Bird Flu

Exploiting fear for ratings

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
05/11/06
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/S&E/birdflu.htm
 

I don’t mean to panic anyone about Bird Flu, but have you seen or read Steven King’s “The Stand”? You know, the one where a mutated flu virus gets loose from a military compound and kills 99.98 of all the people in the world, which inexplicably calls Satan’s imp to Las Vegas so he can get nuclear bombs?

ABC will probably re-run “The Stand” the week the news breaks that H5N1 has finally developed human-to-human contagion. Should give them great ratings.

I watched “First Contact: Bird Flu in America” Tuesday night, and it managed to be just as dreadful as I feared, and better than I hoped. It was sensationalist, and is going to raise public anxiety about bird flu. At the same time, they got their facts straight for the most part, and pointed out that the real danger from a pandemic of that sort isn’t the number killed by the disease, but the number killed by panic and social chaos.

They mention (accurately) that roughly half of all human cases of H5N1 to date have died from the disease, and they posit that in a worst-case scenario 350 million people will die from a bird flu pandemic. That sounds like as good excuse as any to run in mad circles, screaming “We’re all gonna die!” Let me know when you’re done?

Finished? OK, let’s move on. Three hundred and fifty million people sounds horrible, and it is. It will be the worst die-off in human history.

Not in terms of percentage, though. There’s nearly seven billion people on the planet, which means that over the 18 months or so that such a pandemic is likely to run, less than 5% of the population will die. In developed countries such as Sweden or Canada, it will be less than 2%, since they have good medical systems and are preparing. In America, it will probably be about 4%. In places where malnutrition and diarrhea are widespread, it could be as high as 10%.

Further, if you happen to be above the age of five, and under the age of 75, your odds are much better. Influenza is notoriously hard on the very young and the very old.

So when the plague comes, there’s a decent chance you’ll catch it – probably about one in four – but you aren’t going to die. You’ll spend a couple of weeks wishing you would die, because you’re going to be sicker then you’ve ever been before, and hopefully someone will be on hand to keep you hydrated and feed you clear broths and any other form of sustenance your tummy can handle for two weeks so you don’t take permanent kidney damage. When you’re finally able to walk again, you’ll look marvelous, if underweight zombies are what turns your crank. But with any reasonable luck at all, you’ll recover fully and have one more personal anecdote to prove you are a crashing bore at social functions.

Of course, if you’re like most of us, being very sick for two weeks is really going to mess up your life and put you behind on most of your bills. In America, where most people live paycheck to paycheck, two weeks sickness can have a devastating impact on your life.

One thing the movie made clear was that the panic and overreaction would cause far more damage than the flu itself. Towns that don’t have flu cases will be trying to quarantine themselves off, while towns that DO have it are being quarantined from outside. Additionally, there will be transportation people pulling off the road and laying low, either because they are sick or they are afraid of being sick. And people will panic and hoard, cleaning out grocery stores and drugstores. If the flu strikes in the late fall, as it is wont to do, heating oil may not get delivered, and electricity might be iffy in some areas.

The economy will take a huge hit, since the country can expect to see a period of anywhere between two weeks and six months where everything just grinds to a halt. This will exacerbate the food shortages and disruptions in all other services.

In a worst case scenario, more people in the US will die from lack of necessities – food, heat, shelter, and medications – than from the flu. And of course, this being America, a lot of people will probably die of gunshot wounds, whether shot as looters or just for looking pale and sweaty in public.

The movie served to increase the sense of foreboding leading to panic in some people, but also served as a good guideline on how to prepare for others.

If you possibly can, stock up on food now. Include lots of clear soups, broths, vitamins and “sports drinks” such as gatorade. Three days into the flu, you AREN’T going to want to sit down and eat a nice juicy steak, but you need to get some sustenance. Your stomach won’t like anything you swallow, but broths and clear soups will make a huge difference in how sick you get and how quickly you recover. Have lots of bland non-perishables on hand for when you start feeling better but aren’t quite really to tackle spicy and greasy foods. Stock up on heavier non-perishables, too, since you probably won’t even get sick, but will find that hoarders and looters have cleaned out the shelves, and between quarantines and panicked truckers, nobody’s delivering any more food for a few weeks. Most large cities have an average of three days’ supply of food on their grocery shelves.

Keep lots of water handy. It’s unlikely that things will get so bad that the water supplies are affected, but if you can keep bottles of fresh, clean water next to your bed, you’ll find life much easier than having to get up and stagger into the bathroom for a drink.

Don’t assume it’s the end of the world when the pandemic comes. Nearly everyone you know will live, and in a year after it ends, it will be like it never happened.

It may even be far milder than the movie indicated. Successful viruses don’t kill their host, which is why the very worst plagues either flame out very quickly after decimating a few villages (as happened with ebola) or, at worst, kill perhaps one in ten. (“Decimate” is a word that can mean either one in ten or nine in ten; in the case of the ebola villages, I meant the latter).

One item the movie touched on that’s going to surprise a lot of people. Plagues don’t usually come in one big wave. They usually come in a succession of waves, and while it might be the second or third wave that does the most damage, the trend is for them to gradually abate in intensity. Think of them as being like the Boxing Day Tsunami, only each “wave” takes a couple of weeks to break, and it’s spread over a couple of years. So if the flu comes and goes, stay stocked up and wary, because it isn’t over yet.

But the virus will adapt to us (successful viruses don’t kill their hosts, remember?), and more to the point, we’ll adapt to it. Tens of thousands of Americans die each year from other types of flu, and eventually H5N1 will be just another item on the “cause of death” tabulations that surprise people when it takes Aunt Edan away at the age of 104.

One bright note: if it turns out to be a black plague, which killed a third of Europe over twenty five years, that caused a huge labor shortage, which in turn led to workers’ rights and decent pay. So don’t think of it as one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse – think of it as free horse meat!