WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Sadly, our governments do not have a record of always doing the right thing.
They certainly don't have a record of planning ahead very well...
Not with healthcare planning, not with other emergency planning.
The trouble is, it involves having the courage to spend money before it is absolutely certain that it is necessary. In democracies, we always have an opposition that will say the exact opposite whatever the governments do...

Back in the 1980's we sleep-walked into the AIDS crisis.  It killed many homosexuals and haemophiliacs here.  Other, Third World countries, are now having their populations ravaged by AIDS. But, here in the Western democracies, society continues much as before
We then sleep-walked into the BSE crisis.  Millions of cattle were slaughtered, and some lovely youngsters died of a ghastly "new variant CJD" while John Selwyn Gummer force-fed his grand-daughter with beefburger.  But most of us survived, and we carry on much as before. 
We then sleep-walked into foot-and-mouth.  Again, millions of livestock were slaughtered - but we survived and carried on as before.
Every time that we narrowly avert catastrophe we seem to get even more complacent... We pat ourselves on the back and re-assure ourselves that really, really nasty things just don't happen to us any more.

Recently the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina, and the even bigger disaster that was the US government's emergency response, should have been a wake up call to everyone.
But who would bet that it there won't be a next time - and that the next foul-ups won't be just as bad?

This one is a bit different.  This is a disease that is pointing squarely at us.
Our lack of immunity to H5N1 means that casualties in the West will possibly be much greater than in Asia.
And we are sleep-walking into it.

The speed with which this might happen will not allow us the luxury of further discussion, or being wise after the event. As I said recently to a friend of mine, think about how it will happen if it does mutate into a form that travels quickly by coughs and sneezes, and also becomes a strain with high lethality... (ie. like 1918)
When there are the reports of possible human-to-human transmission from India or Vietnam or China, their local health officials will probably try to cover it up, or at least calm everyone down.  No-one will want to be the first to go on TV and shout "Panic!" Just in case they are wrong.
Everyone knows that to start a false alarm would attract massive criticism.  So in the time that it will take them to "confirm the bloody obvious", the virus will be getting on jet aeroplanes and flying around the world.
Or as I summarised: "Maybe you will go into town and see dead bodies on the street in Bromley before you get confirmation on the TV that the pandemic has started".

Is that an overstatement?  Am I scaremongering?
Well, only time will tell...

If the next pandemic flu virus is H5N1 with the same speed of transmission and the same speed of kill as the 1918 strain, then I'm afraid that that is exactly what will happen.  Vaccines and Tamiflu and good health will make little difference.
(At latest count there were less than 20 million doses of Tamiflu in the OK.  Even if it only needed one dose per person, that means that two thirds of the 60 million population of the UK will get nothing.  And I think effective treatment needs more than one dose...)

Am I exaggerating the risk of an H5N1 pandemic?
Well the Government Chief Scientist, Liam Donaldson, said on Newsnight recently:  "It isn't a matter of if, but of when..."

The only question remaining is how bad will be the strain the evolves human-to-human transmission?
We cannot possibly know that until it happens...
But at the moment we are just sleep-walking towards what could be a catastrophe...

So can we do anything at all?

Well, knowing the facts is a start.
When they show you news items about sick chickens, know that isn't the real danger.
When they say the illness in birds has been contained, remember the real danger is still to come.
When they say we have drugs like Tamiflu, remember the benefits will be tiny, and fo a few.
When they say they are gearing up to produce a vaccine, know they will be six months too late.

Just knowing the facts will mean that they can't pull the wool over your eyes.

The advice we are being given now - or the lack of it - is similar to the the suggestion that you could survive a 20 megaton blast from a Soviet H-bomb by painting your windows with whitewash.
It is almost as if the authorities have accepted that enormous casualties are unavoidable and are planning accordingly.

They will have kept back the Tamiflu and the general antibiotics for a list of "emergency workers" that will have themselves at the top, then the hospital staff and the military.  If you are not on that list, then you are just expected to be a casualty just as you were planned to be "collateral damage" if a nuclear war came along...

So now that you have had a chance to read lots and lots of website pages describing Bird Flu and its possible effects...
Now you know how little preparation is being done by others to take care of you...
Do you have anything to say?
If you are English, probably not.
Being English requires one to die quietly rather than cause any upset by complaining.
It's just not polite, don't you know?

For myself, I have asked awkward questions of doctors, nurses, funeral directors and school governors.
All of them were embarrassed at having to tell me that they were making no special preparations - mostly because they already had a sneaking feeling that more was required of them.
And they were also embarrassed to admit that they were not even asking any awkward questions themselves to those in authority over them...
It's the British way.
They were waiting politely for someone else to tell them to do something....
How very, very English.

A lot of journalists got themselves in trouble for implying that the case for war in Iraq was "sexed up".
Where are the investigative journalists to ask why this enormous danger is being "sexed down"?

I have been so appalled at what I have heard, that I have written and re-written this website over several months. And I will continue to update it until either people listen, or the need for it passes.
One way or another...

YOU could break the habit of a lifetime - while you still have some time...
Complain a bit?
Ask some awkward questions?

That's up to you....

Chris Callaghan B.A. (Honours Biochemistry) February 2006

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