What Happened to the Bird Flu Threat to Your Business?

There should be no disillusionment, at some point, be it in months or in a decade, after more ‘false starts’ and lulls, the virus will successfully mutate to an infectious type at a place and time when effective containment is not forthcoming. If the strain is infectious enough and there are enough transient people in the vicinity to harbour it, the ingredients will be present and a global pandemic event will take place.

Fortunately the worst case scenario is the least most likely to transpire. That is for the virus to mutate into a highly contagious strain, and for it to kill over 50% of people it infects (as is the case with the current bird-to-human only cases). The consequences of this would be catastrophic and the survivors would have to get used to a very different world. Ironically it is this doomsday approach which has prevented many businesses from taking any preventative steps whatsoever to prepare themselves. What's the point?

In fact the most likely scenario is not doomsday at all, there is definitely a point to preparing, the most likely scenario will be far less devastating.

Whilst it is true that virtually every person on the planet will at some point contract the pandemic flu, some 50% of those infected will not even know they have it, 40% will suffer from only mild discomfort (as with the ‘normal’ seasonal influenza), and only a small percentage of the rest who suffer severe discomfort will succumb to it, leading to perhaps at most a 1% to 2% fatality rate. This has been the case for previous pandemics in history such as the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. Additionally, the pandemic medical research and technology race-against-time we are witnessing may lessen those numbers still further.

Whilst even a 1% to 2% fatality rate is still catastrophic it will not fundamentally alter our society. In quantative terms, a company of 1000 people could expect to lose 10 to 20 staff over the 18 month duration of the pandemic, probably less of a loss in number terms than is the normal staff turnover rate. These relatively small numbers however disguise the crippling effects an outbreak would have on business, as plans must be in place to carry operations through weeks or months with a 50% or more personnel absenteeism rate, with even healthy staff off work due to fear, home quarantine and caring for others.

Based on pandemic events throughout history, most experts agree that the next pandemic will last approximately 18 months and come in three distinct waves. Human nature is such that at the commencement of the pandemic, and to a lesser extent on commencement of each subsequent wave, fear and panic will grip society with most isolating themselves and their families from close contact with other members of the public. This ‘over-reaction’ was evidenced in the cities affected by the SARS outbreak of 2003, with many travellers reporting prejudices against them worldwide if it was known they had been in an infected area. As tragic as it was only 895 people died from SARS, far less than most of the other scourges which plague our modern society, medical or otherwise.