Shelves will be empty at Safeway and Whole Foods. We will lose electricity, water and phone. We will endure the coldest week in winter without heat. But when we fall sick, the hospital will be the last place we want to go. The flu pandemic of the century is coming, and we need to be prepared.
All this sounds like a scene from Outbreak, but I’m not teasing next summer’s blockbuster. Since 1997, an extremely lethal strain of avian influenza, type A H5N1, has killed more than 150 million birds, as well as 59 people in Southeast Asia, according to the World Health Organization. If H5N1 combines with a human influenza strain, the nightmare scenario I described could come true.
Last Wednesday, President George W. Bush warned the United Nations General Assembly about the threat of H5N1. “If left unchallenged, this virus could become the first pandemic of the 21st century,” he said, according to a White House press release. In the same address, he announced the formation of an International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza.
It is hard to believe that influenza, a virus that affects us every winter, could be so devastating. But history indicates clearly the destruction that flu pandemics can inflict.
In 1918, the Spanish flu may have killed as many as 50 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. And minor pandemics in 1957 and 1968 still each killed tens of thousands of people in the United States alone, the website says.
The website also notes that both the 1957 and 1968 strains of influenza originated in birds, then combined with human strains.
The most recent avian flu is worrisome for several reasons. According to a recent statement by Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt, the “greatest concern” is the lethality the strain has already exhibited-more than half of the people infected with the virus have died.
In addition, according to the WHO, there is a high probability that H5N1 will combine with an existing human strain. “H5N1 mutates rapidly and has a documented propensity to acquire genes from viruses infecting other animal species,” the WHO’s avian flu website says.
Antiviral drugs may be able to prevent or treat H5N1, but those are similarly in short supply. According to a June 2005 report by the Trust for America’s Health, the United States was planning to stockpile only 5 million doses of the major antiviral drug, known as Tamiflu. To treat 25 percent of the United States population, 70 million doses would be required.
The lack of preventative measures means that up to one-fourth of the world’s population could become sick during the flu pandemic, according to the WHO. Because of quarantines, global trade would cease, Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, said in a May article in the New England Journal of Medicine. This would mean food and supply shortages throughout much of the United States, particularly in densely populated areas.
The high infection rate could also result in personnel shortages that would disrupt basic services such as electricity, phone, water and sewage, according to the Flu Wiki, an open source website devoted to the avian flu.
The worst part is that if H5N1 reaches pandemic status in the next few months, there is little anyone can do to prevent the doomsday scenario. Washington, D.C. has yet to advertise a plan for pandemic response, and the federal government is focused on what most agree is a futile attempt to prevent the flu from reaching our shores.
The best thing we can do today is prepare for the worst. The Flu Wiki provides several personal and family preparedness guides to help create a disaster kit, with iodine drops to purify water and several home treatment options for the flu. I already bought large bottles of ibuprofen and Advil, and my thermometer is on its way.
