Flu Pandemic

An article in Scientific American expresses the worries of the scientific community that a new flu pandemic like in 1918 would potentially at least 80 million people worldwide. They have correlated the death toll in various countries to the income per capita, with developing countries having a much higher death rate than Western nations.

I work for a health care corporation. We have 8 hospitals. We have been working with our city to see how we would handle a bird flu pandemic. We believe it will come in waves and we have tried to figure out how we would deal with a massive amount of bodies atone time.

Have you got viral containment facilities too? A large epidemic would be difficult to prevent from spreading not only among the patients, but also among the medical personnel.

This reminds me of Stephen King's The Stand. Brrr...

es, we do. We even practice drills to refine our response times and skills. It's all rather unsettling, but at least we'd have some sort of prep instead of just getting hit blindly. I just hope we never have to use any of this stuff.

I suppose that those drills take place regularly. Is it once a year? Twice, maybe? The weather conditions may also affect the response to such an outbreak. If an such event was to occur during a hot Summer, you'd have to add extra filters to the air-conditioning, for instance.

I bet you've enjoyed watching "Outbreak" with Dustin Hoffman.

Let's hope that something like this never becomes reality.

try to avoid those types of movies! But yes, we have drills at our various hospitals a couple of times a year. And I mean they are complete drills, with bio-hazard suits, tents, wounded, etc.

Actually, I quite enjoy those movies or books, especially The Stand. Imagine how Mankind would react to being cut down by 80% or so in its number, with the subsequent breaking of the social fabric. But maybe this is just my sick mind at work...

I cannot help but wonder how we would deal with the people panicing? I hope that this is something we never have to deal with but I am sure if it is not this bird flu it would be something else. I think it is a great idea to have a plan in place in case of something like this happening.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that the panicking of so many people would cause a lot of deaths among individuals who would otherwise be somehow immune to the disease. I think that Stephen King has made is quite clear in The Stand that a fair amount of people who wouldn't be affected by the disease would still die of other causes.