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/ [cdc.gov]
Rabies is a preventable viral disease of mammals most often transmitted through the bite of a rabid animal. The vast majority of rabies cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) each year occur in wild animals like raccoons, skunks, bats, and foxes.
The rabies virus infects the central nervous system, ultimately causing disease in the brain and death. The early symptoms of rabies in people are similar to that of many other illnesses, including fever, headache, and general weakness or discomfort. As the disease progresses, more specific symptoms appear and may include insomnia, anxiety, confusion, slight or partial paralysis, excitation, hallucinations, agitation, hypersalivation (increase in saliva), difficulty swallowing, and hydrophobia (fear of water). Death usually occurs within days of the onset of these symptoms.
Re:Think again. . . ."zombies" aren't what you thi (Score:4, Informative)
with a very short incubation period.
You actually want a long incubation period so that the infected stay symptomless (but infective) for as long as possible. If the symptoms are severe and the incubation time short (e.g. flaviviridae like marburg or ebola) they kill the host before they have time to infect enough people. In essence, the virus is *too* virulent that it goes through the available susceptible people too quickly.
More deadly would be a virus that has is lethal but does not show symptoms for a period that exceeds its infective period. A good example is the early years of the HIV era -- lethal virus, long time before symptoms start, and infectious much earlier than any symptoms start to show up.
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Except that rabies wouldn't make people start eating other people. It just makes them hallucinate, delirious, causes partial paralysis and fear of consuming water or fluids (and a few other things, but none of which are eating people.)
Re:Think again. . . ."zombies" aren't what you thi (Score:4, Insightful)
Ebola kills TOO fast. For an honest-to-god Zombie Virus, you want one that deactivates/destroys higher mental functions and possibly ups aggression.
Which I why my script-kiddie scenario suggested a rabies variant. . .
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You know, I was thinking of saying something to the effect of, 'are we actually trying to work out the most effective way to engineer a zombie plague?'
Then I remembered what crowd I'm talking about... that said, carry on.
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It's a fun worse case to deal with.
They should do the same with the unexplained apocalypse in "The Road".
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They should do the same with the unexplained apocalypse in "The Road"
?? My take (on reading "The Road") was that a major nuclear war had taken place & enough of the infrastructure had been taken out that civilization was about to collapse. Just because we never find out why the war happened --arguably because all the communications channels died early -- doesn't mean it's really unexplained.
Re:Sounds like an episode of Doomsday Preppers (Score:5, Insightful)
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Flu, even particularly nasty ones, aren't even that bad to most healthy adults with a non-compromised immune system.
Re:Sounds like an episode of Doomsday Preppers (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Sounds like an episode of Doomsday Preppers (Score:5, Informative)
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More sadly is that you are comparing a flu pandemic to a fictional zombie problem which hasn't and most likely never will.
Why is that sad? While a zombie apocalypse will likely never happen, it's still a useful model for studying how diseases spread. Whether it's spread by bite or by some other method, the net effect is still the same. Besides, some diseases are spread by bite.
Re:Sounds like an episode of Doomsday Preppers (Score:4, Interesting)
More sadly is that you are comparing a flu pandemic to a fictional zombie problem which hasn't and most likely never will.
Why is that sad? While a zombie apocalypse will likely never happen, it's still a useful model for studying how diseases spread. Whether it's spread by bite or by some other method, the net effect is still the same. Besides, some diseases are spread by bite.
The difference being that a zombie apocalypse is presumed to have infected as hostile-actors who have to be murdered, not victims who need to quarantined but will most likely survive if treated.
Although now I'm thinking it would be a hell of a thing to make a movie where the zombie-virus worked that way, since that would wind up being a fairly accurate model of armed-crazy people during a flu pandemic.
Re:Sounds like an episode of Doomsday Preppers (Score:4, Insightful)
If the quarantine areas also end up in a food shortage, it will also have hungry infected people who don't care if they infect your whole family and leave them to starve as long as they get your food. Some of them may warrant shooting.
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Note to self: do NOT be visiting the US during a pandemic of any kind.
Note to AC: Pandemics are a poor time to visit anything but the insides of your bellybutton.
Re:Sounds like an episode of Doomsday Preppers (Score:4, Interesting)
You do understand that the idea of prepping for a zombie apocalypse is an allegorical exercise, right? The biggest danger during any large scale disaster isn't the disaster itself, but in how masses of people react to it.
Re:Sounds like an episode of Doomsday Preppers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like an episode of Doomsday Preppers (Score:4, Informative)
I guess all the Preppers will have the last laugh as they eat their freeze dried food in their bunkers, with gun in lap, waiting for vaccine to become available.
I believe Mr. Poe already addressed that issue: The Masque of the Red Death [wikipedia.org].
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A good chunk of the Preppers don't believe in vaccines to begin with.
Re:Sounds like an episode of Doomsday Preppers (Score:4, Informative)
Do you really think those twinks are a substantial percentage even of the prepper population? Realize that from a certain standpoint, Mormons are preppers, and they use vaccines [lds.org]. I don't think that the anti-vaxxer religious prepper types are really that big a blip. If you're sure god will take you, you don't need supplies for the rapture.
On the contrary, many if not most prepper sites include notes on which animal antibiotics you can safely use — you can get them over the counter.
Pigs Vs Birds (Score:2)
angry birds? (Score:2)
A world without bacon would be unbearable. As Homer aptly put it "A wonderful, magical animal." I believe that was in the Odyssey.
So i guess all of those... (Score:2)
...films depicting chaos and societal breakdown aren't that far off, aye?
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...films depicting chaos and societal breakdown aren't that far off, aye?
Yes they are. Look at what happened in the US during the 1918-1919 flu pandemic. It wasn't all pretty, but it certainly wasn't Zombie Apocalypse 17-1/2.
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They didn't have to contend with FEMA being run by a horse show judge with connections.
really scary (Score:2, Insightful)
It's really scary because I work for an Internet startup. Without any technology to let us communicate and collaborate without being in the same room, we are forced to come into our open plan office every day and be exposed to contagious disease.
Definition of 'scary' (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't find this scary at all. It's the reality of the world we live in. What would be scary is if the people in charge of managing such a crisis didn't have a plan, and instead choose to stick their fingers in their ears and sing "glory glory halleluja" while the country died. Literally. Why do people always seem to think things like this are "scary"? That kind of attitude is what creates truly scary situations: The kind nobody was prepared for and is now ravaging the population unchecked. That is scary. A plan... that's reassuring.
Or maybe I'm just from some bizarro alternate universe where being prepared is frightening and living in ignorance is bliss.
Re:Definition of 'scary' (Score:5, Interesting)
What I find scary is the TFA:
"The first priority of DOD support in the event of a PI is [REDACTED]".
OK guys, just what exactly are you up to?
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Ack! My head asplode. I tried to read more of the TFA --
[REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED]
(I'd go further except I think I'm going to hit the lameness filter soon.)
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"Defense"
Glad I could help.
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Re:Definition of 'scary' (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find scary is the TFA:
"The first priority of DOD support in the event of a PI is [REDACTED]".
OK guys, just what exactly are you up to?
The first priority of the DOD is probably the defense of the nation, ie the preservation of the government and therefore civil order. There are 2 ways to survive a pandemic: a coordinated, controlled response, and fragmentation. The first one requires the government to stay intact, to direct the medical and relief responses. They have to ensure that basic services stay intact, that people still have access to food and clean water, and are protected. The bigger cities probably look like Boston did after the bombing. Society stays intact, and the pandemic is defeated by a coordinated response including medical treatment as well as isolation and quarantine of infected populations. In the second response, everyone goes into survival mode: people hole up and refuse human contact, there will probably be looting as well as some killing. Society erodes, and the pandemic peters out through a lack of transmission: carriers die without passing on the virus to others. I think the first option is by far the better of the 2.
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Please stop making sense. It's disturbing to the rest of us.
Re:Definition of 'scary' (Score:5, Informative)
"The first priority of DOD support in the event of a PI is [REDACTED]".
They're the military. It's redacted because it's not politically fashionable to say what they'd have to do, but put yourself in their shoes and it's obvious: Protect key government officials by evacuating them in secret while reassuring the public everything is fine and they haven't been disappeared and are now in a secret bunker somewhere.
Military thinking on this is obvious to the point of being painful: You have to coordinate your response to the crisis, and that means first securing your chain of command, then securing communications, then securing your chain of supplies, and then finally deploying resources into the field to secure key assets.
That's the response plan because that's what the situation dictates. You don't need a security clearance to figure this out... but confirming that's what they would do could complicate those efforts by a panic'd populace. And that's why it's classified. It's not because they're "up to something", it's because sometimes a little knowledge is a bad thing.
It's like the Joker said; "You know... You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go 'according to plan.' Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all 'part of the plan'. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!"
Chew on that awhile when you're wondering next time why the government classifies so many things; It's not because they're up to no good... it's because people are fucking stupid, and they panic at nothing. The whole point of the government during a crisis is to keep people separated and not in large groups where panic and hysteria can take over. Any crisis. It just so happens, it's a particularly good idea during a pandemic.
Re:Definition of 'scary' (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I'll bet it's "Put dissidents in FEMA internment camps." Just like in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
More seriously. While you're probably correct, classifying things for political reasons is almost always a bad thing. This kind of mindset, that normal people can't handle the truth, is what leads to an unaccountable government. Government accountability can only happen with transparency.
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We're talking about the Pentagon, not HHS. Worrying about redactable stuff is their job.
My assumption is that their priority would be maintaining the health and status of nuclear weapons crews.
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The plan isn't scary. The 2 million deaths from a rapidly spreading flu is scary. Seriously dude, do you have to be so pedantic?
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Oh god, there's another one?!!
Re:Definition of 'scary' (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't find this scary at all. It's the reality of the world we live in. What would be scary is if the people in charge of managing such a crisis didn't have a plan, and instead choose to stick their fingers in their ears and sing "glory glory halleluja" while the country died. Literally. Why do people always seem to think things like this are "scary"? That kind of attitude is what creates truly scary situations: The kind nobody was prepared for and is now ravaging the population unchecked. That is scary. A plan... that's reassuring.
Or maybe I'm just from some bizarro alternate universe where being prepared is frightening and living in ignorance is bliss.
Luckily there is a large number of people that do work on and plan for such situations. The CDC, National Guard, FEMA, and even state and local emergency management departments. The good thing is that the same basic response is needed for most types of disasters; only a few details differ (containment of pathogen, isolation of infected people, etc). They still have to manage crowd control, logistics and evacuations, etc. The biggest problem isn't the government freaking out and not doing anything. The bigger danger is the general population freaking out and killing other people over things like food or gasoline, even if the pandemic is relatively short-lived. People scare easily, and when people can't go outside or interact with others in person they will flock to the internet, where fear and misinformation would spread faster than the actual virus would. THe government's response doesn't scare me; they train and plan for this all the time. Everyone else's reaction is what scares me.
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ou live in an apartment complex where 50% of the residence are known to be infected. That means you must quarantine the remaining 50% of the healthy and hope they too won't get infected???
No, it means you shoot anyone who comes out just long enough to evacuate the surrounding areas... and if it's highly virulent, you drop napalm and call it a day. Something like Ebola would dictate this response.
On the other hand, if it's not as contagious... maybe a 1 in 8 chance of death... then you have two options: On-site treatment, or you secure the area, and evacuate the person one by one to a treatment facility if they show symptoms. If they don't show symptoms, isolate them from everyone else and wa
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Don't be ridiculous. Assuming a biological attack on said complex you'd seal off the area and then evacuate with normal health hazard protocols(hazmat suits, isolate, remove and discard clothes, belongings, wash people, keep under observation.) And for normal airborn contagion(as in no biological attack, just normal spread pattern) you'd likely not do decontamination and isolation protocols for everyone in the area, you'd track down friends family and coworkers, put them on sickleave and observation and tha
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You've watched too many zombie movies. You don't just napalm sick people. End of story.
Do zombie movies really turn people into sociopaths?
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Lobbying for new tech? (Score:3)
While such plans do have potential practical value, isn't the usual thrust "what new pet program do our sponsors want funded?"
The way we create vaccines is overly calendar time long (but sidesteps questions about safety of new techniques).Also our general anti-viral stocks are low.
Sponsors from either (or both) camps may be influencing both the generation and now the distribution of the report.
Scary? (Score:2)
A fatality rate of only 1~2% sounds extremely good for an epidemic. At 10% it becomes scary, at 25% the shit's going to hit the fans and 50% of above it's going to be hard to recover.
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from-the-no-shit-department (Score:2)
When it happens, It's going to be really bad.
After the Pandemic plan (Score:3)
This is all fine and good but what happens AFTER the Pandemic could be just as important.
After millions of people dying the social upheaval politically would be insane. The current order of things would be put on it's head, and what it settled out to be could be anybody's guess.
For example, assuming that most infections happened in cities that could dramatically change voting patterns.
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Actually that's wrong. The Black Plague killed off enough people that economies collapsed and labor became more valuable. Craft unions, guilds and syndicates representing the middle and lower class workers were able to extract a larger portion of the recovering economy for their members. The increased wealth among the middle and lower classes increased the demand for goods and services, which led to the Renaissance.
Europeans of the late Middle Ages were possibly the filthiest people in the history of hum
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I liked Barbara Tuchmann's 'A Distant Mirror' myself.
That's actually *better* than the Spanish Flu (Score:3)
For reference, the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 is estimated to have killed anywhere from 3 to 6 percent [wikipedia.org] of world population. It presumably would have been worse in more densly populated areas.
You'd like to to think we've gotten a bit better at treating the flu in the last century or so. However, I don't think you could seriously argue that 2% is too high for a worst-case scenario. It might be too low.
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Re:That's actually *better* than the Spanish Flu (Score:5, Insightful)
Another factor is that WWI and medical practices at the time are blamed for making that flu much more deadly. Quoting wikipedia: "In civilian life, natural selection favours a mild strain. Those who get very ill stay home, and those mildly ill continue with their lives, preferentially spreading the mild strain. In the trenches, natural selection was reversed. Soldiers with a mild strain stayed where they were, while the severely ill were sent on crowded trains to crowded field hospitals, spreading the deadlier virus"
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For reference, the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 happened 95 years ago. We probably won't be seeing another WWI-style transition where previously relatively isolated populations are suddenly exposed to a whole new world of infectious diseases.
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More densely populated and much, much more mobile. Those guys who flew halfway across the country for a conference? Wonderful, you now have hundreds of distribution vectors spread across the country. Shutting down airports helps a bit but people drive far and once you start trying to quarantine that you're fighting a mass panic and people looking to get the hell out every which back road they can. We suck at fighting viruses, we've been fighting HIV for 30 years now and we're still just slowing them down, a
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For reference, the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 is estimated to have killed anywhere from 3 to 6 percent of world population. It presumably would have been worse in more densly populated areas.
You know there's wrong, then there's Wikipedia wrong. First, let's get a real authority [cdc.gov] in the mix. 2.5--5% is the number you're looking for; 3% is probably closest to accurate. And no, it wasn't worse in "more [densely] populated areas". It was better. People in urban areas are regularly exposed to more pathogens, which means their immune system is better equipped to handle a new strain or mutation of something previously exposed to than an isolated person would be. The average cold today would kill someon
Crisis budgeting (Score:2)
It has to be an emergency or they might not get their funding.
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The obese and overweight will be at an advantage, they can go a long time without eating. I on the other hand would be in trouble in short order as I lack those kind of energy reserves.
Beer provides clean water and many nutrients as well as valuable calories. Its dehydrating properties are far exaggerated. Poptarts are shelf stable, consumable without cooking, highly portable and as a survival food not too terrible at all. The combination seems fine for someone who merely needs to exist for a couple weeks
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The obese and overweight will be at an advantage,
They will be at a distinct disadvantage as they contain many calories and move slowly. They will be easy to catch.
Why is this from DoD, not CDC? (Score:2)
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One would hope that FEMA and the CDC would be providing a lot of the direction, since pandemics, public health, disasters, and emergency relief are their
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The military (and just about every other essential agency) have to do their own planning. Only they know their needs and capabilities.
Redactions (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it disturbing how many redacted gray boxes are found on something clearly marked "unclassified".
What is so scary? (Score:2)
Well, yes, huge pandemics are "scary". Stephen King's "The Stand" is based on the premise. But they are also historical realities -- it is possible that there will be a flu pandemic at some point. The fact that the DoD has done some planning for such a scenario is not scary. What would be scary is if they did NOT do any planning.
So are Preppers still crazy? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a plan. (Score:2)
President "Hello, Blizzard? We've got a pandemic coming up, so need to keep people from personal contact for a while. Would you mind putting some limited-time-only lucrative dungeons up in World of Warcraft?"
Defense? Declassified? (Score:3)
b. Why was the country's response to the flu classified in the first place?
Re:Assumptions Seem Dubious (Score:5, Informative)
The last great US flu epidemic only killed so many because of the crude state of medicine at the time and uneven sanitation in large U.S. cities. Even a virulent flu would be unlikely to rack up such a death toll in a first world nation.
That's correct. Instead of a 3-5% mortality rate [wikipedia.org] they're expecting a 2% (TFA) rate.
Progress as promised!
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Re:Assumptions Seem Dubious (Score:5, Informative)
World Population > The Infected Population.
The article is calling out a 2% mortality rate for the infected population, not the population of the world.
This is far less than the 3-5 percent mortality of the world population seen during the 1918 pandemic.
--
BMO
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To further support your statement:
The global mortality rate from the 1918/1919 pandemic is not known, but an estimated 10% to 20% of those who were infected died. With about a third of the world population infected, this case-fatality ratio means 3% to 6% of the entire global population died.[29] Influenza may have killed as many as 25 million people in its first 25 weeks. Older estimates say it killed 40–50 million people,[4] while current estimates say 50–100 million people worldwide were kill
Re:Assumptions Seem Dubious (Score:5, Funny)
Sealand!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand [wikipedia.org]
Re:Assumptions Seem Dubious (Score:4, Insightful)
You know you're in trouble when Sealand is the answer to a question.
Re:Assumptions Seem Dubious (Score:5, Insightful)
You know you're in trouble when Sealand is the answer to a question.
You know, that statement seems scientifically sound enough to get it's own title.
The Sealand Conjecture: anytime "move to Sealand" seems like a wise and/or appropriate response, you're already completely fucked.
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Re:Sounds way to optimistic... (Score:5, Informative)
In the case of a real pandemic on such a scale, I think you'd see labs working around the clock for a cure, and many of them. Not only would governments be putting a lot of pressure, the people working there would very likely feel the pain themselves (relatives, friends, etc.). Plus, for all the money grubbers, making a vaccine that needs to be used on millions of people is a surefire way of getting rich.
It's not labs though, it's raw materials. There's only so many chickens and chicken eggs you can get to grow vaccine from, it can only be done so fast and there's a definite lag in converting existing production lines to create a new vaccine (since everything has to be isolated and grown up).
Re:Sounds way to optimistic... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say 18-24 months for a vaccine, and 12%-14% population loss due to a real influenza pandemic.
And your credentials, sir? Internet pundit. Okay, how about a citation? Don't have one of those either. Okay. Well thanks, but I think I'll go with the formerly classified document released by actual experts over your knee-jerk "I think it's optimistic, and here's some numbers I think are more realistic!" post.
Purely for shits and giggles, I went and looked up what unclassified documents [globalsecurity.org] had to say about the likely timeline. Those numbers look similar to what's been revealed in this document. They, uhh, don't look like your numbers. According to WHO, it would take 5-6 months to produce a vaccine. Not nearly two years. If you were right, we would never have a flu vaccine available, yet every year like clockwork they show up at hospitals and clinics with those reminders to get vaccinated before the season starts. So I'm going to go with the DoD, CDC, and WHO's assessment on that timeframe, thanks.
However, it's just re-arranging deck chairs on the titanic either way. Our vaccine production, whether optimistic, or pessimistic, won't matter; From start to finish, the entire pandemic would last from 6-8 to perhaps 12 weeks. That's about as long as it takes the vaccine to take effect. In other words, even if we developed a vaccine the same day as patient zero showed up, and completely eliminated the production side of the equation and assumed limitless vaccines available to everyone, and that somehow, by magical fairy dust, everyone got the vaccine that same day... over a third of the population would still get infected and still suffer whatever the casualty rate is. Knock that timetable out by a month and it's everyone. Vaccine is useless.
In other words, the strategy outlined by the DoD -- containment and isolation, remains the only effective strategy. A vaccine being put in development would be there to prevent secondary infection and to have confidence that it is safe to end quarantine procedure. That's all a vaccine buys you; Some after-action security. Vaccination is not a priority. Even under super-optimal conditions, it's of limited value to us. We could throw billions at the problem trying to create a rapid response infrastructure and it would amount to exactly dick at a huge cost.
Now as far as your population loss numbers... There's just no way to predict that with confidence. The numbers they quoted are based on a historical evaluation of data over the last 50 years... which seems reasonable from a statistical standpoint... but the Pandemic of 1918 killed over 90% of the population. It was on par with the Black Death. That's pretty much the worst-case scenario -- the average case is much, much more mild. But we do know it can happen... and it's just a gamble as to when.
So I'm with the CDC and DoD on this; Containment. Isolation. Quarantine. That's our strategy, and given our current level of technology... it's the only viable one.
Re:Sounds way to optimistic... (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, no.
The 1918 pandemic killed 10-20% of the people infected.
Note that that particular flu infected ~25% of the world's population.
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Of course, a much lower percentage of the population would have been infected back then - people were much less mobile in 1918. I don't think twice about driving 100 miles a day.
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Knock that timetable out by a month and it's everyone.
Is your assumption that nobody has more than a month's worth of supplies? You should try visiting middle America sometime. Heck, especially Utah.
There are millions of people who will stay home for six months; some you'll see two years later.
Re:Wasted time (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the 2011 Steven Soderbergh movie Contagion [imdb.com] is a fairly realistic depiction of a pandemic and the reaction in the US and around the world. Well-researched, keeps the fearmongering to a minimum while still depicting a scary scenario. Takes into account the role of fringe media in spreading panic/pseudoscientific "cures," among other clever touches. A public health organization arranged for a free screening in my area, with a Q&A period afterward, if that gives you any indication of its accuracy.
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Is it just me or does this confirm that we need to restrict international travel rather strictly.
It's just you. Nothing short of a 72-hour quarantine with invasive medical for every traveler would do what you want to do. What you want to do would also shut down international commerce, which would lead to international war.
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Single entry point for international travel wouldn't help it would likely make it even worse as a once that place is infected then everyone travelling into the US will be a vector, that will then take domnestic flights to their hometown and whatever.
And closing the borders? Don't be ridiculous. What about work? export? import? That's international travel of both goods and people. Close the borders and the economic implosion will be worse than having to deal with pandemic flu.
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Okay, back to the reading comprehension class. Yes, I missed the fact that they're assuming a much smaller "infected population".
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They said infected population, not total population. They are assuming that about one third of the population could get infected.
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no, I will not mock earthquake planning, but a disease passing from birds to humans I will mock any day, and the same for fearmongering
Then you are grossly ignorant of zoonosis and where "new" diseases come from. Most human pandemics come from animal hosts. Humans are very rarely the host in which initial mutations develop, and pandemic deaths are generally a sign of a disease with poor evolutionary fitness in its new human environment (because it destroys its primary ecosystem too fast to effectively spread in perpetuity).
Influenza A is a pathogen regularly crosses between species. Birds & swine are the most common crossover specie