Swine flu? What it means for IT professionals

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Swine Flu is not Bird Flu

Our company's plan for bird flu is *wildly* different than for this one. We used the 1918 Spanish Flu as our bird flu model, which has a 1% fatality rate for healthy 20-40 year olds.

If something like that were to hit we simply cease operations. End of story. With a 1% fatality rate 1-2 people in our company are guaranteed to die. Possibly not an employee, but an employee spouse, or relative.

Shutting down and waiting a week for the outbreak to die down is the only moral solution. That's always assuming the civil authorities didn't do something like Mexico did and tell everyone to stay home. Frankly, for something with even moderate lethality that's about the only viable solution.

This swine flu, while it can be deadly, does not appear to approach the leathality of the 1918 flu. Yes a lot of people in Mexico have died, and that is a tragedy. But if this swine flue were as deadly as bird/Spanish flu is supposed to be only 2,000 people or so could have gotten sick. Pardon me for being a cynic but I suspect the actual number of cases are *far* higher, especially if this flu is as transmissible as it appears to be.

I think it's a little too early to be pulling a Chicken Little maneuver just yet.

Posted by: wolf_z   Posted on: 04/29/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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