Mandatory implementation to all airports of a new superfast chipset test (<30 min.)?
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For each potential carrier, how many diagnostics can DHS reasonably pursue? The current gold standard involves a swab that gets sent off to a lab for testing, resulting in a six-hour turnaround. How would that relatively short quarantine impact flight operations? And who would pay?
If one passenger is clearly sick, does everyone else on that plane get tested? Who would receive prophylactic meds like Tamiflu? And what follow-up tracking is warranted?
Ideally, any systemic approach would include initial diagnostic screens conducted overseas at originating airports.
Upper questions are from "Health screening at airports":
(story from H5N1 web site)
Health screening at airports
Via the Korea Times, an opinion piece by American writer Thomas Barnett: Health Screening at Airports. Excerpt:
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Comments
<!-- comment list -->That is one frustrating opinion piece. It betrays a consciousness about pandemic H5N1 that would've been considered naive four years ago. Are we starting the education process all over again? BTW Crof, nice touch of irony following this with a post entitled "Our persistent ignorance."
Posted by: slovenia | October 17, 2007 at 04:51 AM
I don't know how naive Barnett may be, but it's a safe bet that thousands of people have today learned for the first time that something called bird flu might be dangerous. Barnett may be consciously writing for those folks, just as I have a list of H5N1 Basic Information links.
The newcomers are at the bottom of a learning curve that some of us started climbing two, three, or four years ago. Most of the planet still doesn't know what H5N1 is.
So learning has to happen on multiple levels, like a one-room schoolhouse shared by six-year-olds and 18-year-olds. That's why so many news stories include the mandatory "Experts fear" paragraph.
This kind of basic story will likely vanish by the time we get hit by the second wave of a pandemic. At that point everyone will know what the experts were so scared of.
Posted by: Crawford Kilian | October 17, 2007 at 05:02 PM
If Barnett was, indeed, writing for the 6 year olds in the H5N1 classroom, he has done them a massive disservice by implying that ANY action taken at airports (short of shutting them down completely) will keep pandemic flu out of a country or even significantly slow down its penetration given the virus shedding that goes on in an infected individual in the days before onset of symptoms. Not to mention his seeming faith in the efficacy of the Dept of Homeland Security (I'd insist THAT'S naive). It was the aspect of false re-assurance in his piece rather than its elementary nature that troubled me.
Posted by: slovenia | October 19, 2007 at 01:14 AM
_____
For each potential carrier, how many diagnostics can DHS reasonably pursue? The current gold standard involves a swab that gets sent off to a lab for testing, resulting in a six-hour turnaround. How would that relatively short quarantine impact flight operations? And who would pay?
If one passenger is clearly sick, does everyone else on that plane get tested? Who would receive prophylactic meds like Tamiflu? And what follow-up tracking is warranted?
Ideally, any systemic approach would include initial diagnostic screens conducted overseas at originating airports.
Upper questions are from "Health screening at airports":
(story from H5N1 web site)
Health screening at airports
Via the Korea Times, an opinion piece by American writer Thomas Barnett: Health Screening at Airports. Excerpt:
Flu strains enter the United States in the bodies of sick travelers, so the key here will be our efficient and effective screening of in-bound passengers at international airports. According to Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists currently investigating pandemic response procedures for the Department of Homeland Security, for every flu carrier who --unwittingly or not-- eludes that envisioned net, as many as 10,000 Americans could suffer exposure within three weeks time.
Consider the sheer volume: over 25,000 passengers arrive through Los Angeles' international terminals on a daily basis. In August, when a software glitch struck U.S. Customs' computers there, 20,000 passengers were stranded for up to 18 hours.
Even if we can quickly screen all passengers while pulling aside the suspected sick, tough questions abound.
For each potential carrier, how many diagnostics can DHS reasonably pursue? The current gold standard involves a swab that gets sent off to a lab for testing, resulting in a six-hour turnaround. How would that relatively short quarantine impact flight operations? And who would pay?
If one passenger is clearly sick, does everyone else on that plane get tested? Who would receive prophylactic meds like Tamiflu? And what follow-up tracking is warranted?
Ideally, any systemic approach would include initial diagnostic screens conducted overseas at originating airports. Since virtually all international flights are lengthy, passive diagnostic screening at points of embarkation and debarkation would offer authorities the opportunity to compare and contrast readings over time. For example, additional measures would be warranted if a passenger's symptoms worsened during the flight or if those symptoms spread to other passengers.
October 16, 2007 at 08:44 AM | Permalink <!-- technorati tags --><!-- post footer links -->
Comments
<!-- comment list -->That is one frustrating opinion piece. It betrays a consciousness about pandemic H5N1 that would've been considered naive four years ago. Are we starting the education process all over again? BTW Crof, nice touch of irony following this with a post entitled "Our persistent ignorance."
Posted by: slovenia | October 17, 2007 at 04:51 AM
I don't know how naive Barnett may be, but it's a safe bet that thousands of people have today learned for the first time that something called bird flu might be dangerous. Barnett may be consciously writing for those folks, just as I have a list of H5N1 Basic Information links.
The newcomers are at the bottom of a learning curve that some of us started climbing two, three, or four years ago. Most of the planet still doesn't know what H5N1 is.
So learning has to happen on multiple levels, like a one-room schoolhouse shared by six-year-olds and 18-year-olds. That's why so many news stories include the mandatory "Experts fear" paragraph.
This kind of basic story will likely vanish by the time we get hit by the second wave of a pandemic. At that point everyone will know what the experts were so scared of.
Posted by: Crawford Kilian | October 17, 2007 at 05:02 PM
If Barnett was, indeed, writing for the 6 year olds in the H5N1 classroom, he has done them a massive disservice by implying that ANY action taken at airports (short of shutting them down completely) will keep pandemic flu out of a country or even significantly slow down its penetration given the virus shedding that goes on in an infected individual in the days before onset of symptoms. Not to mention his seeming faith in the efficacy of the Dept of Homeland Security (I'd insist THAT'S naive). It was the aspect of false re-assurance in his piece rather than its elementary nature that troubled me.
Posted by: slovenia | October 19, 2007 at 01:14 AM