The Pandemic vs. the IT Department 181
ElsaBorzoi wrote to mention a Network World article suggesting some pandemic preparations for your IT department. From the article: "A survey last month of 300 Minnesota business officials found most thought a flu pandemic would significantly affect their business, but only 18% had preparedness plans in place. The poll sponsored by the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy found that close to two thirds said they were already prepared or somewhat prepared to move employees to remote locations or let them work at home, while 29% said they were not prepared. The H5N1 influenza virus, which originated in Asia, could hit the U.S. this fall, potentially causing an epidemic, the nation's chief avian flu coordinator warned."
Business IT?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets (Score:5, Insightful)
I am pretty certain that a flock of winged monkeys, backed up by tap dancing midgets would significantly affect my business. We, sadly, don't have a plan for such an eventuality.
Just because the majority believe a pandemic would affect their business, that's not the same as saying they believe such a pandemic is likely to happen.
The last truly staggering flu pandemic was in 1919. Since then we've been about to get nuked, about to have planes flown in to us and about to all die of Sars, or possibly mad cow disease, or West Nile, or possibly flesh eating bacteria - oh, and our computers were all going to assplode on Y2K. It turns out there are lots of exciting panics the media likes to report and yet most of them are either over hyped of Jack Bauer manages to diffuse them before they become an issue for the masses.
Yes, a flu pandemic would be terrible. Yes, it's even possible - more possible, though less fun, than the winged monkeys. But it's not necessarily probable. Good risk management - as opposed to running around screaming at every perceived risk - involves calculating cost multiplied by probability and comparing options. It's possible most of those businesses, whether rightly or wrongly, just don't believe they need to panic about the latest shocking THREAT TO LIFE AS WE KNOW IT that is yet to do more in the west than make some German cats sick.
Re:Business IT?? (Score:2, Insightful)
That mortality rate, provided by the WHO for their 'laboratory confirmed cases, only includes people who
a. became very sick from the infection
b. obtained medical attention which the WHO recognized
c. had blood samples tested and confirmed in a lab
Anyone that became infected and didn't exhibit symptoms wouldn't be included (why would they get tested?), and anyone that died in a remote area wouldn't be included either. The more 'infections' that develop in "1st world" countries the better able we will be to determine the true mortality/morbidity rate of avian influenza in humans.
Unfortunately that won't be able to predict the rate for 'pandemic flu' which would be a mutation of the current avian flu virus.
Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, did you catch the last bit in the blurb:What's he supposed to say? "It's all poppycock, and I'm over-paid"? We're not that naive are we?
Re:"revolving ill" not a useful concept (Score:3, Insightful)
IIRC the 1918 pandemic flu mortality rate was ~2 or 2.5%.
where do they get these numbers? (Score:1, Insightful)
Let's look at at more realisticaly. If it becomes as easy to catch as the "normal" flu, use that as a baseline, it is around 1/3rd usually of the population every winter gets it, from mild to pretty bad. Even normal flu kills thousands yearly, BTW.. So, up to 100 million people in the US will get it within a few months. Worldwide, no idea, a lot, at least a billion to two billion. If the mortality rate stays the same as it is now, that's 50 million deaths in the US, not two million like they say in the article. Say it is only one quarter, that's still around 25 million deaths. Plus a lot sick all over needing a lot of care.
Does anyone REALLY think any "contingency plans to work at home over teh intarweb" are going to be worth anything at that point? How much of normal meatspace is going to be up and running? Delivery trucks, critical infrastructure like water/sewer/electricity/fuel deliveries, etc? food? Huh? This is a humongous unknown. This would be like 100 katrinas on top of panic city all over the place. Absolutely no one has much of an idea what might happen if when it becomes human to human. I'm just guessing but I can sure question their bogus math, it doesn't follow any other flu statistics, it is severely low balled all the time.
And by most accounts lately, about zip of those anti flu drugs even work all that great either. It may be a big nothing, it may wipe out a huge percent of the global population. Who knows, they sure don't. The only thing real is, no place where it has been reported have they been able to eliminate it. *No* *Place* It's still being found all over asia and slowly going to other nations, it's in africa now and in places in europe. It has continued to spread. It is now found in various mammals. People do get pretty sick from it, and it has a high mortality rate.
Is it a scam? I don't think so. Could it get so bad that it would affect life as we know it (TM)? yep. Will it? Chances are eventually it will. The only good thing I have seen in the various reports is it seems to weaken slightly as it crosses species from birds. But not much. I will say this. The government used to have some pretty hokey civil defense info where they recommended having "three days" food and stuff at home, a total joke really. Now they are recommending *weeks worth*. This is a clue. I would translate that to *months* if it ever hits hard, total isolation, stay away from people, stick it out. Even then it might not be enough, who knows.
The Keyboard (Score:4, Insightful)
Exercising ones immune system, the keyboard has to be the heaviest load.
If there is a pandemic, the first thing to disinfect will be keyboards.
And why are we taught to sneeze and cough into the hands?
I bury my face into my arm to segregate the infectious spray.
The public would do well to be educated to do the same.
Re:Isolation slows infection down (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lacking sense: priorities (Score:3, Insightful)
You're dealing with so many patients that the hospitals won't have room to stack them, let alone time to look up their records.
There won't be enough Tylenol in the infirmary, let alone more exotic drugs like antivirals.
The United States has approximately 548 doctors, 280 hospital beds and 772 nurses per 100,000 people.
In a pandemic with 50% infected, each doctor would have to care for twenty people, and each nurse for twelve. Those hospital beds would be somewhat overloaded with twenty people in them, too.
If there were a real pandemic (Score:5, Insightful)
Some cities (not towns) lost 10% of their population in the last big flu pandemic.
Think what that means--
No food
Maybe no water
Definately not a lot of traveling about.
Hospitals completely overloaded
So if you are -really- worried about this...
Make sure you have 2-4 weeks of dry and canned food (pasta is decent).
Have some kind of power that doesn't depend on gasoline (don't need a lot- just some for radio).
Make sure you have 2-4 weeks of water (that's a lot- so maybe just have 25 gallons and be ready to fill extra containers if the water gets erratic).
The food is most critical- quarantines are possible- loss of food transportation is possible.
Water and power are less likely to be disrupted.
Mostly- just hope this doesn't happen- we run a lot closer to the edge than they did inventory wise. Even a mild disruption and there is no food on the shelves.
Re:Lacking sense: priorities (Score:2, Insightful)
You're dealing with so many patients that the hospitals won't have room to stack them, let alone time to look up their records.
Ok, I'll give you that. When it gets *really* bad, things are going to get out-of-hand.
But how do I know when I need to stop reporting for work? Is someone going to announce the official start of the pandemic on CNBC or CNN?
What is the "high water mark" that I need to watch for so I know that it's time to stay home?
A local school was closed today because hundreds of students and dozens of staff have the flu (true story). Is this the start of the pandemic or just another flu bug making its rounds? I went to work today just like any other day to keep shoveling coal into the boilers.
Re:Isolation slows infection down (Score:3, Insightful)
And if normal human transmissable flu mutates to be as deadly as h5n1 we'll be in trouble. and if ebola mutates to become more contagious over a long gestation time we're in trouble. and if aids mutates to be transmissable from touching a doorknob we're in trouble.
and if the moon turns into green cheese and falls to earth, we're in trouble.
not going to happen people. bird flu is a media beatup where less than 100 people have died from it in 8 years yet nobody says anything about the millions of people across the world who have died from normal influenza in the same time . Read that again. Millions of humans have met their deaths at the hands of normal everyday influenza in just a few years. hundreds of thousands are americans. No that no exaggeration. that's MILLIONS of people.
But you don't see the media beating that one up because it's not worth as much in sales.
Re:Isolation slows infection down (Score:1, Insightful)
Hell, if even half of the media fear-mongering had come true, the human race would have been extinct at least 30 years ago.
ND
Re:The solution where I work... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, sequencing data has shown that the H5N1 to be a lot more like the 1918 bug than scientists seem to be comfortable with, and is spreading in ways that weren't expected at a speed that wasn't expected. While it isn't cause for alarm, it is cause for concern and should be considered as a part of any emergency preparedness plan.
My solution to the H5N1 Pandemic (Score:3, Insightful)
I know American companies have to be more efficient, and workers need to handle more tasks and title responsibilities in order for productivity to increase. But I think if you stop forcing office workers to handle live poultry, you'll prevent the only known vector for contracting the disease [wikipedia.org].
We would be learning from the mistakes of other cultures; like China, whose individuals are known to raise their own poultry livestock at their residences. This is not as outlandish as it sounds. After all, America has seeemed to have learned from the French to avoid mandatory limits to hours worked per week.
Alternately, if you still think there is a credible concern for the H5N1 virus to mutate to a human communicable form, then I'd suggest taking care of the AIDS epidemic first. AIDS is incurable, and I'm sure you're worried about that virus mutating into a form transmissible by contact, sneezing, or become airborne. Will you be recommending mass cullings of AIDS sufferers? or merely enforced, indefinite quarantine?
I'm sure guys like Rumsfeldt and Frist would welcome gov't financing of vaccine research, but I think Iraq has taken away all of the money available for discretionary spending in the budget. I guess they'll have to take lobbyist jobs, like everyone else.
2-4 weeks of food? (Score:2, Insightful)
Moreover:
Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
While it is true that a pandemic may eventual strike, it is a waste of resources to panic. Any bisuness needs to have an emergency IT plan if, for example, fire destroys the IT staff's offices. There is no need to go beyond normal emergency preparedness at this point. Panic has never solved anything...
Re:Isolation slows infection down (Score:4, Insightful)
The 1918 flu happened. It's not just hype. Flus can and do jump species. And given that the possibility that this avian flu variant could have a much higher mortality rate than normal flus should at least make you concerned enough to make some sort of preparation. Finally, it's worth noting that a lot of parties more in the know than slashdot posters (eg, medical professionals and governments) are stocking up on various unproven antivirals.
Frankly, I don't like the odds. They're probably under 10% that we see a high mortality pandemic, but I see this flu spread over a substantial wildlife population over a large portion of the world including some places that are incompetent at preventing disease especially in an agricultural setting (eg, some of the African countries).
Re:Offtopic (Score:2, Insightful)
The artice refers to bird flu specifically because its jsut the latest big thing happening at the moment, but, an IT deprtment should have a disaster recovery plan Anyway. Fire, water damage... anything can happen to mess up your building.
True, its not just the IT department that should have a disaster recovery plan but HR, Facilities/General Affairs should be involved. HR need to organise and inform the troops, in the case of an alternative site transport may have to be organised, facilities will be busy with a million little things.
Make sure you have an alternative site and a disaster recovery plan that everyone is aware of.
Make sure your PBX can re-route deskphone to user's homes like Asterix can.
Centralied computing solutions such as Citrx or Tarantella's make working from home as simple as possible.
VPN solutions can be distributed from a website in an emergency for home workers. Hardware 2-factor tokens can be tough to distribute in an emergency, software tokens are handy in these situations.
Make sure you know your telco's lead time to get a line up and running from your data centre to your site B.