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Letter Re: Influenza Exercise Shows the Potential for Major Infrastructure Disruptions
Jim:
I thought you and your readers might be interested in this flu pandemic exercise
recently carried out by financial services firms. An
article in Computerworld describes the scenario: "If a pandemic
strikes the U.S., it will kill about 1.7 million people, hospitalize 9 million,
exhaust antiviral medications
and reduce basic food supplies...", and, "Among the other things
that may happen in an actual pandemic are school closings, as well as blackouts
or brownouts in major metro areas because of degraded service as a result
of absenteeism. Internet service throughput could be reduced by 50% due to
congestion, and Web
browsing timeouts would become common. Airlines would cut schedules, and garbage
would pile up on streets."
The article's fairly standard mainstream media flu pandemic coverage, the kind
I'm sure we've all seen before. What makes this really interesting is that
the scenario information used for the exercise has been posted
online. It's somewhat focused on the financial sector, but there's
a lot of good general information about what might happen when a major flu
pandemic strikes. - Chris in Utah
