Pandemic Flu Conference - Experts Forecasts
By Bham Posted in User Blogs — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Carnagie-Mellon University has released proceedings of "Pandefense 1.0," a Nov 2005 conference of health experts convened to discuss the implications of an H5N1 Avian flu pandemic. Some key consensus forecasts include:
* Probability of the US having "adequate stockpiles of vaccine and antiviral drugs to prevent a [flu] pandemic within three years" is only one percent.
* Probability of a human-human transmissible mutation of the H5N1 strain within three years is 15 percent.
* Median worst-case US mortality forecast is six million (180 million worldwide).
A summary of this research can be found here.
In addition to the profound public health implications of such a disaster scenario, it would (I think inevitably) be accompanied by major economic, geopolitical, and domestic destabilization. In the same way, and for the same reasons, that many historians believe bubonic plague was a major catalyst in ending the European Middle Ages - by undercutting the system of landed aristocracy and indentured serfs, and by enhancing the bargaining power of tradesmen and guilds, for example - this could be as transformative, if it happens?
The conventional wisdom is that the epidemics that largely destroyed the Incan civilization of Central and South America were brought by the conquistadors (smallpox for example). But newer Mexican research suggests it may have in fact been a series of hantavirus pandemics precipitated by the end of long droughts resulting in the overpopulation of infected rodents. In either case, epidemic diseases did as much or more than foreign conquest to "revolutionize" pre-colonial American culture. Whether the revolution was for better or worse is obviously debated, but my only point is the change was profound.
What will become of us in a pandemic scenario? Six million fatalities (the conference median worst case forecast) is still just two percent of the US population of 300 million. That's really bad, but the accompanying economic disaster as transport and business shut down would touch all 100 percent of Americans. Would we, could we, hold a civil society together under such pressure?
For me, an inescapable lesson of Hurricane Katrina is the importance of prior planning at the individual and family level, and of self-reliance. A flu pandemic, and its sequelae, could be a thousand-fold more challenging than any weather or seismic disaster... perhaps on a par only with an astronomical-scale event like a large meteor strike.
After most disasters, the most uplifting stories are the people-helping-people kind... ignoring for the moment the dark side like the New Orleans looters or the NYC blackout riots... but by definition in a pandemic people at large will seek to minimize interpersonal contract. This could be either our finest, or darkest, hour. The same could be said for our leaders, and our civil and political institutions. Will it be Mad Max or Florence Nightingale?