Playing With Numbers and the Bird Flu

The Bird Flu that had started in Asia has now moved to Europe. One of the places where the flu has been found is a large wetland that serves as a stopping point for birds making they fall migration. It will continue to spread.

That doesn't mean that we will face a widespread outbreak of this flu. Right now the flu is still not easily transmitted to people. It may never mutate into a threat, or it may have started to change last week. The reality is we have to plan for an event, with the understanding that it may never occur.

In planning we look back.

1918s Spanish Flu was the last major pandemic, and one that we see used to model the scale and scope of a modern pandemic. The event in 1918 killed about 600,000 in the US, with just over a quarter of the population coming down with the flu. This gives the us a mortality rate under 3%.

The vast majority of these illnesses and deaths occurred in a 6 week period in September, October and November, and did have a profound impact on the society and on health care delivery.

Even in areas where morbidity was low, those incapacitated by the illness were often so numerous as to bring much of everyday life to a stop. Some communities closed all stores or required customers not to enter the store but place their orders outside the store for filling. There were many reports of places with no health care workers to tend the sick because of their own ill health and no able bodied grave diggers to inter the dead. Mass graves were dug by steam shovel and bodies buried without coffins in many places.

What is the potential impact of this latest threat?

The current mortality of the virus is slightly over 50% the Hong Kong event a few years ago had a mortality rate of 33% (compared to under 3% in 1918).

Could the US hope to respond to 75,000,000 cases of the flu that killed 25,000,000 people in a period of 6 weeks?

We only have something like 800,000 hospital beds in the US, there is little doubt that the health care delivery system will fail. If we are hit, and the virus's mortality stays high, the quality of the governmental response will be very important.

Of course, homeland security, and FEMA will lead the response. That is why it is vital that we get competent leadership in place, so FEMA can return to it's past effectiveness.

This is also why every home should have some means to fend for themselves for a few days. Hurricane, Ice Storm, Flood, or Flu, every home need the supplies and a plan that will allow them to survive, if the government response fails again (and it wil).