This is what "health expert" Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota says about preparedness.

Scroll down to bold print {my emphasis}





US companies must ready for flu pandemic: Leavitt
Tue Feb 14, 2006 6:17 PM GMT
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By Andrew Stern

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - U.S. companies must pitch in to help prepare for what scientists believe could be a devastating influenza pandemic, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said on Tuesday.

Leavitt repeated the message he has been hammering home to states -- they can expect little help from the federal government and need to get their emergency plans in order.

"Avian flu, when it occurs, will severely test the best-laid plans ... and many companies are not making any plans at all," Leavitt told a conference on business preparedness for the anticipated bird flu pandemic.

H5N1 avian influenza has spread among flocks across Asia and into Europe. It has been found in Italy, Slovenia and Nigeria.

While it has infected just 168 people, killing 90 of them, experts fear the virus will mutate just enough to allow it to pass easily from person to person. If it does so, it could cause a catastrophic pandemic.

The U.S. Congress has approved $3.6 billion in funding out of $7.1 billion requested by President George W. Bush to prepare for a pandemic that some scientists estimate could kill more than 300 million people globally.

An organizer of the conference, public health expert Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, outlined scenarios where corpses will pile up and vital global supply lines will disintegrate as the pandemic takes hold and up to 60 percent of the world's population becomes infected.

Still, 98 out of 100 people will likely survive, and that must be prepared for too, he said.

HOSPITAL BEDS, VENTILATORS, AND SURGICAL MASKS AND GLOVES WILL RUN OUT ALMOST IMMEDIATELY, Osterholm said.

Leavitt read a scenario in which every porch had a casket, there was no work and men were kept busy digging graves.

"This is not a Stephen King novel I am reading from," Leavitt said. He was reading from a Kentucky coal miner's account of the catastrophic consequences of the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed between 20 million and 100 million people worldwide.

'OVERDUE AND ILL-PREPARED'

"We are overdue, and ill-prepared. Local communities are going to have to take the lead," Leavitt said. "Those expecting the federal government to ride in and come to their rescue are going to be sorely disappointed."

Government itself is ill-prepared for its workers as well, said a senior analyst from Congress' investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office.

"I don't think anybody is up to speed yet," said Judith Kordahl, who is attending the two-day conference. The GAO is doing research for several reports on the topic of bird flu preparedness.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was criticized for its belated response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, was just getting around to offering advice to companies on how to keep operating during a pandemic, Kordahl said.

Most disaster preparedness planning is designed to inform workers about what to do if something were to happen to one's office building should a local disaster hit, such as a localized natural disaster or an explosion of a "dirty bomb" that spreads nuclear contamination, several attendees said.

Without an immediate vaccine, or enough medications to fight the infection that can overwhelm the lungs, many workers will merely be told to work from home and to avoid contact with others, they said.

Leavitt said checklists for businesses and families are being prepared to reveal weaknesses and enhance planning, but acknowledged it was difficult to get people to act before the actual crisis hits.

"Let's acknowledge that anything we say before a pandemic occurs feels like an exaggeration, feels alarmist. But anything said afterward, it shows a lack of preparation," Leavitt said.

"Is this Y2K all over again? Is this crying wolf? This (pandemic) will happen with certainty. We don't know if H5N1 is the spark ... in 1918 they had no idea what was coming."

this is an interesting dicussion, i guess we will see how things get handled

Edited by seesthelight

Janetn, let's do a little math, okay?

There are roughly 5000 hospitals in the US. Approximately 1,000,000 staffed beds. Hospitals admit roughly 36 million patients a years.   The medium size of a hospital in this country is 200 beds.

To make things easy, lets take a 200 bed hospital (we'll multiply x 5000 later to get national totals <g>).

I've seen estimates that say a 200 bed hospital would need over 530,000 masks to last the staff for a six week pandemic.   Optimistic, to think a wave would only last 6 weeks, but we'll use that number.

530,000 x 5000= 2.65 BILLION masks.

And this doesn't count nursing homes (another 2 million patients) or ad hoc hospitals set up during a pandemic.

Now add in gloves, gowns, IV's, and other disposables.  The numbers become staggering. Is it about budgets? Yep, I'm sure that's part of it. But it will also be about supply.   Where do we get 2.65 Billion masks?  They are all manufactured offshore.  Other countries will be clammoring for them, too.   Even if you could afford them, where do you store them?

Worldwide, the demand will be 10x greater. Maybe more. 

Like it or not, we have to cross that bridge between what is ideal and what is possible.  Ideally, we'd have enough of everything we needed in a pandemic. The realitity is we will have to make do with what we can get.

Can we do better?  Yep, and we'd better get on the stick. But it isn't always about bean counters. No matter what we do, we will have to live with less than ideal circumstances.  Finding a way to resuse masks will be imperative. Muslin, while certainly not ideal, is better than nothing.

Do I like it?  No, not one damn bit.  But I do accept it.

I'm sorry you want out of the profession. We're gonna need as many people as we can get.

Canadian Press, Feb 16/06

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/719f39dfc899e3 538634b708b63b77e4.htm

http://www.stanford.edu/group/virus/uda/

I am a 38 yo mother of 2 boys, 7 and 4. I am also a nurse. Once I am exposed to this deadly bug, I could not come back home to my children until the pandemic was over. not to mention my employer, a family owned rehabilitaion company, (ortho injuries) has yet to even mention his prparations or plans for this event. As of this post, I think my priorities lie with my children.

carmannurse wrote: I am a 38 yo mother of 2 boys, 7 and 4. I am also a nurse. Once I am exposed to this deadly bug, I could not come back home to my children until the pandemic was over. not to mention my employer, a family owned rehabilitaion company, (ortho injuries) has yet to even mention his prparations or plans for this event. As of this post, I think my priorities lie with my children.

I'm playing the devil's advocate.

What do you think your chances of returning home to your children are,
after the pandemic(s) are eventually over (even with Tamilfu)? Do you
have any concerns about bringing home a lethal pathogen? This is an
issue in light of the dearth of information with this virus and it's
progeny. I ask this because many people will have to deal with this issue
in one form or the other, including myself. I suppose the final answer is,
dependent on you particular situation, and if the facility you work in
provides you with the proper protection, whatever that might be. I'm not
here to judge, and nobody else has the right to do it either. We are all
here for the same purpose, to help each other.


My 2-cents.

I've worked with VRE, MRSA, AIDS, Hep., staph, & C.Diff, and I agree, avian flu is more hideous.

Yep, our children need us, as the Lord entrusted them to us to provide and protect.

Good mom! : )

Mary Kay RN
    

Somebody better break the news to Dakota.....  

Mary Kay wrote: gulp!...... Ooooh baby! Praise God I'm an American! MK RN ; )

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/05/bush.reax/



http://www.columbian.com/news/APStories/AP03022006news9294.c fm

I hope they won't be as relaxed this time.

As if the rest of the world had imagination either!  We all want to put our heads in the sand until it's all gone........................................................ ........................................................

 

 

 

Gee it didn't go away

Rick, Thanks for the Martial Law post.

Mary Kay, If the Feds consider a U.S pandemic a threat to national security, Rights may be suspended and medical professionals and others may be conscripted to treat essential personnel to protect the Union. 

Good point.   

Here's the way it'll be at my house.  I'm a FF/EMT-P, and my wife is an ER RN.  Between us we have over 55 years in the medical field.  She will be staying home and taking care of our children, son-15 and daughter-13.  I have extensive training in Haz-Mat and WMD (and spent 5 years as the lead FD based Tactical Medic in my county), and I'll be going to work.  There is no real altruistic reason for this other than I can take care of myself, and still keep watch over my family and neighborhood while on duty.  And it keeps a check coming in.  I also feel that it will be safer for me on the move than what an ER will be like once the chaos sits in (about 5 minutes after it goes h2h).

I have told my wife who is and RN she is staying home. She of course will want to go....

I told her that  is a basically useless and that  unless her HMO had prepositioned container freight after container freight of supplies which would cost money) she is not going to be doing anything for anybody. No supplies = no healthcare. Some one said that nurses-doctors would be hooking up and monitoring ventilators. there will be none to be had. 

Her hospital runs at close to 90% most of the time.Supplies are delivered just in time( they do not have real stock of anything.) ER waits are out of flu season are many times over 8 hrs.

 In a pandemic lets say a 1000 people show up most with acute symptoms of bird flu. The wait would be days, riots would most likely break out.People are going to be at their emotional limits, violence will occur. Should they let non-HMO  people in? Let say they let Everybody in, is there a priority for members? No matter what can you imagine the suits you would see for taking care of an illegal alien over the children of the HMO members? It is simply unworkable. alot of the people waiting would die  during the wait ( that is if it is only as deadly as the 1918 virus)

It will most likely end healthcare as we know it, just from and economic standpoint.

Conscription, the drafting of civilians into the armed forces, has always entitled governments to shoot those who refuse to risk their lives whilst acting for their country. This has always been enthusiastically backed by that portion of the civilian population that is safely immune from its results and terrors. At some point plain commonsense is redefined as cowardice because it is in the personal interests of those who do it.

 

In times of war this collective barbarity is sometimes necessary for the greater good but the power to send our troops to their deaths is frequently abused for economic or political purposes. Military leaders are well aware of the effects of low morale and they use their powers of compulsion with great reluctance.

 

Those who work in the medical profession, the fire service, the police force, mountain rescue etc. are not members of the armed forces. There is no point in extrapolating or investigating this statement of plain fact.

 

The people who work for these essential services are civilians. We are all grateful that they do, on occasion, risk their lives in order to save others. They do this for us. They do not do it for central government and they do not do it under the threat of a firing squad. There is a very clear line of distinction between these two very different rolls and any attempt to move or blur this line is deceitful and morally wrong.

I'm having a bad hair day

I live in S/E MI and we have a lot of Canadian Nurses that work in our area hospitals.  If they are forced into indentured servitude in their own country that is really going to cause a major hit on staffing on this side of the border, should anyone actually show up to work in a hospital.

Mary Kay,

I believe they are leaving it up to the hospital and their need and where it crops up first! But I know where my hospital stands!

TERMS 1 wrote: I live in S/E MI and we have a lot of Canadian Nurses that work in our area hospitals.  If they are forced into indentured servitude in their own country that is really going to cause a major hit on staffing on this side of the border, should anyone actually show up to work in a hospital.

Some Canadian nurses might recall at the height of the Sars
epidemic, there was an acute shortage of masks. Some were asked to put
the discarded masks in to a bag so they could be used again, this according
to Barb Wahl the former president of the Ontario Nurses Union.

gricha56 wrote: How do I describe myself?  Navy Hospital Corpsman.  Retired.  Some experience with Malaria, Yellow Fever, Polio, Rift Valley Fever and many types of sexually transmitted diseases.  More than a little experience with mass casualties.  I wouldn't go anywhere near a hospital at the height of a pandemic.  And neither will sick people.  I have a good idea what this illness does to lung tissue.  Many have mentioned SARS in their posts, and I find that to be very appropriate.  They have much in common. Pathologists describe the injury caused by the pneumonia of this virus as a burn of the lung tissue.  The odds are you will not survive that injury.   If by some miracle you do,  you are not going to enjoy robust health ever again.  They can put me in jail if they want to, but I'm not bringing  the bug home to my babies

Unfortunately, this virus has the ability to rapidly move beyond lung tisues into other major organs. This complicates care and recovery. Virologists noted that H5N1 was the first avian virus that they've seen that causes "hind-leg paralysis" in chickens.

I think the damage to lungs may have as much to do with the body going into overdrive from a Cytokine Storm. If this is the case, then there are strategies that can mitigate this.


    
    

Just a little bit of humor here.

New Element Discovered!

"The heaviest element known to science was recently discovered by researchers at the University of Fulchester. The element, tentatively named Administratium, has no protons or electrons and thus has an atomic number of 0. However, it does have 1 neutron, 125 assistant neutrons, 75 vice neutrons and 111 assistant vice neutrons. This gives it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by a force that involves the continuous exchange of meson-like particles called morons.

Since it has no electrons, Administratium is inert. However, it can be detected chemically as it impedes every reaction it comes in contact with. According to the discoverers, a minute amount of Administratium caused one reaction to take over four days to complete when it would have normally occurred in less than one second. Administratium has a normal half-life of approximately three years, at which time it does not actually decay but instead undergoes a reorganisation in which assistant neutrons, vice neutrons and assistant vice neutrons exchange places. Some studies have shown that the atomic mass actually increases after each reorganisation.

Research at other laboratories indicates that Administratium occurs naturally in the atmosphere. It tends to concentrate at certain points such as government agencies, large corporations and universities and can usually be found in the newest, best appointed and best maintained buildings.

Scientists point out that Administratium is known to be toxic at any level of concentration and can easily destroy any productive reaction where it is allowed to accumulate. Attempts are being made to determine how Administratium can be controlled to prevent irreversible damage, but results to date are not promising."

Here's a gallows-humor question for all the health care professionals on this thread--if after two weeks of a pandemic, you feel a tickle in your throat (due to lack of protective gear), will you--

a) Double up on Tamiflu and other vaccines
b) Start directing incoming patients to the administrators' offices
c) Immediately drive to the nearest lawyer's office and *cough, cough*

Still prepping.  I'll probably try to ride it out at home--without protective gear myself why should I have to pay to hang around a building full of  strangers?  (...not to mention hospital food.)

 I have 25+ years ER experience and 12 years infection control experience and am the sole IC professional for my facility so guess where I will be??