COMensarations
Thursday, June 15, 2006
The Pandemic TabEx (Part 1)
An interesting little exercise, that.
Fresh out of the Pueblo City-County Health Department’s (PCCHD) Table Exercise for city and county agencies to discuss and plan for the advent of a human form of bird flu.
Don’t panic! PREPARE!
That’s the first and foremost message that I think came out of the meeting. And that’s to everyone.
The chance of bird flu going ‘ballistic’ IS there. No one has a good idea of how likely it is to happen, but if it does happen the most important aspect of surviving it is to BE PREPARED. And by that I, and everyone I heard at the exercise, mean to have the essentials of life readily on hand the MOMENT you hear it has gone ballistic. Why do I say that? Well, because it is the general consensus of the attendees that the various government and other agencies we’ve come to rely on are likely to be overwhelmed by the work effort necessary to do their most basic jobs.
Consider what the effect would be on a hospital if 30% or more of their staff—doctors, nurses, maintenance, clerks—were NOT available because they were sick with the flu themselves. Then again there are the police and fire departments. At this staffing level, they are not going to be as ready to help you as they are right now, when they have their normal work force. Not only that, but consider such everyday activities as grocery and drug stores. These sorts of places might become great places to become infected with the flu yourself, with all the people that pass through them and their clerks handling money that could have been handled by people carrying the bug and passing that money to you. Or consider the people standing in line with you coughing and sneezing.
It gives you pause to consider how frequently you’d want to go to such a place.
So, what are these essentials for life? And how do you prepare yourself and your family to have them?
Please excuse me while I drop back into a prior life experience mode; military logistician, if you will.
Looking at them from this perspective, it’s pretty easy to classify them in terms of the Army’s classes of supply. And here they are: