Impending Swine Flu Pandemic in U.S.

I was reading an article in today's Gainesville Sun by Martin Schram, in which the author revealed some alarming predictions. According to the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, half of the U.S. population may come down with swine flu during the next few months. 1.8 million may need hospitalization, with 300,000 in intensive care. Worst of all, as many as 90,000 may end up dying from the swine flu. This is on top of the regular flu season totals. Racing against this is the push to produce as many swine flu vaccines as possible, as quickly as possible. And then distributing and administering them throughout the population as quickly as possible.

There is no way that there won't be a widespread outbreak of the swine flu. Before vaccines are available, the only effective preventative measures (besides putting oneself in complete isolation) are to wash hands often, keep hands away from one's face, and sneeze and cough into one's own sleeve or elbow (not into the hand or the open air). Also, anyone who feels that they are sick with the flu needs to stay home from work or school until well after the fever subsides (or if it is their child, keep them out of school). For this to really work, though, employers and schools need to recognize the pandemic nature of this flu and relax their attendance and documentation policies. As for employers who demand doctor's notes from employees returning to work after being absent due to sickness, their continued insistence on this policy will only overtax our health care system, which will already be stretched to its limits with this dangerous flu outbreak. Employees who are parents of sick children also need to be accorded latitude if they need to tend to them at home.

Wisely, the armed forces will get a high priority for swine flu vaccination, with all soldiers receiving shots. Why? Just look back to 1918 and the closing months of World War I. Then, it was a different type of flu, the Spanish Flu, that quickly spread due to infected returning soldiers.

With disaster preparedness, it is human nature to remember the failures while forgetting the successes. Katrina is a household name almost synonymous with disaster and government ineptitude. But who remembers Floyd? In 1999, gigantic hurricane Floyd seriously threatened Florida before veering northward at the last possible moment. Then-Governor Jeb Bush, thinking ahead, wasted no time in immediately ordering an unprecedented mass evacuation from the easternmost parts of the state. Hopefully, with the impending swine flu pandemic, we will have the good fortune, at some future time, to be able to look back on it as a "forgettable" success and not as a memorable failure.