Wild in the streets

Hmmm... Does anybody remember the movie from the sixties where the young people started locking up the old people and taking over? Pretty funny at the time, lots of LSD and rock music... I wonder when a pandemic happens if we'll see similar behavior toward the ill... or for that matter toward people that we don't want to get sick I can recall footage of quarantines back in the sixties and fifties, you don't see that today with all the vacinations If you have no idea how a disease is transmitted its pretty reasonable to lock people away who are infected, and then lock away the people who locked those people away and so on.

I would have to think that mass quarantines would be less likely today because of better understanding of epidemiological factors. I would guess though that in isolated areas you might see doctors, individual stores or restaurants suggesting that those who might be exposed or have the flu stay out or come at certain times.

So far we're just quarantining chickes, but hey, maybe stewardesses will be next when it jumps to people.:

Romania imposes bird flu quarantine
Wire Reports
BUCHAREST, Romania - Romanian authorities called for calm Saturday as they quarantined an eastern region where tests confirmed Europe's first appearance of a deadly strain of bird flu that has devastated flocks and killed dozens of people in Asia.

Poland's government banned the sale of live birds at open-air markets and ordered farmers to keep poultry in closed quarters beginning Monday. It also banned pigeon races. (lest we infect the little pigeon jockeys that ride them...)
On Friday, after the deadly H5N1 virus was confirmed in Turkey, on Europe's doorstep, European Union experts agreed that steps should be taken to limit contact between domestic fowl and wild birds.

Back to demographics and social effects. We can probably multiply out some effects by thinking about the individual case and multiplying it out, asking at what percent things change. Normally, if one part of the population stops doing something, another may rush in to fill the void due to promotions and so on, but when the population disappears other things happen.

Consider if 2% of the population dies, that will result in perhaps 2% of the homes, cars and property of those people passing to their heirs and perhaps going on the market, creating not a surplus of 2% of the houses, but instead temporarily adding say 6 million houses to the market, while removing 6 million people from the possible market to occupy them. Multiply this effect across various segments and you have the potential for a very very bad economic slump, slightly offset perhaps by the life insurance payouts to heirs and the boost to the government coffers from the inheritance taxes... oh wait, it'll be mostly the poor so maybe the economic effect will be very different. I'll have to think that direction through tomorrow.

Stay out of the coop...

If it's Monday the Greek Seagulls must be infected

So trend wise, does it seem to you that these people that are killing chickens are a bit like children slapping the waves down. "Got that one, ooh there's another". I'm not sure whats worse the economic hardship to the farmers, the cruelty to the birds or the lie that it infers real government action.

I was reminded of one of my early environmental planning courses at SUNY Geneseo. A bright Professor named Dick Lamb was talking about disease and debris vectors in landfills. For those not steeped in environmental planning, vectors are those pesky things that are hard to control like rats, seagulls and third world families scrambling through dumps to find things they need, like food. He was saying that the key difference between a landfill and a dump is that landfills focus on sealing each days refuse so that "vectors" can't get to and spread debris and desease.

So there, in that germ of an idea, I suddenly thought ooh, we have infected birds fighting with people for scraps of this and that, excreting poop on garbage which pigs, people and rats also eat, the rats, classic carriers of plague fleas and other bad diseases, the pigs of influenza, merging their microscopic bad guys together and voila we have the newest form of pandemic.

We're not going to stop the pandemic by killing chickens in farm coops. Cull the dieing birds for sanitary reasons and move on. The vectors are on the loose. And killing all the rats and seagulls isn't practical either. Nor is sealing all the 3rd world and not so third world dumps either.As we worry about the avian flu leaping directly to people I think we're forgetting the dumps as a possible vector for the form of the disease which will leap from human to human.

Focusing on slowing the roll, through appropriate curtailment of travel at the right moment, quaranteen of people, anti-rat and mice programs, keeping people out of the dumps and anti-flea efforts could help, but its a losing battle. Maybe we could create a version of the flu that wouldn't be deadly but which could infer enough immunity to keep us safe from that real bad guy. Kind of like burning a fire line in the forest to stop a forest fire.

Vertebrate Pests

Sunset in NYC

Looking over the NYC at sunset is not to be missed. 

Fast Food Shortages

Previously the experts are saying that its a matter of when the pandemic will strike, rather than if. I've noted more optimistic reports in recent days about vaccine potentials. I wonder if this is an attempt by world governments to put a lid on the conversation, to slow the level of concern. I'm not meaning to sound paranoid here, but there is often a lot of spin on the part of government opfficials. Anyway back to my main contribution, talking about demographic segment effects, lets focus on the US for example, continuing with an assumption of about 50 million deaths. (Estimates range from 50% down to as low as 1 in 1000 depending on how the virus evolves)

If more elderly than younger die, the retirement accounting situation gets better. If the reverse, due to better immunity from prior bird flu incidents, then the reverse is true and the retirement system becomes destabilized. Of course, depending on the magnitude, it could also boost the job prospects of younger works since there would be fewer workers. Better quality jobs however would put pressure on the service sector since fewer people would be available to take lower paying, less desirable jobs. Plus regardless of the older/younger thing, its a sure bet that the poor and those with marginal health care coverage will be more likely to die than the rich and wealthier segments of the middle class. So basically we're thinking, older, poorer, less well educated, little or no medical benefits. That sort points to a real shortage of people to work in fast food. Today there are several million people in fast food alone.

Hmmm, now in an outbreak situation it sounds like eating in restaurants where most of the employees are at risk for the flu, have no sick time to use if they start feeling a little ill, and are handling the food that is going straight into your body... -That doesn't sound like a good thing, and I think most folks will be cutting back on socializing anyway, so one of the first casualities of the pandemic is likely to be the restaurant industry.

Which definately leads me to conclude that new robotics will come forward to fill jobs... Well the mind does have to leap around a bit on that doesn't it. I think I'm just juggling advances in technology which have been moving ahead steadily with a sudden market requirement to retool Taco Bell to build tacos robotically, wrap them, bag them zip zip paying for them ATM style with those self service ordering kiosks McDonalds has been working with. Call centers will have to automate further and roombas will get bigger and better for office cleaning.

Todays facts and stories

SciDev Net- What is Bird Flu
Become an Instant Expert
AID Statistics
Romania says animal deaths were bird flu
WHO expert: bird flu could spark killer pandemic

Bird Flu and Preparations

I was in Walmart last night and it suddenly hit me that I should at least stock up on conventional flu remedies since it was likely that if the pandemic actually came to pass that those might be hard to get as well. So I got three different fever reducers, flu meds to dry you out (i remembered that in 1918 it was snot that seemed to be doing people in), cloriseptic and pepto. Probably silly to have all this on hand, but hey better to have than not. As I watched my daughter I thought, "what wouldn't people do to save their children when they start to panic"... now where's the gun department..

So back to the questions of DEATH and panic. What happens if it gets bad enough to kill 1 in 100. That means probably 50% of the population gets infected. People stop going to work out of fear, things grind to a halt rather rapidly. People become numb to other natural disasters. Much like a national hurricane of fear. Long term 1 out a 100 isn't a big deal, short term the psychological and social impacts are huge. Particular if those with compromised immune systems are hit harder. 1 out a hundred works out to 3 million deaths. Makes 9/11 look puny. That's 50 million dollars in new money going to funeral homes and cemetaries, estates and lawyers get to be big deal. 2 out of a hundred 6-7 milion, 3 out of hundred 12-15.

These numbers seem both incredible and small when I think about the current morbidities in south east asia, 5 out of 10. How many people want to leave their homes to work or go to school? I'd guess many would continue to go particularly hourly people without any vacation or sick time. But that in itself could create a demographic hit. More exposure for a specific demographic group translates into higher numbers of deaths. I'm already guessing that the poor will be more directly affected than the rich and middle class. That suggests a real hit to those in the lower third of the income bracket. We might have to raise taxes on the rich after all...

News for the day:
Turkey bird flu 'is deadly strain' CNN - 49 minutes ago
Weak-link Laos gets US funds for bird flu fight
Hong Kong's Tsang outlines huge bird flu response plan; outbreak ' ...
Bird flu drug maker won't share patent Roche the sole manufacturer ... hmm Roche says no to sharing, how long before somebody's shoe steps on them?

Bird Fl

I've become really interested in this whole pandemic thing lately, probably because I remember other bird flu epidemics. I remember my mother and I having the "Hong-Kong flu" back in the sixties. I recall discussions of the impact of the 1918 pandemic. My great-aunt Annastasia Curtin died as a result of it in Buffalo NY, as did many poor irish. According to the stories it left many, many orphans in its wake. I was trying to think why. It seems like young adults would have been healthier, so why so many orphans. But check out the link below on the 1918 pandemic and you'll find mention that many working age adults died from it, more so than the old and young.

Recent stories in the NY Times indicate that bird infections have spread to Romania and Turkey. Which has led to the EU banning poultry imports from Turkey. I wonder if that includes Turkeys from Turkey? It seems rather futile, given that wild birds are winging their way blithely over borders.

One thing that has been playing in my mind are the alternative futures impact that a pandemic can hold. Preparations for a real pandemic are of course foremost on people and politicians minds, but its interesting to consider the not so invisible hand of the grim reaper. As I write in the coming stories, I'll be speculate as a futurist and as a public policy analyst on what could happen depending on the demographics of the disease profile.

Some other articles include:

The 1918 Influenza Pandemic
Bird flu virus: What you need to know
Scientists warn of possibility of drug-resistant avian flu
Colombia Finds First Cases of Bird Flu
Bird flu ‘doesn’t apply for a visa to go travel’

Visiting stone circles in Ireland