Pandemic Response Discussions

Before you ask

Why this community

This community is for collaboration, this community people have interests on important "non computing" material. This community has interests in patterns, particularly when ItsaPeopleProblem.

Why not on TheAdjunct

That community has smaller audience currently. And the administrator is still working on rules of "inclusion" and "exclusion".

Whats the BigDeal?

Global Impact. More than "just" the disintegration of the airline industry.

If there is going to be a pandemic soon and the society panics, then there will not be a C2 community. It is probably developing faster than "melting polar ice cap" (one third gone in recent years) or TheTsunami?, or any large scale but local disaster. Note in mid eighties China had a quake that killed over 150,000 people, but disasters of that kind did not have "global impact".

Also society has changed for the worse. While the 1965 Blackout in Northeastern part of US did not result in significant anarchy, the 1977 blackout resulted in "a night of lawlessness". See the book BlackOut. Now in this post 9/11 era of twenty first century, even our governments seem to be in the AnxietyIndustry business.

How can the community participate

Maybe we can discuss management issues.

For example, the strategic stock that is being held in the countries that have them. How should it be applied? Get some grassroots feedback to government and WHO, etc.
- example being if pandemic breakout in Vietnam, and that country cannot afford medication, do we use some of our "strategic stock" to help them?
what are the impact of quarantine, if outbreak occurs and public demand isolation from infected communities?
US is not known to have "public knowledge" of strategic stock of this vaccine. Does that mean US experts held that the vaccinees are useless? Or the public should not know? Or there are other ways to solving the upcoming pandemic problem? Or it is a case of SelfDeceit? A few days later BBC reports US has now successfully reproduced a complete 1918 virus. Findings:
- the "swine flu" is indeed ver similar to H5N1
- there are now concerns that the mutation into human form did not require "gene swapping"

Is the main page GoodEnough?

material moved to NotGoodEnoughButHaveToMakeDo. Free up main (and this discussion page) for more urgent stuff

Things to do to help your subconscious

I suggest all interested WikiZens to dig up "recent" US huge scale calamity movies with similar themes and screen these again. I recall coming across one movie, where a highly contagious deadly virus hit a US town, people tried to flee, the government wanting to "nuke" the entire county....

could be more realistic scenario than you think. This BoilTheOcean approach is more preferable than complete disintegration of society.

For a Less severe disaster movie check out "OIL STORM". It started with hurricane destruction of oil supplies near New Orleans, ending with complete "change of lifestyle" in US.

Another good old movie is "Cassandra Crossing". BTW GeorgeBush just said in early Oct05 that he will engage the military to enforce measures to contain the epidemic, should it become a reality. Hope he does not go OffShore with his troops this time. There were insufficient American soldiers (National Guards) to go around to help with TheTsunami?, American style (aka Katrina).

And I am quite impressed with Australia where there are community interests in furthering discussions. There is going to be an "Insight" program to discuss, which I have no doubt the government leaders (or the consultants they engage) will listen.

BottomUp response to TopDown planning is the intended focus (of the parent page)

Ever been an architect in a company of any size? When you go about soliciting input you often get "polite but useless feedback". Same with "Management initiated surveys". Respondents (bottom level) realize they do not have the resource nor scope of their leadership, and most become concerned about (their own) contributions doing more harm than good. If the contribution is good, the top takes credit. If the feedback "needs qualification", then the contributor may become a "marked target" for the impudent behavior.

Now this "Pandemic scenario" been around so long that even "Discovery channel" make money out of writing TV programs for it. So when a commercial TV station starts to do a "Sunday program" out of it I would say it could be " an engineered survey in disguise".

My intentions as a "faceless bottom feeder" is to try to make this "consultation process" a success. Local, and even national governments can nolonger "do what is right" by themselves. There have to be massive endorsement of whatever draconian measures to be instigated, for the affected societies to stay intact through the upcoming crisis.

BlameStorming.. OK so NowWhat??

moved from the PandemicResponsePattern main page

What I did not know, but frightening, is that it reported some drugs were used to combat this flu, resulting in increased resistance.

Goddamned assholes. They did it to themselves. I hope it wipes out half of China.

Half of any country wiped out has global impact. Even a small African country, if the pandemic was contained, would not have guaranteed that the virus do not have a "subsequent coming" in other countries, as long as Global transportation system continues to function. The virus came in waves during the 1918 round of infections.

So now you have wetted your anger. Are there technology solutions that "the world" can develop without getting abused again? The developed countries stand to lose much more than a poor African nation, which never had democracy, freedom, sufficient food, medicine, etc.

Not in time. It takes a long time to develop antivirals, which is why only the most criminally insane of godsdamned idiots would waste them on animals. And RefactoringTheHumanBody, or recoding DNA at any rate, won't be possible for a few decades.

Maybe, just maybe, if H5N1 doesn't hit for at least another decade then SyntheticBiology will have sufficiently expanded our theoretical knowledge of molecular biology to come up with an effective solution. Or possibly if we just trawl through the H5N1 antibodies to find some that are effective, yeah then SB would be very useful in synthesizing the required megadoses.

There's also containment. This means ways to shut down the airline and passenger transport industries fast. Possibly, a fast, reliable and reusable viral detector on a chip would be extremely helpful. A test for super-infectious people would also be extremely helpful. It also helps that China is willing to shoot people.

I'm also wondering about the viability of eliminating poultry.

More drugs is not the solutions. ["Law and order"] could be a larger issue

It does not matter if the production of the drug(s) (Tamiflu) identified by another contributor can be increased tenfold. There will be distribution problems even the drug can be done 100 fold at zero cost. View not supported elsewhere.

In my opinion, the larger issue is "panic avoidance", when the inevitable happens. Maybe there are even larger issues at stake. So can we name these risks, and discuss risk mitigation alternatives?

AnxietyVaccineNeeded?, or ThereIsNoSituationSoBadThatYouCantMakeItWorseByPanicking

I searched C2 for panic pattern or something like it. Best I can find is the above page. The name of the other "DontPanic" page does not express the need to address Anxiety/Panic prevention.

A few hours after the main pages got created, the news reported many people in Korea got trampled to death, after a mass of people waiting admission to a government organized function decided to rush the gates.

What would have happened if the world gets hit by an Endemic like the Flu of 1918? Would the response taken by governments and public stampede out any pretences of civility? Are there any "harm minimization measures" that get the people of "Age of Anxiety" better prepared?

Stakeholders in aiding/preventing/talking about Pandemic

drug companies and research scientists and financiers working on projects related to Flu
people in power that think democracy is too inconvenient / inefficient
people without power hoping for a reshuffle if law and order break down
news media without good stories
bored people on this wiki :)

None of the above

For people who think they want to "worry for its own sake" or "know everything worth knowing", here is some bits on comments re: healthy H5N1 cases in chickens.

the virus has always been known to be virulent in chickens, which fall sick quickly and die within 24 hours of contracting it.
Healthy chicken are now found in Indonesia, hosting H5N1 virus.
"We are worried that if there are infected chickens which don't show any symptoms, then if we are in close contact with them, the chances of humans getting infected will be higher."
"..the more chickens are infected, the higher the chance of the virus spilling over to humans,"

Good scary story, now go to bed

OctoberZeroFive

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