Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

[Shiloh]

Source: http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=94

Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns
Katie Mercer, Canwest News Service
Published: 1 hour ago

VANCOUVER - During an influenza pandemic, freighters will be docked, medications will be scarce and people will starve, a leading international expert told a conference Wednesday.

"More people will likely die from this than from the pandemic," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

North American pandemic planning hasn't factored in its dependency on Asian markets, Osterholm told attendees to the "Are You Ready for a Pandemic?" conference.

The impending pandemic will most likely originate in Asia, the "roulette table" for serious H5N1 flu virus genetic mutations that cause pandemics, warned Osterholm. If that happens, trade supply lines will die along with the influenza's victims, he added.

Osterholm's apocalyptic warnings have lauded him the "Chicken Little" of influenza pandemics by some. Panicked and angry e-mail responses to his appearance on Oprah last year single-handily shut down his university's computer server.

But international influenza researchers predict the next pandemic will be similar to the 1918-19 Spanish Flu, which killed more than 40 million people.

The next pandemic will be global in just weeks and will last 12 to 18 months, Osterholm said, although noting that the economic effects will be instantaneous.

The problem is that pandemic planning in North America has been based on all other factors such as trade and electricity being normal, but that won't be the case, said Osterholm.

That's because many highly skilled workers such as the 50,000 freighter employees worldwide "are not on any vaccine plan in any country," he said. It takes two people to navigate the freighters coming in daily. Take one away and those freighters and their supplies will remain docked, leaving people around the world, including in North America, struggling with dwindling food and medical supplies.

Replenishment of lifesaving generic medications, most of which are manufactured in China and India, won't be shipped. And influenza-testing kits, respiratory masks and the raw materials to make them all come from Asia, warned Osterholm.

Even continental trade will be impacted if borders close as a preventative measure.

"Border closings aren't going to make a difference in spreading influenza, but they make a difference when it comes to transportation issues," he said.

But that's only if modes of transportation are still operational. The moral dilemma of who receives available vaccines first is still being debated and talks in the United States seem to point to children and mothers, Osterholm said.

But he's not convinced this is a viable option.

"More kids and mothers will die if we don't protect our electricity workers, miners, first responders and health-care workers," said Osterholm. Without these workers, North America could face electricity and gas shortages, derailing trains and putting the brakes on truck transportation.

These are the sort of factors businesses and industries need to start preparing for, said Frank Welsh, director of the office of emergency preparedness at Public Health Agency of Canada.

"We need to look forward and figure out together how we are going to recover."


? Vancouver Province 2008

 

[gsgs]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

just Osterholm.

Or does any other expert or "expert" see it this way ?




More people than from the pandemic will likely die from
freighters being docked, medications being scarce and starving

(it's not clear if he thinks this applies to USA or worldwide)

 

[Giuseppe]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

I think that Osterholm predictions are really understandable. In fact, one of the my worst concern is the ''continuity'' of chemical plants operations in case of mass-casualties event, such as pandemic flu is.
The absence from work of the critical workers that maintain the ''continuous-cycle'' chemical plant may cause severe damage to the infrastructures with possible toxic leakages and heavy pollution of the air, soil, water adding further strain to a already bad hit population.
Further, same plants productions are directed to electric generators and thus a failure in the chain of chemicals may result in the partial halt of power generation.
The assurance that critical industries workers will be protected by a pandemic flu is awaited in the perspective to enhance societal resilience to disaster.
(It is also difficult to provide a back-up number of workers for this industries due to high skill they required to work.)

 

[Amish Country]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

"No Chemicals" has the potential to mean: "No safe drinking water in major cities". Many suppliers of public water are not required by law to store even a 3 month supply of water treatment chemicals needed to keep public tap water safe to drink. Some water suppliers may only have a few days supply of chemicals on hand at any given time.

Properly storing these chemicals has the added costs of proper containers as well as space, security and proper monitoring. Some of the chemicals such as chlorine are highly reactive and corrosive. These chemicals have to be properly stored in specially designed containers under certain controlled conditions. They can not just be left laying around. This adds expenses to the bottom line of water suppliers who have come to depend on Just-in-Time deliveries.

Public water may still be available during a pandemic but if it is not safe to drink waterborne diseases may be an issue. If the chemicals added during the water purification process and the process itself is not properly performed and monitored due to absenteeism there could potentially be additional dangers to the public.

 

[gsgs]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

did these "disruptions" happen in 1918 or in other epidemics before ?

(more killed by economical chaos than by the virus/bacterium itself)



Oterholm has been caught in wrong statements and tricky wordings before.

 

[Thomas Luke]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

Please go to my recent post on Flu Trackers: Protecting Public Health and Global Transportation Systems During an Influenza Pandemic
Thomas Luke

 

[Farmer]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

did these "disruptions" happen in 1918 or in other epidemics before ?

(more killed by economical chaos than by the virus/bacterium itself)



Oterholm has been caught in wrong statements and tricky wordings before.

Our dependence upon a complex infrastructure to support activities of daily living is very different today than it was in 1918.

To use the drinking water example: in 1918 we did not have complex drinking water treatment plants that chlorinated/disinfected water and no systems to distribute the treated water over large areas.

 

[Oracle]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

<i>"did these "disruptions" happen in 1918 or in other epidemics before?"</i>

Yes, and they are annotated in numerous reports posted to this website.

<i>To use the drinking water example: in 1918 we did not have complex drinking water treatment plants that chlorinated/disinfected water and no systems to distribute the treated water over large areas.</i>

Please read this:

www.americanchemistry.com/100years/WCC-Timeline-vert6.pdf

More than one thousand US cities were routinely chlorinating the drinking water supply in 1918; public water supply chlorination standards were published in 1914.

Moreover, large-scale, complex drinking water supply distribution system technology (long distance transport and local storage) was pioneered in London and Germany, nearly 150 years earlier.

 

[Amish Country]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

did these "disruptions" happen in 1918 or in other epidemics before ?

In 1918 major cities were not dependent on international trade for their survival. They received the bulk of their food from the local sustainable farms in the rural areas that surrounded them. These farms used organic non-GMO seed that even if they used hybrid seed could be saved and produce a viable crop in the following year. The fertilizer used on the farms (nitrogen) came from animal manure (not refined from or produced by petrochemicals). The land for the farms was tilled and harvested using some of the animals that produced the fertilizer, no imported, refined fossil fuels or complicated machinery needed. The bulk of the food was transported by horse drawn wagon, train or boat. The few cars or trucks back then might be just as likely to use steam or peanut oil as fossil fuel. Much of the heavy equipment that was available ran on steam.

In the US these farms are now suburbs. My uncle who has just returned from a trip from Italy reported to me that the orchards (olives and citrus) that he saw back in the mid 1940's no longer exsist and are now factories. The problem is not limited to the US.

In the US homes in 1918 were food processing factories. They had to be due to the lack of refrigeration and Just-in-Time deliveries from halfway around the world delivering out of season produce that we have today. Back then women preserved in season foods for consumption later in the year. This was done by in-home methods. They canned, pickled, jellied, jammed, dried, salted and smoked produce and meat.

----------------
GSGS if you check out John Barry's book The Great Influenza, Samoa was able to halt ALL incoming ships and advoided the plague. I imagine that created some "disruptions" of supplies of imported goods but beat the alternative hands down.

The book also reports in one hospital at the beginning of the pandemic: "Seven days into the epidemic....There were shortages of aspirin, atropine, digitalis, glacial acetic acid (a disinfectant), paper bags, sputum cups and thermometers -and thermometers that were available were being broken by men in delirium." page 215

During the height of the pandemic in Philadelphia, "No one could buy things. Commodities dealers, coal dealers, grocers closed "because the people who dealt in them were either sick or afraid and they had reason to be afraid.".....

Thirty eight hundred Pennsylvania Railroad workers were out. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad set up its own emergency hospitals along its tracks. The entire transportation system for the mid-Atlantic region staggered and trembled, putting in jeopardy most of the nation's (US) industrial output." Page 332.

------------

It is also a problem of scale. There is a much higher and less self relient, less self sustainable population to deal with now than in 1918.

 

[gsgs]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

but whar's the estimated amount of these diruptions ?

say, 500000 excess deaths in USA in 1918 - how many of these
were due to "disruption" and how many directly due to H5N1 ?


today we heve a better infrastructure, better transport system
for goods than in 1918.

 

[Amish Country]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

but whar's the estimated amount of these diruptions ?

say, 500000 excess deaths in USA in 1918 - how many of these
were due to "disruption" and how many directly due to H5N1 ?


today we heve a better infrastructure, better transport system
for goods than in 1918.

That number, at least in the US can probably only be estimated. Due to the high number of casualties at the height of the pandemic in 1918 mass graves were dug and many corpse were gathered by the wagonload and quickly buried without autopsy or much if any paperwork. Doctors and healthcare workers were to busy trying to care for those still living at the time. In the US in 1918 there was shortage of trained doctors and nurses as many were serving in WWI.

Also as part of that "infostructure"? Many of the aqueducts supplying drinking water to major cities were originally built in the late 1800's and early 1900's. New York recognized that the system might need a little work after almost 100 years and has been working on maintaining it. One set of doors on the water system had been installed in the early 1900's and never tested for the fear that they might not open again after getting them closed. When I was a child in New Jersey wooded water pipes that had probably been installed in the 17 or 1800's and were still in use up until that time were unearthed and replaced. I am concerned with the ability of some of these aging infostructures to meet the needs of the current and future populations especially during a crisis. THe weakness of our moderen transportation system is its relience on oil. If the supply is intrupted or the refining process slowed due to absenteeisum there could be problems. Are refinery workers on any of the lists as critical personnel for vacine if there is a pandemic?

 

[gsgs]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

more than 50000 = 10% ?
my estimate would be closer to 1% than 10%.

Let alone 50% as in Osterholm's figure.

 

[Sally Furniss]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

GSGS if you check out John Barry's book The Great Influenza, Samoa was able to halt ALL incoming ships and advoided the plague. I imagine that created some "disruptions" of supplies of imported goods but beat the alternative hands down.

A little more on American Samoa.

The Commission reported that American Samoa (Pago Pago) had entirely escaped the ravages of influenza, and it appears, from their report, that from the 20th November, to avoid the risk of introduction from Apia, the United States Governor at Pago Pago imposed on all ships arriving at this port five days absolute quarantine before discharging or taking on board any mail or cargo.

 

[Farmer]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

<i>To use the drinking water example: in 1918 we did not have complex drinking water treatment plants that chlorinated/disinfected water and no systems to distribute the treated water over large areas.</i>

Please read this:

www.americanchemistry.com/100years/WCC-Timeline-vert6.pdf

More than one thousand US cities were routinely chlorinating the drinking water supply in 1918; public water supply chlorination standards were published in 1914.

Moreover, large-scale, complex drinking water supply distribution system technology (long distance transport and local storage) was pioneered in London and Germany, nearly 150 years earlier.

Drinking water disinfection and distribution were not assured in the US during 1918. Major US cities such as Washington DC and Denver were just STARTING to disinfect drinking water in 1918.

My point was that the infrastructure needs and dependence upon external inputs are not comparable between 1918 and 2008.

 

[gsgs]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

a statistics would be interesting, whether cities or countries with drinking
water desinfection did better in 1918.

Can we get the data, which cities had desinfection and which not ?

 

[Oracle]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

Denver:

"Though exposed waterways posed a problem, Denver Water?s predecessors treated drinking water from inception, always employing some type of granular filtration, however primitive. The private companies cropping up beginning in 1870 laid mains to deliver drinking water, slowly replacing wells with diverted (Platte River) surface water . The first infiltration galleries were buried along Cherry Creek in 1886 and at the Platte Canyon Filtration Plant (Kassler) in 1889. The first "rapid sand" mechanical filters were built in 1892 at the Willard Filter Plant, and the first chlorination feeds ? effective in preventing cholera and typhoid epidemics ? were installed at all filter plants in 1906. "

"A tradition of excellence was already established in 1918 when Denver?s voters chose to create an independent, municipal water department to serve a growing city. Providing clean, safe drinking water always has been as important to the agency as producing ample supplies. "

http://www.denverwater.org/waterquality/keepingwater.html

Washington DC:

Washington DC employed a state-of-art slow sand filter system at McMillian Reservoir (meant to obviate the immediate need for chemical treatment of surface water supply). You are correct in that this system had a chlorination unit added in 1923. Despite not having chlorination in the first decades of the 20th century, the District of Columbia had significantly fewer communicable disease outbreaks after the installation of the SSFS in 1906.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMillan_Reservoir

Not hardly the backwards state of affairs in public water supply treatment in major US cities, as alluded to in your previous post.

>My point was that the infrastructure needs and dependence upon external inputs are not comparable between 1918 and 2008.

Well, duh! It would have been best for you to simply state that irrefutable fact. All I am doing is correcting disinformation.

 

[Oracle]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

<i>Can we get the data, which cities had desinfection and which not ?</i>

Disinfection can be physical or chemical, or a combination of both. It's typically used for surface water supply (rivers, reservoirs). Groundwater supply usually doesn't need filtrations nor disinfection, unless there are leakage/inundation problems in the distribution system (in that case, stilling wells are used for timed chemical addition).

If nearly a thousand cities had water supply chlorination in place by 1918, what is your point in asking for this information? Of note: it wasn't until 1919 that Abel Wolman and Linn Enslow developed an analytical method to correctly dose water with hypochlorite; chloramination was first used in 1917.

I couldn't find a comprehensive list that you asked for, but I did find data that demonstrated the effect: between the dates of onset of chlorination of the public water supply (1908) and 1918, the typhoid death rate dropped from 27 to 8, an effective decrease of two-thirds of the cases reported in 1905 achieved in the span of just one decade, due to the use of public water supply disinfection methods (physical and chemical) and effective public health education campaigns (food handling, hand washing, etc. efforts to qwell outbreak potential) in cities. By 1930, the most common water-borne diseases (cholera, typhoid, hepatitis A, and dysentery) were eliminated as prominent sources of morbidity and mortality in the US population.

 

[gsgs]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

we have the mortality and infection numbers from many US-cities for 1918,
should be easy to see if chlorination of drinking water had any effect
on influenza - if we had such a list.

It's unlikely IMO, since no such effect was observed for seasonal flu,
but worth testing.

I remember the reports from 1918 about the effect of automatic
dish-washers which used hot water.
I don't remember the final conclusion

 

[Sunshine123]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5668

Best scenario of water disruption during an emergency I have read

Water Supplies in a Pandemic

I work for a state agency assisting the water supply industry for my state. As such, I have access to water treatment plant operators and an understanding of water supply systems. My purpose in telling you this is to establish credibility.

I am definitely not authorized to speak publicly for my agency. HOWEVER, as a Civil Engineer (Professional Engineer) in the business, and as a private citizen, I've made an analysis that I'd like to share with you.

Obviously, there are lots of concerns about how people might contract ordinary flu and other diseases. Let me discuss a transmission route that is LIKELY to occur in the event of a pandemic: namely the public water supply systems.

The water supply system

First, let me describe the supply system. The source of public drinking water is typically surface streams and reservoirs. There are communities, most often in rural settings, that get their water primarily from wells and springs. But the great majority of cities and towns in the USA get at least a portion of their water from surface sources.

Water is piped to the water treatment plant where the water is held, temporarily, in large ponds. The water is taken into the treatment plant where large materials are screened out and then the water is put through a series of filters. These include flocculation, and sand filters that remove even small particles down to bacteria sizes.

However, viruses are so small they cannot be filtered out. That's one of the main reasons for chlorination, along with killing any residual bacteria. State law requires there be "log 4" reduction in virus count. That is, 1/10, 1/100, 1/1,000 down to 1/10,000 reduction in virus count. And every treatment plant tests the water to determine that the log 4 reduction is being achieved.

Test results are routinely submitted to drinking water regulatory agencies. Sometimes during normal operation, treatment plants cannot conform and are required to take corrective actions to regain compliance. See concluding comments below.

During normal day-to-day operations the raw water (term used for water before treatment) contains all the stuff that is in rivers and reservoirs. This includes bird and animal fecal droppings, as well as dead and decaying plant and animal matter. Not a pretty sight, but that's the way it is.

Now, in the USA these plants operate quite well and every day provide people with clean, non-contaminated drinking water. Pretty amazing when you consider the volumes of water -- billions of gallons per day. When was the last time you heard about a water-borne disease outbreak??

What happens in a pandemic

Anyway, now let's consider what happens to this system during a pandemic.

Obvously, there is a concern for sufficient numbers of qualified personnel to properly operate all aspects of the system from pumps, valves, and filters to the chlorination equipment. But here's the "pandemic kicker". Ducks and geese having the disease (recall they shed the virus in large amounts even before becoming symptomatic) deposit their droppings in the streams, reservoirs, and in the holding pond right outside the treatment plant. And, of course, when they die their contaminated bodies float and decompose in those surface water sources.

In addition, sewage treatment plants quite commonly discharge to streams and thus some levels of human excrement also end up in surface water supplies. This too, is ongoing day-to-day. Quite simply, sewage treatment plants do not remove all pathogens or chemicals. This is the source of pesticides, herbicides, pharmaceuticals, and other "endocrine disruptors".

We all live downstream

Recall the slogan, "we all live downstream". Well, we really do live downstream. So, flu-contaminated human waste is also in the raw water stream that supplies drinking water treatment plants.

Sewage treatment plant effluent is also used in many areas of the country for "water reuse" such as to water golf courses and other "non-contact" (to humans) uses. On a day-to-day basis these human wastes are removed like the other wastes from the drinking water.

So, during a pandemic, the raw water sources contains both bird and human-generated flu virus.

Speaking to the manager of a large water treatment plant, I find the following. During the summer a typical chlorine stockpile for water treatment is no more than one week. Summer means the greatest water demand during June, July and August. The chlorine is delivered to the drinking water via compressed gas bottles. One bank (say 12 cylinders) is on-line while the other bank of 12 is full and waiting to be put on-line. That's a typical hard plumbing hookup. During the winter, when water demand is lower, the bank may last more than one week.

Not if, but when, there is absenteeism at the chlorine generating plant, the chlorine supply will not be there. MAJOR problem! Without chlorine, the flu virus (along with other infectious agents) could be supplied to the public. Unless the water supply is turned off.

To add to credibility of this scenario, I'd direct you to one water supplier, in Denver, that has made plans to prepare for a pandemic scenario. The article makes good reading up until he talks about chlorine, which is beyond his control. These folks have even taken to stockpiling a 30-day supply of chlorine. After that, they face the decision of supplying contaminated water, or shutting off the supply to the public. See the following, which I think I got from your website.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...626378,00.html

Another pandemic consideration is the length of the flu pandemic. In 12 to 18 months there will be equipment malfunctions in the vast array of equipment throughout the automated system. What breaks and when it breaks could affect the ability to treat the water (water filters through chlorination dispensing) and deliver it (pumps, valves, control systems).

It could be that, after some critical item (or combination of items) breaks, no water will be delivered during a pandemic.

Well, maybe you already knew this stuff. But this supplies some detail of this industry. In my military survival training I learned that water was the most crucial item to life. Recall also that hydration of flu patients is a key item, crucial to their survival. And clean, uncontaminated water could be in seriously short supply to millions of people during a pandemic. Might I suggest individuals seriously consider stockpiling water along with whatever else they do to prepare for a pandemic.

http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/f...y_pandemic.pdf

 

[gsgs]

Re: Economic chaos will kill more than pandemic, expert warns

chlorine is cheap, everyone could easily treat his/her water
individually before drinking it

just a few $ for 1 year, easy to store

(?)