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."
Alaska is on the forefront of the Bird Flu (Score:3, Informative)
We would be one of the first to see it, but there are many questions to be answered.
Re:Alaska is on the forefront of the Bird Flu (Score:2)
I don't want to suggest we don't need to be careful. On the contrary the very idea that we should ignore disease is silly. However; the H5N1 virus is being used as a international bureaucratic shake down. Here is how you can know this:
(1) Are the authorities doing anything about the 50,000 people this year who will die with the flu except pushing their useless vaccines?(NO!)
(2)Washing hands stops all infections diseases and it is undeniable that we don't have to cure a diseas you don't contact. Are the
Re:Alaska is on the forefront of the Bird Flu (Score:2)
What, exactly speaking, can you do about people getting a disease if the medicines are useless ?
Washing your hands to stop infection is something we were taught at first grade of public school. Why
Isolation slows infection down (Score:3, Informative)
It's important to remember that working from home (or remote locations) isn't going to prevent the illness from infecting everyone - it will just prevent everyone from falling ill at the same time.
The 'attack rate' (ranging from 10 to 35% in most 'plans') is cumulative. It would be much easier to handle 10% revolving ill over a few months than it would be to handle ~35% of staff ill for 2 weeks.
Remember, too, that if this virus mutates into a human-to-human transmissible form that you'll be just as likely to catch it at the grocery store/transit system than you will at work.
Wash your hands/keyboards/mice/doorknobs
"revolving ill" not a useful concept (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, except this isn't a garden-variety flu bug -- it's incredibly lethal. If this bug mutates to easily spread from person-to-person, you're not talking about revolving ill -- many of these people won't be "revolving" back to the workplace, they'll be dead. Of 34 human cases of H5N1 that hit Asia by February 2004, 23 were fatal. [bird-flu-influenza.com]
Re:"revolving ill" not a useful concept (Score:3, Insightful)
IIRC the 1918 pandemic flu mortality rate was ~2 or 2.5%.
Re:"revolving ill" not a useful concept (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"revolving ill" not a useful concept (Score:2)
Let me get this right. We are panicking over a virus that, in a continent with billions of inhabitants most of who are sleeping right next to the plague-carriers, handling them all day long, and propably not overly concerned with hygiene (based on their habit of selling live birds in the market), packed cheerfully right next to each other with barely room to breath and living in the middle of a festering jungle (at least some of the
Re:Isolation slows infection down (Score:2, Informative)
Read this [who.int]
Re:Isolation slows infection down (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Isolation slows infection down (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_kong_flu [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Flu [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenzavirus_A [wikipedia.org]
And the fact the avian flu was now found in cats in Germany makes
Re:Isolation slows infection down (Score:2)
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 bea
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:Isolation slows infection down (Score:2)
Raaa... brains...
Stupid fear-mongering media.
Bird flu preparations? Three letters: (Score:2)
And that shows TOTAL unprepardness (Score:2)
Re:Bird flu preparations? Three letters: (Score:2)
Does the company take into account possible quarantine restrictions/customs delays for spare parts from Asia? What about contingencies for outs
Business IT?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Business IT?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Business IT?? (Score:3, Funny)
Plus there's nothing worse than being in a crisis and finding your backups are fucked !
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" co
Re:Business IT?? (Score:2)
As a relatively advanced human civilization, we must take all the precautions we can -- minimizing infection, enforcing sound public health practices and education, maintaining sharp monitoring and reporting globally... but beyond that, it is up to God. And I'm not a religious person, but if y
MOD PARENT UP. (Score:2, Interesting)
And this doesn't include a potentially huge number of people who do contract H5N1 flu from birds and display nothing more than normal flu symptoms, get over it in a couple of
Re:Business IT?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Business IT?? (Score:3, Funny)
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:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets (Score:2)
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?
This Virus Mutates to Humans You Won't Be So Smug (Score:2)
Getting complacent? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets (Score:2)
Interesting comment. Every time I see phrases like "when it hits the US," it makes me wonder - seriously. It hasn't "hit" anywhere else with significance, so why would it "hit" the US? Does the US have a special nation-sized bullseye on it? Is there something special about the genetic makeup of US citizens? It almost makes me think we're being primed for so
Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets (Score:2, Informative)
That's 12% of the population of the planet [ibiblio.org]
Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets (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.
Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets (Score:3, Interesting)
Times have really changed. I'm the first to reach for history when it's relevant, but I'm not sure it is in this case. In the plus column, we have incomparably better communication than we did in 1918, and incomparably better detection and tracking. (It is by no means perfect, but good lucking getting a gene sequencing done in 1918.)
Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets (Score:2)
That's part of the problem right there. The virologists, at least the ones who get quoted, think there's a natural cycle of breakout flu pandemics with a period of about 50 years.
Panic is bad planning but so is complacency. Why not do business continuity planning including a scenario where N% of employees can't come to work for M weeks? Then you've covered the possibility of a flu pandemic, plus the posssibility of a natural disaster that makes your emp
Re:Winged Monkeys And Tap Dancing Midgets (Score:3, Funny)
preparations should include... (Score:2)
Lacking sense: priorities (Score:4, Interesting)
PUBLIC DOESN'T GET IT. If there is a pandemic, you don't go to work. You don't go to the mall, you don't go to school and you don't go out partying on the weekend. This is serious stuff. It hasn't happened yet and let's pray that it does not happen (easy human-to-human spread of lethal virus) but the situation at the IT department is totally irrelevant. Go to your job if you want to die.
Re:Lacking sense: priorities (Score:5, Interesting)
But what about those of us who work in the I.T. depts of healthcare providers? Wouldn't you want us to go to work during the "pandemic" to make sure that things keep running to handle the large influx of patients at clinics and hospitals?
Somebody's got to be at work to make sure that when you or a relative shows up at the hospital, your electronic records can be accessed, imaging applications are working correctly and medications can be dispensed.
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 overload
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
Re:Lacking sense: priorities (Score:3, Funny)
In a pandemic with 50% infected, each doctor would have to care for twenty people, and each nurse for twelve.
Check your math. That's 50,000 infected people (274 of whom are doctors, leaving only 274 to care for the patients); making over 180 patients per doctor, nearly 130 per nurse. The mere idea of a hospital bed with 357 patients and three nurses would tax even the Spice Channel.
Re:Lacking sense: priorities (Score:4, Interesting)
For "normal" flu, this level is approximately 1%. However, if we extrapolate from the fact that pandemic flu (of whatever type, be it bird flu or the 1918 flu) often has a mortality rate 25 times that of normal flu (0.1% vs 2.5% for 1918) then you can see that perhaps a quarter of the people would be hospitalized.
Again, this is all guesswork, and either way it's entirely beyond any theoretical capability of the medical system to cope with.
Re:Lacking sense: priorities (Score:2)
Re:Lacking sense: priorities (Score:2)
Queue the government.
They pay people to do disaster & contingency planning for situations like this.
In theory, the Fed/State Government stockpile antibiotics and/or vaccines, so that the people in charge of (and required to run) critical infrastructure will get taken care of. Those people include obvious and not so obvious fields and industries.
So
Re:Lacking sense: priorities (Score:2)
In fact, depending on the exact circumstances, martial law might very well become a serious consideration: When everyone including the police are quarantined, who is to stop the looters? Congress (from suitable distance as to not infect each other, surely) would have to void
Quarantine (Score:2)
Everyone stays in their designated areas, lives and dies where they are, for a set period. That way any pandemic will either die out or evolve and become sublethal or those that have inherent immunity would survive it.
The Gov has to make sure there's a sufficient stash of fuel, food and drinking water in the various locations so that people can survive for the set period.
Forget about hospitals. You get a critical
Re:Lacking sense: priorities (Score:2)
Most people don't work at a hospital. And hospitals would be far better equipped to protect their employees from infection. The original poster is talking about people working at nonessential jobs, which frankly is most of the population.
Obviously, you do not get it. (Score:2)
Here are some thoughts for you:
Re:Obviously, you do not get it. (Score:2)
I think it was a few weeks before they started tourturing people in secret prisons and wiretapping without warrents.
Re:Lacking sense: priorities (Score:3, Informative)
Dual use (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dual use (Score:2)
The solution where I work... (Score:3, Interesting)
I work for a "Healthcare company".
Re: The solution where I work... (Score:2)
Well, if you get the flu be sure to show up long enough to infect your bosses and everybody at HR before you go home to bed where you belong.
Re:The solution where I work... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The solution where I work... (Score:2)
I plan on it. I just found out about that rule today. (After coming down with th
Re:The solution where I work... (Score:2)
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:The Keyboard (Score:2)
When I got my first job in the State Government I thought it was hilarious (being a fan of Douglas Adams) they we had telephone cleaners who came around once a month and disinfected the phones.
In those days you shared your phones so perhaps it made good sense. I won't make jokes about telephone cleaners again.
Re:The Keyboard (Score:2)
Because nothing beats keeping a germ-encrusted rag in your pocket for staying healthy...
vaccination through hardware (Score:2, Funny)
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.
2-4 weeks of food? (Score:2, Insightful)
Moreover:
Re:2-4 weeks of food? (Score:2)
Move? (Score:2)
You think I'm moving to a remote location in the event of a pandemic, to save your business? Like hell I will. I'll be bunkering up at home, while stockpiling tinned food and ammo.
Re:Move? (Score:2)
National avian flu coordinator? (Score:2)
At the same time, I think it would be foolish for us to ignore the possibility that there will be another influenza pandemic. Indeed, there are many who say that it's certai
eats, shoots and leaves (Score:3, Funny)
i [mostlyfiction.com] think homeland security needs to keep an eye on this guy...
The bird flu (Score:2)
Humankind has survived several pandemics already, like the b
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.
Re:My solution to the H5N1 Pandemic (Score:2)
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.
AIDS is an entirerly different virus family to influenza, and as such there is no expectation of a form transmissible by contact - there's probably someth
Are they joking? (Score:2, Funny)
Company A COO: "Err... All of our staff and customers are dead. I'm afraid it's just you and me left in this $5 billion state of the art clean room.... Want to see me naked?"
problem solved (Score:2)
Chances are, we'd never even notice little things like bird flu.. armageddon.. Hurricanes..
hard science (Score:2)
general background information (Score:2, Informative)
http://pandemicflu.gov/ [pandemicflu.gov]
related link and info
http://pandemicflu.gov/general/ [pandemicflu.gov]
A pandemic is a global disease outbreak. A flu pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus emerges for which people have little or no immunity and for which there is no vaccine. The disease spreads easily person-to-person, causes serious illness, and can sweep across the country and around the world in very short time.
It
Despite The Drama (Score:2)
Now, if something like this pandemic hits, then there will be an extreme need for IT folk to take care of the infrastructre that the entire modern medical comm
Be prepared: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Be prepared: (Score:2)
Immunize the kids (Score:3, Interesting)
Get every shcool age child, especially those under 12, into a clinic to be vaccinated. From the view of protecting the public, the CDCs limits on vaccinations for the elderly, infant, and asthmatic make little sense. Yes, I know - those are the people most likely to die from influenza, they should get vaccinated, too. But little kids are such a strong vector for any disease - primarily due to their lack of proper hygene regimen - that they should really be the ones to target. Keep the kids from getting it and its far less likely to be passed from child to child in school/daycare/playgroup, and then to the rest of the family (including elderly relatives), and on through the chain of human interaction.
I would gladly give up my dose if I knew that every kid in every primary school would get theirs.
BTW - I heard that a bunch of flu vaccine went to waste this year in the US. I'm prat of the problem because I didn't get mine. Why? I wasn't allowed to until after a certain date. By the time that date came around, we were half way through the flu season. I suspect most of us in the "healthy" population figured that by the time we were allowed to get vaccinated and it take full effect, we would be through most of the flu season, and there would be no point. It's like buying disabiliy insurance when your a year or two from retirement...why bother? Good intentions (by the CDC), but poorly implemented. It will only make it harder for the companies making these (relatively) low-margin products to continue.
If it is not a big deal, then why all the panic? (Score:4, Interesting)
So wait a minute, doesn't every disease have the chance to mutate into something much worse not just avian flu? AIDs is incurable, has infected hundreds of millions and is transmited only by contact. What if it mutated so it was spread airborne? Everyday millions of bad things could happen but don't and we are not panicking over all of them.
So ask yourself why all the fuss? What is going on that could benefit from people being distracted?
Could it be the war in Iraq, scandals, economy, politics? Take your pick. We should be demanding the media to focus on the real issues and hold the politician's feet to the fire and not be distracted by nonissues.
Re:This is interesting (Score:2)
Re:This is interesting (Score:2)
The issue is what is needed to separate ourselves for a period of time. Basically, if you are in a
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
Re:Proof? (Score:2)
Compare that to the flu of 1918, where the virus had probably years to mutate, there was no surveilance, and on top of that there were 4 years of war and starvation, so an enormous number of people with weekened immune systems were exposed to it.
If you rationally compare the known evidence and history of epidemics and pan
Re:This is interesting (Score:2)
Bleach is good for breaking up viruses. UV works well. So does ordinary soap, from what I've read.
Re:This is interesting (Score:2)
Kind of weird, but if this shapes up to have a 70% mortality rate, then it is what will be needed to survive. Not just for personal self, but also for our children.
What exactly do you mean by this? You are aware that the entire worlds population could fit very comfortably in an area the size of Texas? I don't mean piled three high, I mean a house and land each. You aren't one of these people that think the population needs "weeding out"?
If you ever did work at the CDC, I sincerely hope they fired your
Offtopic (Score:3)
Re:Offtopic (Score:2)
Re:Offtopic (Score:2)
Your shareholders. You have a duty to care about their investment, not to ask them who the fuck cares.
This doesn't mean that safety doesn't come first. There are lots of dangerous jobs out there - manage the risk, and get the job done.
Furthermore, there are many businesses - things like banks, some public services - which people expect to be running no matter what. Telling a customer he can't get his money has the potential to make a pande
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
Re:Bomb Shelters (Score:2)
maybe more than you think. 9/11. Katrina. good reasons for backing up data to an anonymous vault in a half-forgotten desert salt mine.
Re:Detrimental affect(s) = need for preparation? (Score:2)
Mod Parent Funny (Score:2)
Re:Who Said it was " pushed by media"? (Score:2)
Re:Flu Scare to Maintain Political Control (Score:2)
If only that were true. In fact by comparison with H1N1 (recovered from 1918 victims) it appears that H5N1 is about 30 mutations off a human pandemic form. Usual
Re:Flu Scare to Maintain Political Control (Score:2)
Dude, where is your reference for that? How can you predict a mutation? Are not the odds many times greater that it will stay the same or mutate into something less contagious?
Re:Originated...? (Score:2)