The frantic finger pointing and tongue wagging that occurred after Katrina was bad, and not surprising. Somebody didn’t just drop the ball, they crucified it and set it on fire before heaving it into a canyon. Naturally, people are going to want to deflect assign the blame. Still, the speed and ferocity with which the game of hot “responsibility-for-the-colossal-cock-up” potato ensued was enough to make one’s head explode. The head ’sploding was aggravated in light of how the shenanigans even managed, in a lot of ways, to overshadow the suffering of the actual victims.

  And yet…

  And yet, I find myself feeling like the mounting coverage (and barely concealed panic) surrounding a potential bird flu epidemic is somehow worse. If I thought that all of this pre-disaster worry was going to make a difference, I think I’d feel better. If I thought that the scrutiny and the planning and the disdain for the plans were actually going to improve the response to a future outbreak, I’d be a lot more comfortable with the collateral anxiety. As it is, I feel like it won’t. It won’t matter if the semantic differences between “epidemic” and “pandemic” become fodder for dinner time conversation, or if patients start begging their doctors for Tamilfu instead of useless antibiotics. When the virus finally gets virulent enough to spread swiftly, lots of people are going to die, and the blame game will be in full swing before the first mass grave is even filled.

  Being prepared is nice, but panicky, ineffectual preparation often does more harm than good. At least, in the first scenario, we didn’t have to walk around jumping at hurricane-shaped shadows all the time. And they do say that stress weakens your immune system.

spread the panic!

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Ask backflip blinklist BlogBookmark Bloglines BlogMarks Blogsvine BuddyMarks BUMPzee! CiteULike co.mments Connotea del.icio.us

Digg diigo DotNetKicks DropJack dzone Facebook Fark Faves Feed Me Links Friendsite folkd.com Furl Google

Hugg Jamespot Jeqq Kaboodle kirtsy linkaGoGo LinkedIn LinksMarker Ma.gnolia Mister Wong Mixx MySpace MyWeb

Netvouz Newsvine oneview OnlyWire PlugIM Propeller Reddit Rojo Segnalo Shoutwire Simpy Slashdot Sphere

Sphinn Spurl Squidoo StumbleUpon Technorati ThisNext Twitter Webride Windows Live Worlds Movies Yahoo!

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML: 

 If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed or Email Feed.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

More »

Tags: bird flu, blame, disease, epidemic, Hurricane Katrina, infection, pandemic, Panic!, preparation

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 3rd, 2005 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.