I'm really fond of the internets. It's an awesome series of tubes, and one of my favorite ways to go on line. However, it's vulnerable in ways we know and in ways we don't.
One of the major shifts in pandemic watching, reporting and prepping we have seen this winter is the 'mainstreaming' of the concern. The recent/current Bernard Matthews UK commercial turkey farm contamination from a Hungarian virus (the 'how did it happen' part is still under investigation), and the British ministries' backing off of full-throated support for the company will hopefully focus attention on the bigger issue of preparedness in that country.
Meanwhile, in this country the new CDC guidelines that now rank pandemics in terms of categories 1 through 5, similar to hurricanes, are making the rounds in the media, and working its way through the government bureaucracy down to the states. The meat of the proposal? if there's a category 4 or 5 pandemic (H5N1 or some other), the schools in your town will close for up to three months, and large public gatherings will be canceled. That's because kids are a major vector in spreading flu and other respiratory diseases (ask any parent of a second grader or day care kid).
Did you know that? Would that affect you or your kids in any way? You bet it would. The task now is to figure out how to mitigate the consequences of such a move. For example, in addition to whether you can afford to stay home, the schools may have to turn to long distance learning. Businesses would have to telecommute where possible. And the kids, now being home and unable to go to the mall, would have to figure out how to entertain themselves.
Any chance thay'd - uh - want to use the internets? And would it be prepared for the onslaught of Kids At Home?
Many companies and government agencies are counting on legions of teleworkers to keep their operations running in the event of an influenza pandemic. But those plans may quickly run aground as millions of people turn to the Internet for news and even entertainment, potentially producing a bandwidth-choking surge in online traffic.
Such a surge would almost certainly prompt calls to restrict or prioritize traffic, such as blocking video transmissions wherever possible, according to business continuity planners who gathered on Friday at a SunGard Availability Systems hot-site facility in northern New Jersey to consider the impact of a pandemic on the Internet.
Businesses as well as home users likely would be asked to voluntarily restrict high-bandwidth traffic, the planners said. And if asking didn't work, they warned, government action to restrict traffic might well follow.
"Is there a need for a YouTube during a national emergency?" asked John Thomas, vice president of enterprise systems at a large, New York-based financial institution that he asked not be identified.
Whether the avian flu will morph into a human pandemic is unclear. But if it does, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of deaths could result worldwide. To try to limit a pandemic's spread, many people will seek to work from home, either voluntarily or under government quarantine orders. Consequently, "the demand for communication will soar," said Renate Noone, vice president of professional services at SunGard's Availability Services unit.
Businesses and government agencies are in the best position to deal with any online traffic surges, via the use of redundant communications systems and techniques such as diverse routing. But that may not help teleworkers or customers and business partners who are trying to access systems remotely, said Noone and other pandemic planners.
"I think it's definitely the most vulnerable part of the equation," said Bernard O'Neill, vice president and chief network officer at Prudential Financial Inc., referring to the communications problems that teleworkers may face.
On the one hand, it's too expensive to just 'fix the problem. On the other hand, businesses all over the country are seriously looking at the pandemic preparedness issue and starting to form cooperative task forces to figure out what to do.
In that sense, businesses are actually ahead of the public awareness curve of the public (except for Daily Kos readers and the growing on-line flu communities, which like political blogs, each have their own flavor and character).
This weekend, we'll begin to post some 'so what should I do?" diaries, but in the meantime remember there's lists and sources of what you can do on line. at least, there is as long as the internets stay up.
Update [2007-2-14 22:34:37 by DemFromCT]: excellent summary of bird flu and current risk assessemnt from Donald McNeil in the IHT.