# 2121
One of the frustrations felt most keenly by pandemic planners, federal officials, and those of us involved in pandemic communications is the difficulty we seem to have getting the preparedness message across to ordinary people.
It would seem simple enough.
We live in a dangerous world, where bad things can, and do happen to people each and every day. Hurricanes, floods, tornados, earthquakes . . . and yes, even pandemics - are part of this world we live in.
People cannot always depend upon their government to come to their rescue in a disaster, at least, not immediately.
It is up to each individual, each family, and every business to be prepared to weather a disaster on their own for days, perhaps even weeks.
In addition, we need to find ways to work together as a community when disaster strikes, for we are only as prepared as our next door neighbors.
This is a lesson that you would think you could teach a 10 year old child in about 15 minutes. It is, basically, a longer version of the Boy Scout's Motto: Be Prepared.
And yet, the preparedness movement in this country is virtually ignored. Despite warnings from our Federal government that all citizens should be prepared for a pandemic or other disaster, very few have made any effort at all in that direction.
We expect FEMA, or some other government agency to come to our rescue in a crisis.
Today is July 4th. Independence day.
Ironic, isn't it, that Americans today seem perfectly content to be dependent on their government to protect them. Even when that very government warns they may not be able to do so.
It wasn't always so.
Growing up as I did in Florida the 1950's and 1960's, being prepared was part of life.
Sure, part of that mindset was the cold war; the Cuban Missile Crisis, duck and cover drills, evacuation routes and fallout shelters, Civil Defense handouts in the schools and CONELRAD tests on the radio and TV.
Duck and Cover
The specter of instantaneous nuclear incineration was pretty much a constant part of life back then, and was a terrific motivator. For the very first time, man was capable of erasing himself from the face of the earth. Unlike today, we actually took that threat seriously.
Amazingly, being born into it, it seemed almost `normal'.
Like most families, we stockpiled food, had bottled water, emergency radios, flashlights, an emergency family plan . . . the very things our government wants us to do today.
Of course it wasn't all bad.
Our shared angst changed a generation. It helped to give us folk music, rock & roll, Tom Lehrer, the peace movement, a sexual revolution, and a newfound tendency to question authority.
When life lacks permanence and security, one tends to break, or at least change, the rules.
But beyond nuclear annihilation, we also had another threat. One that came around like clockwork.
Hurricane season was a yearly reminder that life could change, brutally and irrevocably, overnight. Towns could be destroyed, lives could be lost, and even the shape of the coastline could be altered in a matter of hours.
It was a very big deal, I can tell you, on April 1st 1960 when Tiros I - the world's first weather satellite - was launched into Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
For the first time, we had a `god's eye view' of earth. Regions of our globe where once cartographers could only inscribe "Here there be Dragons' could be watched 24 hours a day. Our view of our world changed, practically overnight.
It was a wondrous day for everyone, except possibly for members of the Flat Earth Society.
Sure the pictures were grainy, and the resolution laughable by today's standards, but for the first time we could watch from aloft and observe how and where hurricanes formed.
I was six years old. And I remember it like it was yesterday.
It meant we were no longer solely dependent on ship's reports and Hurricane Hunter aircraft to know if disaster lay just beyond the horizon.
It meant more than 12 hours warning to prepare.
TIROS 1 could take and transmit about 1 picture an hour, and only during daylight hours. Infrared capability was added to later `birds'. Today, our reconnaissance satellites can take 40 pictures an hour, and see right through the clouds and measure rainfall, winds and even sea water temperatures.
As a result, hurricane forecasting has improved tremendously over the past 48 years.
In 1960, about all satellites could do was tell us where hidden threats lay. They couldn't tell us much about where they were going, or how big they would get.
In many ways our surveillance of infectious diseases, like the H5N1 bird flu virus, are at the same level of technology (and accuracy) as our weather forecasting of nearly 50 years ago.
With our current science we can now see a pandemic threat while it is still over the horizon, but we can't tell where it is going or whether it will fizzle out or become a monster.
Our technology just isn't that good, and in many parts of the world, we have no surveillance at all. These are significant blind spots, where a virus could erupt and spread with little warning.
Just like hurricanes, pandemics come around on a semi-regular schedule. Instead of being a yearly occurrence, they come around every three or four decades. This pattern has held for at least the last 300 years.
The last pandemic was 40 years ago. You do the math.
Today, we no longer worry about missiles aimed at our cities. The paranoia over communism is pretty much gone. College aged kids, going to their freshman year this fall, were born after the Berlin Wall was torn down.
They don't remember the cold war.
The madness of the 1950's and the 1960's are as alien to them as the rise of Nazism in the 1930's seemed to my generation.
Most young adults today are probably unaware of the history of the Doomsday Clock, maintained by Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists . Although originally designed to show how close the world was to nuclear destruction, the clock now reflects other threats as well.
By the Mid-1990's, the threat level had receded from it's peak, of 2 minutes to midnight (destruction) to 17 minutes. Unfortunately, the clock has been advanced several times since then, reflecting a more dangerous world, and we now sit at 5 minutes till midnight.
Today, Hurricanes no longer strike without warning. We get real time weather warnings about tornados and floods. We sense no threat of nuclear war. We have eyes in the sky, cable TV, computers on every desk, and modern science and miracle drugs.
We believe our technology will protect us.
While many parts of our world remain violent, chaotic, and perilous . . . that seems too far distant to affect us here at home.
We believe the government can, and will, come to our rescue, even when they warn us they can't. And we refuse to believe that anything really bad could happen.
Not to us, anyway.
For some people there almost seems to be a pathological resistance to preparing. As if, by taking basic steps to protect their friends and family they are committing a sacrilege of some sort.
A mutinous act? Putting their trust in themselves and their neighbors, instead of in their government?
Or perhaps it is just some deeply buried superstition, a core belief that by preparing they are tempting the new gods of technology to visit upon them and their families a plague or some other calamity.
I'm sure the reticence of people to prepare would make an excellent psychological study. It may be as simple as people don't like to think about unpleasant things.
But this is a barrier we must overcome if we are to be ready for a pandemic, or other national emergency. This complacency, inbred to our society over decades, is a clear and present danger to our nation and to the world.
We obviously need a stronger, more consistent message from our leaders. And not just from agencies like the CDC and the HHS, but from our political leaders as well. For too long our elected officials have been content to let others take the lead (and the potential flack) over the issue of pandemic preparedness.
This is an election year. When is the last time you heard a presidential candidate mention pandemic influenza as a global threat and urge Americans to actively prepare for a pandemic in a stump speech?
And no. Position papers that nobody reads don't count.
The media is to blame as well, for as a society we know far too much about the personal lives of Britany Spears or Brad and Angelina , and far too little about public health issues like pandemic influenza.
But the ultimate responsibility must lie with the people themselves. Even if the message is poorly, or inconsistently delivered, it is out there.
I found it. You found it. It really isn't that hard.
Thousands of newspapers articles, hundreds of news reports, scores of magazine articles, and dozens of TV specials over the past 3 years have underscored that there is a novel influenza virus in the wild and that scientists are concerned it could mutate into a pandemic strain that could kill millions.
How many times have you read that sentence?
How many times has the average American come across, glossed over, and chosen to ignored that warning?
Yes, we need to find better ways to get the message out. The government obviously needs to do a better job conveying the threat, although I get letters from people in other countries who could but wish for a government that was as proactive on this issue as ours.
But I truly wonder; exactly what it will take to get through to the majority of people out there. What will it take to get them to act?
My guess is, probably reports of a pandemic breaking out on the evening news.
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