The disappointing results of my assessment of the state of pandemic flu planning in Oregon and in my little corner of Oregon -- see my Diary a week ago "Ready or not . . . (for pandemic flu in Oregon)" -- is leading me to conclude that moving the fat elephant of state or even county bureaucracy and officialdom is beyond the redemptive efforts of a part-time flubie. So is there another path, or are we left with nothing except home preparation and opting out of society during a pandemic?
I think that there may be some merit in trying to get planning going "from the ground up."
To put things another way, let's look at the levels that I see in "planning from the ground up." In each level listed, I assume that effective planning is not taking place. If it is, that level can be used more as an ally than as a target for action.
- Self - plan to minimize exposure to pandemic flu while doing your own job.
- Workplace - get others in your work unit to agree to plan for operations during pandemic flu.
- Institution - persuade your entire institution to develop a real plan, not a show plan.
- City/county - persuade the civil servants or political leaders in your city, county, or both that they must do much, much more in the way of planning (and then testing the plan) than they are doing.
- State - persuade the bureaucratic and politicians at the state level to get serious about pandemic flu, do serious planning, and test out the plans.
We need a form of triage -- ignore those who are doing OK, as well as those who cannot realistically be persuaded to do the right thing without soul-breaking effort. Like medics dealing with wounded soldiers who will either die or live without our help, and who have to make the difficult decision to ignore, we have to turn our eyes away from two parts of the triangle and engage ourselves with the one part where our efforts might make a difference.
If one wants to devote one's life for the next year or so to this task, it might be possible to make an impact at level 5, but it is enormous work. It is fine to rant and rave at the state officials, but if they don't "get it," you either have to become their personal tutor or get some political leader to adopt your cause. Either course of action would take untold amounts of time and energy.
My current notion is to abandon hope of changing the policies of the State of Oregon for now. This does not mean ignoring them. I am in correspondence with some people. But it should not be a major focus because the results obtained for a given amount of work are not likely to be high.
The City and the County, level 4, are in some intermediate area -- perhaps persuadable, but probably very difficult. Leaders there are relatively accessible. This may or may not be true of the school district leaders. It may be worthwhile remaining engaged with them. In the case of my Diary of a week ago, I decided to see what would happen with just a major op-ed published in the local Sunday newspaper. I am not sure that much, if anything, happened.
The same goes for the overall institution for which one works - level 3 -- in my case, an entire University. It may also be that the effort to change them is beyond reasonable. Or maybe not. Maybe the op-ed helped. Probably not. Maybe volunteering on a committee will help. Maybe not.
A huge problem with levels 5 and 4 is that pandemic flu planning is not in government budgets for the most part, and getting them to work on issues that aren't funded is like pulling teeth -- even if the result of their lassitude may mean thousands of deaths.
Level 3, one's work institution, may be amenable to doing better planning even without a budget line item because leaders can be made to understand that the institution is at severe risk. But in the case of my university, the answer up to this point is that "plans are on hold until we hire a coordinator for emergency planning." A budget line issue.
But the place where results may have the best chance of paying off are at levels 1 and 2.
At level 2, it means persuading my workplace (part of a university) to engage in planning -- including shutting the place down or at least sending the students home (no matter what the university does or fails to do) to be taught from a distance.
The trouble with working on the folks at level 2 -- one's work unit -- is that some are likely to argue that if orders aren't coming from on high, there must not be a problem (or perhaps that doing planning at the unit level would offend the higher-ups). Still it seems at least possible to persuade those with whom you work on a daily or at least weekly basis.
As for level 1 - your own job -- doing effective planning quite possible, and doesn't require anyone else's permission. You just do it. (You may have an argument with your boss when the pandemic hits and you choose to work from home, but you are much better situated to win that argument if you can show that you can teach or work from home; and that you even did it for a few days as a test.)
At level 1, this means planning on how I am going to do my job of teaching if I decide to "shelter in place" at home.
In the case of teaching, I think this involves setting up course websites (perhaps using something like Blackboard technology, licensed by the University), putting PowerPoint slides on CDs and duplicating them for possibly handing out, ensuring that one's students can handle communicating with you via a discussion list, and thinking about web-casting lectures (live with e-mail or other interaction?) from a central location to students in their homes.
Maybe this thinking has already been done by others. If so, I would welcome a link to those discussions.
I really am looking for solutions.