Because I want this to get the widest possible reading, I'm cross-posting this from The Blue Voice to this journal. After I'd written the piece I discovered another site, The Coming Influenza Pandemic, a blog devoted entirely to news and information on this subject.
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WHAT THE HECK IS A PANDEMIC?
Probably everyone else knew this, but I'm just finding out that this has been "Pandemic Flu Awareness Week" in the blogosphere - Oct. 3 to 9, so I'm not quite too late. This is probably the reason for all the recent news coverage on the avian flu. I've certainly become aware, thanks to the daily headlines - "pandemic" is a pretty scary word. So, I had decided I needed to get down to some serious research on the subject. And just about the first thing I found had everything I needed. Everything we all need.
The site is the Flu Wiki. And your first question may be: What the heck is a "wiki?" From the site, their answer:
A Wiki is a form of collaborative web page that allows anyone (including you) to edit any page on the site. Wikis offer collaborative problem-solving, and allow diverse, decentralized participation. The open nature of the wiki format has shown itself able to develop surprisingly effective and sophisticated products, such as the Wikipedia. Whether it will work to fashion new solutions to a complex public health problem remains to be seen. This is in the nature of a grand experiment. We hope you will join us in it.
Please check this out. All I have read indicates that we are as unready for an epidemic of this flu (or, okay, a pandemic) as we were for a hurricane like Katrina. This wiki is full of answers to our questions, scientific information, things you can do.
The purpose of the Flu Wiki is to help local communities prepare for and perhaps cope with a possible influenza pandemic. This is a task previously ceded to local, state and national governmental public health agencies. Our goal is to be:
- a reliable source of information, as neutral as possible,
- about important facts useful for a public health approach to pandemic influenza
- a venue for anticipating the vast range of problems that may arise if a pandemic does occur
- a venue for thinking about implementable solutions to foreseeable problems.
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