Weakest Link
(Death • Monday Indicators)
Respected Mexican medical researchers are suggesting that the pandemic flu virus infecting so many, there and here, isn’t as deadly as, say, the Spanish Flu virus of 1918, and also may not be as easily spread from person to person as originally feared.
That’s very, very good news.
Because if The Other White Meat Flu virus were any more virulent, it could’ve torn us all up by now. And really, it still can.
That’s due in part to a very weak link in our public health system.
In order to figure out whether someone in an 11-county region around Houston has The Other White Meat Flu, that person has to provide a sample for testing at a single City of Houston lab, part of what the Centers for Disease Control calls the National Response Network.
Only I’m thinking they might want to rename it the National Slow Response Network, because, at least in the Houston region but quite possibly nationwide, it has become a major drag on efforts to slow the spread of this bad germ.
A high-ranking local health official told me yesterday morning that samples from about 1,000 sick Texans in and around Houston were piled up at the lab waiting for the tests to be run. I’m not criticizing the lab personnel, because I know for sure I wouldn’t want them to rush my test and run the risk of making a mistake.
But it’s pretty clear that in times of pandemic outbreak, you need more than one National Response Network lab for every 6 million people. And somebody at the top of the CDC probably should’ve put his or her thinking cap on and recognized that fact quite some time ago.
Because here’s the possible resulting scenario:
Your boy is sitting in his classroom with 20 other kids, one of whom has come to school sneezing and dripping like crazy. His parents have meager jobs and lousy bosses and can’t miss work for fear of being fired and, like a lot of parents I see, they dump their semi-sick kid off at school and hope real hard he gets over it. Only this time he doesn’t, and instead after a couple of days of infecting the classroom, he runs a fever and the school nurse orders the parents to come in and take care of him.
The doctor tests him positive for Type A flu and follows the pandemic instructions for getting a sample off to the Houston lab. It becomes #1,001 in the line of local tests that need to be run.
Four other kids sitting closest to the first kid who got sick in the classroom get sick. Parents of two of them notice, and keep them home. Parents of the other two don’t. In a day, they are coughing and sneezing. Their parents keep them home the following day, but they’ve already infected three other kids sitting near them.
After two or three days, all four have tested out positive for Type A flu, and their samples are put in the line at the Houston lab. What was #1,001 now is #825, but it’s still going to be at least several days – maybe a week – before the initial sick kid’s sample is tested.
When that happens, the Houston lab tech won’t be able to identify the flu subtype with which the kid is infected. That means almost certainly the kid has the pandemic, but they’ll send the sample on to the CDC for confirmation.
At that point, the Houston lab will notify the county health department that the kid is a “highly probable,” and the health department will notify the school that they recommend it shut down for a week or two.
Remember, though, that hasn’t happened yet. There are still five, six, seven days to go before that first test from your kid’s school makes it into the lab.
Meanwhile, the magic of multiplication has occurred. By the time they close down your kid’s school, his entire class has the germ, and they spread it through a lot of the rest of the school at lunchtime in the cafeteria, and at recess.
Local health officials take their “guidance,” which is to say, marching orders, from the CDC. The CDC says you can shut down a school if one of the students there flunks the lab test in Houston – but not before.
No one driving the bus seems to notice that the lab traffic is backed up for a couple of miles, and there’s only two people working the toll booth. You know what I mean?
In today’s pandemic, that line of untested lab samples guarantees a lot more of us are going to catch this swell flu. But if the virus were more bad-ass, or if some other type of dangerous biological infection were introduced into the population, this lab bottleneck could be responsible for a whole buttload of death.
→ B.Dunn, May 02, 2009, 07 12 am
It's Going To Be That Kind Of Week
(Monday Indicators • Economy)
Back to the ’50s – Government data coming out later this week probably will show U.S. consumer prices dropped on an annual basis for the first time since 1955, while home builders started fewer houses than any year before 1959, when people began tracking such things. – Bloomberg.com
More time, less $ – From coffee shops to machine shops, employers are trying to mitigate the effects of the downturn by reducing employees’ hours or overtime…For those who have had their hours sliced, however, there are adjustments. In Tacoma, Wash., waitress Kristen Olson has seen her hours at a local coffee shop cut from 35 hours a week to 20. Next month, she plans to move in with a roommate since she can’t afford rent by herself. And, she says, she either “sticks to happy hours” for dinner or makes a big pot of spaghetti that will last the week. – Christian Science Monitor
Is Beer Essential? Possible new Texas law on its way through the Austin Sausage Factory: “If an abnormal disruption of the market for any consumer good or service occurs in an area, a merchant or wholesaler may not sell or offer for sale an essential consumer good or service in the area for a price that is unconscionably excessive.” – 81st Texas Legislature
→ B.Dunn, Feb 16, 2009, 05 14 am
