Useful Links:	Health Focus: Avian flu President Nov. 1 speech> BUSH  Rep. Gingrey's comments> GINGREY PERSONAL HYGIENE, PLANNING ARE CRITICAL Logan Boss, the public information officer for Northwest Georgia Public Health, wrote the following in response to an article in The Calhoun Times. Boss has provided Hometown Headlines with a copy of that letter. We've removed just a few sentences that specifically dealt with the original article appearing in The Times. Of all the misconceptions being propagated by current news coverage of avian flu strain H5N1, by far the most damaging to the preparedness effort is the widespread belief that local birds are the key.  If H5N1 progresses from occasional bird-to-human transmission to efficient human-to-human (h2h) transmission, it won’t matter where it happens.  If it happens anywhere, the odds are overwhelming that H5N1 will get here (wherever "here" is) in a matter of weeks or months. Pandemic viruses are avatars of globalization.  Remember SARS and how quickly it spread from China throughout the world?  If H5N1 does eventually accomplish efficient human-to-human transmission, it won’t matter where; from then on, it’s a human pandemic, and protecting local birds won’t affect it a bit.  So far there is no pandemic virus.  H5N1 is an avian influenza virus -- a flu virus in birds-- that is spreading very successfully within the bird population.  It has managed to pass from a bird to a person fewer than 200 times we know about, and from a person to another person only two or three times we know about.  That’s why we don’t have a human pandemic yet.  If and when the virus changes so it can pass easily from person to person, it will qualify as an outbreak and could quickly become a pandemic.    Flu pandemics occur roughly three times a century, so in a perfectly ordinary year, there’s about a 3 percent chance of a pandemic, mild or severe as the flu gods dictate.  But the course of H5N1 since 1997 when it first appeared has presumably raised the odds of a pandemic, and many think it has raised the odds (to an unknown and unprovable extent) that if a pandemic does come it will be a severe one.  WHAT TO DO: What can individuals do to prepare for something we hope doesn’t happen but know sooner or later will?  Focus less on the pharmaceutical fix (vaccine, antivirals) and more on non-medical, non-governmental and local preparedness.  Inculcate good hand hygiene habits now.  Hand hygiene is mostly individual and so profoundly low-tech, it has trouble getting as much attention as it deserves.  Remember what your mother always told you? Whether it’s avian flu or the garden-variety flu that occurs every winter, the single best available protection against the spread of influenza is washing your hands as often as you can.  You should also avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth, cover your mouth when you cough and use a tissue when you sneeze.  People also need to get clear on the "pan" in "pandemic." "Pan" is the Greek root meaning "all."  Pandemics are unique; they happen everywhere, more or less at once.  Which creates a paradox.  Because a pandemic is worldwide, it is intensely local.  There is nobody "outside" the pandemic to send help.  Every community is pretty much on its own.  Most people don’t understand that yet.  Most emergencies are local; pandemic flu will be intensely so. BE PREPARED: What else can you do right now to plan and prepare?  Businesses should include pandemic flu in their business-continuity planning.  What will they do if their usual supplier(s) can no longer supply?  What will they do if their workers don’t come to work?  Every organization can rethink its staffing needs in anticipation of soaring absenteeism and re-evaluate its social-contact needs.  Infectious disease transmission is a function of the number of social contacts  --  keeping people home more means keeping more of them well and alive. Nonprofits can start planning to coordinate volunteers. Local governments can ask themselves hard questions about leadership and survival.  How will they keep essential services operating?  What inessential sources of infection (e.g., movie theaters) will they want to shut down?  Where will they put bodies when the morgues are full?  How will they maintain order?  A "what if" exercise conducted in Floyd County two years ago using pandemic flu as the scenario underscored the fact that hospital surge capacity - where to put all the sick people--will be a major problem.  What else can individuals do?  Figure out how you’ll take care of a sick family member without getting everyone else sick.  Maybe stockpile what you’ll need so you don’t have to go out so much.  Above all, push every organization you’re tied to -- your church, your employer, your club, your children’s school-- to start its own pandemic planning process. Right now, your risk of contracting avian flu is very close to zero.  Unless you’re in the poultry business in Asia or several areas in Europe to which the virus has apparently spread, you simply have no contact with the H5N1 virus.  And as far as we know, your current risk of contracting pandemic influenza is exactly zero; there is no pandemic today.  Very few cases of avian influenza have occurred in people, ever, and the last influenza pandemic was in 1968.  Your risk of contracting pandemic influenza will stay at zero until some flu virus that our bodies haven’t encountered before-- H5N1 or a different strain -- starts spreading efficiently from human to human.  The, quickly, your risk will become sizeable.  What’s the probability of that happening?  Nobody knows.  A severe avian (H5N1) influenza pandemic might -- or might not-- happen.  We hope it won’t, but we need to get better prepared, now, in case it does. Anyone interested in learning more about avian flu should visit http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/. Sincerely, Logan Boss Public Information Officer Northwest Georgia Public Health
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