http://newfluwiki2.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2356#92150

Good doctor, I’m simply Mr. Gupta.

http://files.howtolivewiki.com/TIDES_PACKET/TIDES_BOARDS_V2_low_resolution.pdf

This is a roughly 40 page document I did for the http://STAR-TIDES.net project – a sort of distributed thinktank on infrastructure issues as they pertain to emergencies and sustainable development, mostly operated by National Defense University. It gives a pretty good overview of some important models for thinking through critical infrastructure management.

One model I want to focus attention on is the Three Levels Of Response model: Household, Town and Nation. Things like the redistribution of lifestock to cities before a crisis gets so bad it is impossible require full commitment from the Government. You need something akin to a compulsory purchase order for the cattle, and probably troops to transport them. Same for the farmland that you park the beasts on at the other end. Plus you need a university department with a big GIS to crunch the numbers on where the cows are, where the fodder is, and where the people are.

This is a big undertaking. It’s a huge undertaking, and that’s just in the planning.

It is the kind of thing that you do because you have no choice if you do not want your cities to starve themselves into anarchy.

I am entirely unconvinced that anybody in government really has their heads wrapped around this. I think that ACT-UP style activism may be required before people will actually do what it takes to give the population as a whole a fighting chance in a CFR50 / CAR50 type scenario.

ACT-UP fought AIDS. They were dying, they didn’t have much to lose, they went for the publicity-jugular and actually had some successes.

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

http://www.actupny.org/documents/CDdocuments/CDindex.html

Government has a lot on its mind. I’m told that pandemic flu preparedness has received a great deal of attention behind the scenes. I’m also entirely doubtful that for all that attention anybody has really comprehended the potential scale of the crisis and the kind of measures required to keep the population alive in those circumstances.

My gut feeling is that heads are wedged a long, long way up asses on pandemic flu, as they were on AIDS in the 1980s. While the profile of the problem is a little different, we do have a model for getting groups like the CDC to change their tack on under-appreciated diseases.

Of all of the measures suggested in the SPRS piece, the simplest and most important is the humidity defense. If the science continues to support it, I think a grass roots campaign to require early closure of buildings which do not have the ability to maintain high interior humidity in a pandemic might be just the kind of leverage point required to start doing what is necessary: getting the bureaucracies to do their damn jobs, rather than circling the wagons and hoping to god that nothing ever happens, which is the fundamental course they are on these days.

ACT-UP got change on AIDS. We all know that individual action is a cushion for a very, very long fall, and that the big measures required to get on top of the pandemic need to be driven by hundreds of millions of dollars of government investment. We need to be defunding futile, pathetic cold war era weapons programs and putting that money into dealing with the pandemic risk.

Getting that kind of action out of the government is going to mean raising hell.