This afternoon the White House held a blogger conference call with John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security, and Dr. Richard Besser, Director of Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response at the CDC, in concert with the H1N1 Flu Preparedness Summit. "...Secretaries Kathleen Sebelius (HHS), Janet Napolitano (DHS), and Arne Duncan (ED), along with Homeland Security Advisor John Brennan, hosted [the all day event] ...with states to further prepare the nation for the possibility of a more severe outbreak of H1N1 flu in the fall..."
There is a comprehensive web site chock full of information at flu.gov. The conference call was to inform new media and promote information resources available to the public.
The opening statements:
.... John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security:...This summit today is a critically important opportunity for us to let the American people know that H1N1 is something that we’re going to be dealing with over the coming months. We went through the, the spring experience. We learned a lot from that, but there’s still a lot to be done. And so this preparedness summit is the, the opportunity for the government to work with state and local officials, public health officials, and the American public through flu, www.flu.gov to make sure that people understand what the status of this influenza is and what the government is doing to address it. As we talked in the summit today, this is a dynamic situation. There’s a lot that is unknown about the, the future of, progression, of the, the disease. And what we’re going to have to do is make sure that we’re able to adapt quickly to the evolving situation in the coming months. Which is a combination of making sure that we’re able to conduct the surveillance activities, as far as watching its progression in the southern hemisphere, carrying out those mitigation measures to minimize the impact, as well as to move forward with a vaccination program which is being pursued at this point and will be launched if a safe and effective vaccine can be found. And then, also, to make sure that we have regular communication with the, the American people. It’s one of the things that President Obama has said directly to me on many occasions – that the safety and health of the American people is foremost on his mind. And he wants to make sure that we’re doing everything possible to prepare for that. And so given that we have to do a lot within the coming months today’s summit brought together notable specialists throughout the fields that are related to following the influenza strain. And so what we’re trying to do is make sure that this is going to be a team effort as we go forward in the coming months. And with that I turn it over to Dr. Besser.
Dr. Richard Besser, Director of Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response at the CDC: Thanks very much. As we’ve been saying all spring, there’s, there’s a lot of uncertainty when there’s a new infectious disease. And we saw with H1N1 rapid spread after introduction in, in the United States. And what we were saying at that time is that we needed to track this virus as it spread through the southern hemisphere and plan for the fall because of uncertainty, because of our inability to predict what will take place in this country when, when, when the fall comes. This meeting today has been a tremendous opportunity to pull, pull together people from a variety of sectors. So we have public health here, we have governmental, we have folks from the Department of Education , Homeland Security – many different groups that have to work together to plan for what could take place in, in the fall. What we know now is that the virus is causing significant disease in the southern hemisphere. And that we need to be prepared for a variety of scenarios in, in this country – from a worst case to, to a, a milder case. And this effort today is really an attempt to encourage, inspire people across the country to step up and do that kind of intensive planning that will pay dividends in, in the fall. We know that every year seasonal flu will come. That’s a, a certainty. And so in addition to, to dealing with, with the, the arrival of H1N1 we need to be planning for seasonal flu on top of that. And as we’ve said repeatedly seasonal flu causes on average thirty-six thousand deaths per year. There’s shared responsibility, there’s things that we need to do in government, there are things that need to be in, in schools and across communities, and there are things that individuals need to do. We’re working hard on a vaccine, but at this point we don’t know yet that there will be a, a vaccine that will be ready to go. But we have to do the planning that would be required should a vaccine, a safe, effective, and recommended vaccine be available. We’re, we know there’s uncertainty but we are very confident that with collaboration and coordination and, and communication we can really reduce the impact of, of this virus on our communities. And with that I think we’re ready to open it for questions...
The transcript of the blogger Q and A is at Show Me Progress.