Introduction[edit | edit source]
WHY PLAN AND PREPARE: Please read Mike Coston's article on pandemic plans. The gist of it is that the WHO, starting around 2005, wrote plans and urged member states to write theirs. A number of businesses also wrote theirs. All those efforts had links, many of which are now lost, or the documents are badly outdated. Also, the world has learned a lot with the ongoing situation with covid. Last but not least, H5N1 continues to do its thing, there are other viruses, and Covid could use some coherent effective effort worldwide. So there's plenty of reasons why we should be adding to this effort.
WHY THIS PAGE: Pandemics are the kind of exam where we get better marks if we cheat, I.e. if we copy from each other. We also get better marks if the others get better marks. Also, there's no resource like this one. Or, of there is, then by doing this the hope is we would find out why it's redundant, we'd link to it, and we'd call it a day.
THIS PAGE: This page intends to be an open set of documents to collect links, ideas and templates. Don't expect it to be polished, as it is a wiki and therefore always work in progress. Take text as you see fit, as it's open content just like the rest of appropedia. Contribute to it if you can. Contact x.com/lucasgonzalez on twitter if you'd like help in becoming a contributor, or if you have resources. Thanks.
YOUR PLAN: A plan is a document that guides your actions. It could look like a checklist, a flowchart or even a recipe. There would be plans for preparedness and for response; we can safely assume most people won't plan before the next pandemic hits us all, but if there are some plans they will act as templates, other people will go faster than you did, more people will be more ready and you will win. Your plan should include 2 broad areas: how to reduce contagions, and how to keep vital things going. Once that's underway, you can add a third area, which would be about helping others to be more prepared, or helping others respond better.
HOW TO WORK WITH THIS PAGE: Grab a piece of paper or its electronic version. Look at this page by yourself or with others. Decide on the parameters of one scenario that you'd like to work with, and some basic goals; I strongly suggest you start with limited parameters, otherwise it's quite likely that you'd suffer from overwhelm and that would make you less effective. Having one scenario creates a picture in your mind; you treat that as your "reference reality", even though it's not reality, and even though it's not even a prediction. Having a few basic goals also helps, because you know what you're aiming for, and how close you are, at least on paper.
YOUR SCENARIO: You can use a spreadsheet to do some basic numbers. There's a spreadsheet you can use in resiliencemaps.org/files/fluscim. Rough estimates would be enough.
- Say you're looking at your town, region, country... what's the population? Google that, or use a ballpark figure.
- Then, play with attack rates: that's the humber of people who would fall ill.
- Next, you can play with lethality or proportion of severe cases. Do remind yourself, and the others in the work group, that this is not a prediction: just a scenario. In practice, it's likely that the worse scenarios would create the strongest motivation for precautions; the presence of a bad virus would give everyone the energy to try and stop it, and what we're doing is hash out HOW we'd convert that motivation into effective action. Think of it as a fire exit: we don't use it until it's needed, and then you're glad someone nailed the exit signs on the right doors.
- Finally, place 2 dates: one measured in say months (6 months, say) and another in years (say 5 years). This also reinforces the idea that this is a scenario: you're telling yourself that these are possibilities. One date gives you the clarity that you won't be able to do everything you'd like to see, and creates extra clarity for the priorities. The other gives you a longer time frame which is good for patience. Neither is based on any reality because, again, neither is a prediction. But we set the dates and that gives us, and our team, a slightly increased sense of control.
YOUR GOALS: The main overarching goal is to delay deaths. (We all die at the end of our lives. Ok, if people don't die before their time, that counts as saving lives.) Deaths in an aerosol pandemic come from two directions: direct deaths from the virus itself, and indirect deaths from the disruption of vital services. One example is dieing from an appendicitis because the surgeon, the anesthesist, or the electricity are not available. So we want to make things difficult for the virus but doable for humans. It's a combined goal.
YOUR STRATEGIES: Next, the suggestion is that you focus on one strategy at a time. Reduce, protect, cope - expand!
LINKS TO PLANS: country plans, regional plans, business plans. With a commentary about Date, What's useful, How we could improve on it with what we now know, Questions that would be useful. Notice the emphasis on "usefulness", given that we can safely take for granted that plans written before aerosol transmission was acknowledged will be defective, and most old plans won't make reference to new developments such as waste-water surveillance etc.
LINKS TO SCIENCE: aerosols, UV, etc.
LINKS TO PAGES WITH DETAILS OF TOOLS: See this portal and link to appropriate pages. Effort in improving those pages would be great, but maybe let's focus on this page only for now?
