Pandemic Response Pattern

In OctoberZeroFive our part of the world had two media happenings. One is the return of "Bali Bombing". The second is the airing of a Sunday media program, on the upcoming Pandemic and the world community plan for disaster management.

The objective is to seek collaboration on a CommunityDisasterManagementPattern, to be categorized with the HumanBehavioralPatterns that exists here. A pattern to mitigate any AntiPattern behavior in the population.

The Pandemic being named and watched

Around the turn of this century there was an outbreaks which everybody know by the name of SARS, or equally common as "Bird Flu". The viral breed was categorized as H5N1.

It is said the 1918 (First world war) "Spanish Flu" was actually caused by an "Avian flu virus". The death rate was comparatively low then, but lots of people died due to the widespread nature of that disease. And during that period the attack came in several successive waves that involved unchanged gene, or mutated variants.

Flu is already a common killer of worlds population, the human kind is more fatal for the old and very young.

The experience from SARS was that the fittest of the population was not immune, and that the strand has a high mortality rate.

The scientists are expecting "gene swapping" between avian and human flu virus to create a new pandemic situation within years.

Vaccines are available, but do they work?

Through mass media, it is now known there is a drug, in short supply, that alleges to prevent / cure this avian flu. There is a debate in this part of the world who should have access to this limited supply.

If you're referring to tamiflu, as I understand it it generally works to prevent the spread of the disease. That's to say it makes those around a patient safer, but it doesn't save the patient or prevent you from getting the flu if you take it and bump into someone who hasn't. I have checked with a medical practitioner who viewed that Flu virus are extremely adaptive, a vaccine would not have helped those already sick, and that the vaccine would become useless in subsequent waves of viral outbreak.

CureWorseThanTheDisease

For people interested in more information, I have taken a look at WikiPedia and the information is up to date and consistent with my information sources. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5N1

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

And the country that abused the drug is a major source of supply for the ingredient of the drug

Material moved to PandemicResponseDiscussions

Community response make or break civilization

There are fears that the reaction of the population, once the pandemic is confirmed, would cause disintegration of society. So in that sense, knowledge of a "unproven vaccine" could be another CureWorseThanTheDisease.

Please use PandemicResponseDiscussions for chat mode discussions.

See also a new Sep05 book by Dr Mar Siegel "...Epidemic of Fear"

CategoryGosp CategoryWikiSavesTheWorld