Dan Rather
LAST WEEK, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin unveiled a new hurricane evacuation plan for his city, still reeling from Hurricane Katrina. This bit of civic disaster planning received national media coverage and, unlike pre-Katrina warnings about New Orleans' levees, a good deal of public attention. It's a reminder of human nature: We tend to subject the barn door to its most careful scrutiny only after the animals have escaped.
All of this came to mind as the White House released its latest plans for an emergency that has not yet happened: an influenza pandemic, which many health experts fear could result if the avian or bird-flu virus H5N1 mutates into a strain easily spread from person to person.
DEATH TOLL
In the last century, the influenza pandemic of 1918 killed an estimated 20 million to 40 million people worldwide, and smaller pandemics in 1957 and 1968, killed tens of thousands of Americans and millions around the world. Should bird flu generate its own pandemic, our Government's worst-case scenario contemplates up to 2 million deaths from the disease in the United States and up to 40 per cent of American workers kept away from their jobs for weeks at a time.
As assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Frances Townsend made clear at the plan's unveiling, no one knows for sure whether bird flu will, in fact, develop into a pandemic. But if it does, the U.S. plan envisions a gradually unfolding crisis that may well stymie centralised efforts to deal with it. "In terms of its scope," says the report, "the impact of a severe pandemic may be more comparable to that of a war or a widespread economic crisis than a hurricane, earthquake, or act of terrorism."
In other words, the federal government will do what it can to slow the spread of a pandemic within the U.S., and to develop and disseminate a vaccine; but - again quoting from the report - "Local communities will have to address the medical and non-medical effects of the pandemic with available resources." And, as President Bush added in a letter appended to the report, "No less important will be the actions of individual citizens, whose participation is necessary to the success of these efforts."
One way to view the report's emphasis on the necessity for local, rather than federal, response efforts could be seen in the many headlines last week that sounded variations on "Feds to U.S.: If Bird Flu Hits, You're on Your Own." Another way to view this aspect of the report is as a sobering concession to reality: No matter how many billions of dollars the federal government spends, no matter how detailed the plans, it cannot oversee every citizen's behaviour at home or in the workplace - nor would we want it to. If bird flu hits, a lot of the responsibility for dealing with it will depend on individuals, their employers and their communities, like it or not.
CLEAR GUIDANCE
That said, though, one hopes that the federal government will follow through on something that both its plan and common sense dictate to be essential: "for the federal government to provide clear guidance on the manner in which [pandemic response] needs can be met." This calls for outreach not only to states and municipalities but to individual citizens as well -- and not only with a 232-page government report. We all need to know what to expect and how to deal with it if we are to avoid chaos and panic.
We have been warned: There is a problem with the barn door, and we may be called upon to hold it shut with our own efforts. Here's hoping we all get - and all understand - the warning.
Dan Rather is an American television broadcaster.
