# 3876
An opinion piece in the Washington Post today, questioning just how ready we really are for a severe pandemic.
First, read the editorial. Then I’ll be back with a few comments.
Vaccine frustration
Maybe we're not so ready for a pandemic after all.
Friday, October 23, 2009
AS VACCINATION efforts go, the one underway for the H1N1 virus (a.k.a swine flu) has not gone smoothly. Lower-than-expected vaccine yields have reduced the number of doses available, and this has led to the cancellation or scaling back of vaccination clinics across the country, including in Maryland and Virginia. After eight years of talk about preparing for either biological attacks or life-threatening pandemic influenza, the performance is worse than disappointing.
The notion that we’ve `caught a lucky break’ with this relatively mild H1N1 pandemic is one that I, and my fellow flu bloggers, have just about all mentioned.
Along with the fact that our luck may not hold.
If we are smart, we’ll use this moderate pandemic as a learning opportunity, and begin to prepare in earnest for the next pandemic.
But history tells us that once this threat abates, so likely will our interest in preparing for the next one.
The levees of New Orleans, after all, are in no better position to deal with a CAT 4 hurricane than they were before Katrina hit.
We’ve distressingly short memories and an uncanny ability to `wish away’ threats we don’t want to deal with.
After the pandemics of 1957 and 1968, and the close call in 1976, virtually nothing was done to prepare for the next pandemic until 2005, several years after the H5N1 bird flu virus had already begun to circulate.
That we are prepared at all for H1N1 is because we started to prepare for bird flu.
And a lot of that credit has to go to the CDC and HHS under the directorship of Michael Leavitt. Was it enough? No.
But given the limited congressional funding they were provided, and the lack of public interest, they accomplished a fair amount.
The Obama administration must be thankful that they at least had a playbook in place. Designed, perhaps, for a more virulent pandemic – but a template that was ready to go - and adaptable to the current situation.
Had this been the H5N1 virus, with a high mortality rate, we’d be in a terrible fix. So yes . . . we’ve caught a lucky break.
The sobering thing is . . . H5N1 is still out there. It hasn’t gone away. It could show up on our doorstep tomorrow, or next month, or next year. Or perhaps it will be something else, a different strain, or maybe not even influenza.
But you can pretty much put money on the fact that eventually something else will come down the pike.
We ignore that reality again at our considerable peril.
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