You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Home Front: WoT
U.S. companies prepare for bird flu pandemic
2007-02-07
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Exxon plans to keep some refinery workers living in the plants to keep them going. A small Southern grocery chain is thinking about drive-through pickup of soup and bread.

The U.S. Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration urged employers to develop plans to cope with a possible flu pandemic on Tuesday, suggesting letting employees work from home and encouraging sick workers to stay home without reprisals. But a few international companies and small regional firms were already making bird flu planning a full-time job, and said on Tuesday they have had to prepare for the unthinkable.
Interesting how private companies lead the way on this.
It's not flocks of gummint chickens that are getting axed.
Jay Schwartz, vice president of information systems at North Carolina-based Alex Lee Inc., is worried about what will happen when food supplies begin to get scarce as people become ill, stay home to care for children when schools close or tend to ill relatives.
Posted by:Steve White

#18  :-D
Posted by: trailing wife   2007-02-07 22:13  

#17  *hides snicker*
Posted by: Frank G   2007-02-07 21:55  

#16  The worst case scenario will result in the end of man-made global warming.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2007-02-07 20:12  

#15  The good news is that it'll put off (the effects of) peak oil for another couple of years.
Posted by: Shipman   2007-02-07 18:32  

#14  The good news is that it'll put off peak oil for another couple of years.
Posted by: Shipman   2007-02-07 18:31  

#13  AH9418, disposal of corpses may seem unimportant, but there are twokinds of issues involved. First, questions of hygeine (and it's not just viruses but for instance bacteria getting into the water supply, rats being attracted to piles of bodies out on the soccer fields etc.

Second issue is legal and / or the ability of authorities to get compliance with tough measures. What is NOT needed during a pandemic is for various agencies to be deciding these issues on the fly. Hence the plans, which get at least a quick read from legal counsel to ensure that the local govt, or military base commander, or whomever can do what they are planning to do if need be.

Case example of how NOT to do it: Katrina
Posted by: Glonter Unutch7517   2007-02-07 15:57  

#12  Think worst case for personal protection and you will still fall short.
example: fresh water useage for typical natural disasters is 1 gal/person/day. If you have to do extra cleaning / laundernig of clothing /bedding for those sick in your household, that requirement is way short. For 2 of us for 3 weeks, I am estimating 100 gallons.
Also not counting on electrical grid staying up (their staff isn't immune) so cannot count on pumps for the water, lights, heat, refigeration. plan on a lot of Spam, peanut butter, wood stove cooked meals, assuming enough strength to fire up the thing.
Posted by: USN, Ret.   2007-02-07 15:08  

#11   "Infectious corpses" are not a problem, except for the smell. This fake issue is like a zombie, it shows up every time many people die at once. Is there any evidence of anyone catching influenza from a corpse? Disposing of the dead with decency relates more to the survivors' self-esteem and mental health.
Part of the issue is how fast the infection spreads & whether or not people without symptoms are socially active & casually spreading the virus. The other part is how lethal the virus is. If 50% of the population gets it, and 50% die, that's 25% of everyone. Civilization will take a pause if/when that happens. I hope key organizations are cross-training their people to fill in when essential personnel die off.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2007-02-07 14:15  

#10  Nothing specific I'm afraid, occasional observer, merely assumption. What I know about matters military I've learnt here -- I'm just a little civilian housewife (stop snickering, Frank G!) with no outside connections to the military besides a friendship with the former commander of the local VFW post, and he gallantly shelters me from anything that I might find distressing.
Posted by: trailing wife   2007-02-07 12:10  

#9  Depends on which military network you have in mind, tw. A lot of DOD day to day stuff is done using virtual private network tunneling over the standard public internet. And more to the point, the civilian employees at DOD won't have access to any other options from home.
Posted by: occasional observer   2007-02-07 11:52  

#8  If it's reached the epidemic stage, product development for the new and improved laundry detergent will move down the criticality list of the researchers involved. They'll get along without the immediacy of the internet for that purpose. But I imagine the military's net will have better survivability, surely?

My vote, for what it's worth re: infectious corpses: burn them, if sufficient facilities exist, otherwise mass graves with the bodies sealed in plastic to prevent decomposition products from seeping into the groundwater... then burnt later. No need to restart the infection cycle by letting an over-sentimental relative get infected from the remains of the corpse. I apologize if that seems cold blooded.
Posted by: trailing wife   2007-02-07 11:46  

#7  And yeah, I've worked on one of these plans.
Posted by: occasional observer   2007-02-07 11:22  

#6  25-50% mortality in the current version, hard to tell what it will be in a human-to-human mutation. The issue is how fast it spreads, before symptoms are obvious.

COOP (Continuity of Operations Plans) typically align activities with the CDC's 6 stages. Stage 0 = before H2H xmission. Stage 1 = some H2H xmission, which (should) trigger staging of food, emergency supplies, initial prevention/"restriction of spread" activities and opening emergency ops centers. Plus designating alternates for decision making and key tasks, so that important functions go as smoothly as possible if/as people are unable to be at work due to their own illness, kids at home, etc.

Stage 2 = it's here among us, at which point things like closing schools go into effect, along with setting up various levels of quarantine and medical centers for expected overflow from hospitals. Expect govt agencies to have id'd mission-critical employees who may be asked (and at later stages might be required, if only by movement restrictions) to sleep etc. at work.

The rest of the stages get a lot more tough. How do you handle thousands of infectious corpses quickly, to prevent transmission? Do you burn them? Bury them in mass graves for later exhumation and reburial by loved ones? Worry about that when / if 25% of the country dies?

Another issue: lots of these plans assume the Internet will be available for telecommuting. I suspect that for various reasons that's an iffy assumption.
Posted by: occasional observer   2007-02-07 11:21  

#5  Spaviger Flesh5959: Well, right now you either die, or you have serious lung damage. Ordinarily, this would mean if you could get a call in to emergency services, they might be able to save you.

However, because the US has almost no extra ventilators then we use during a normal flu season, a lot of people who would have survived will suffocate, raising mortality strongly.

I still think that the US will pull through with some strong common sense innovation to minimize casualties, except in places where local and State government is ineffectual (read "Democrat"); like New Orleans and Louisiana were for decades before Katrina.

So far, I have thought up three ideas that I think would be easy, cheap and effective ways of controlling Avian flu:

1) Cities setting up phone banks to automatically call every residence in the city with information and to ask if they need assistance. This would be a godsend, and would force multiply emergency services. Volunteers could go house-to-house for people who don't answer (like in the old days.)

2) Businesses could have large bottles of hand sanitizer and courtesy loop masks at their main entrances. This would help keep their employees and customers healthy and their merchandise from getting contaminated. (Already some grocery stores have grocery cart handle wipes available along with free hand sanitizer at checkouts.)

3) This new idea, a federal "I'm sick" hot line would be an incredible advance in epidemology, in actually *seeing* where the disease is, which is light years ahead of any statistical projection or official medical reporting. This would focus and concentrate response at all levels.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2007-02-07 11:17  

#4  How about the national " I'll be Dead in no time" hotline... it's an incurable disease folks, remember
Posted by: Spaviger Flesh5959   2007-02-07 10:29  

#3  A-tish-oo !
*sniffle* *sneeze* *cough*
Posted by: MacNails   2007-02-07 06:54  

#2  Every federal govt agency is drawing up pandemic flu "continuity of operations" plans. Isn't unique to business.
Posted by: gummie   2007-02-07 06:03  

#1  A lot of common sense thought has gone into protecting trucking in the US. Many trucks now are "sleepers" which have beds for the drivers in the back of the cab.

Filling stations can be made "credit card only", and by monitoring truck stops, you can keep the human contact to a minimum, lowering chances of infection.

It might even be a good idea to set up a national "I'm sick" hot line. Encourage people to call in as soon as they start showing symptoms, in exchange for information and assistance.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2007-02-07 00:19  

00:00