Posted on 07/17/2007 4:58:30 PM PDT by blam
Schneier on pandemic planning: Why bother?
By Robert L. Mitchell on Tue, 07/17/2007 - 12:02pm
Security expert Bruce Schneier has special advice for businesses thinking about pandemic planning: Don’t bother.
In a Computerworld story this week, Schneier, chief technology officer at BT Counterpane in Mountain View, Calif. stated that if a pandemic hits the scope of the disaster would be so large that contingency planning by businesses would be useless. The comments were made in the context of a Computerworld story that focused on the results of a study from Ipsos showing that while the risk of pandemic remains, public concern has faded.
Schneier's is using what I would call the nuclear war argument for doing nothing. If there’s a nuclear war nothing will be left anyway, so why waste your time stockpiling food or building fallout shelters? It's entirely out of your control. It's someone else's responsibility. Don't worry about it.
I’m not sure pandemic really falls into the same category. Yes, a global outbreak of bird flu could be catastrophic. Yes, the government would need to spearhead a national response. And anyone reading the scary scenarios set out by public health expert Dr. Michael T. Osterholm in this interview might feel overwhelmed. But a pandemic is likely to play itself out in such a way that companies that prepare come out ahead – and possibly ensure their own survival.
Doing something is better than doing nothing.
Health experts have stated that during a pandemic as much as 40% of the workforce could be out for a period of weeks at a time (for an in-depth look at the issues, see my story, Heads in the Sand: IT isn’t ready for the Bird Flu). That's exactly the problem with planning at the individual business level, says Schneier. “If everyone loses 40% of their workforce it’s a different economy. The world is different. You cannot prepare for the world is different and you’re wasting your time if you try,” Schneier said. Such planning can only be done by governments, not businesses, he says. "That kind of world altering disaster you can’t prepare for and you shouldn’t.”
That said, Schneier isn’t even optimistic that government will be up to the job. “If you’re a politician and you spend money on preparation and nothing happens you’ve wasted your money. As a politician you are much more savvy doing something after the fact.” But that doesn’t mean corporations can step in. “There’s a lot of stuff in play here. But corporations simply can’t deal with the threat. It’s not their threat,” he says.
Not so, counters Michael Rasmussen, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc. who covers governance, risk and compliance research. “There are a lot of things I would agree with Bruce on – this is NOT one of them,” he says. He wouldn’t rely on government do all the planning either, but he thinks there’s plenty that business can do to prepare. “We see many of our clients preparing for a pandemic, as much because they recognize the threat of a disruption caused by absenteeism from any source, not just disease. To that extent, concern about a pandemic has awoken the corporate community to the more generalized risk of people-impacting events that can disrupt business operations.”
A pandemic is likely to occur in waves and affect different regions at different times. At any given time one facility may be in the middle of an outbreak, another may be recovering while a third could be unaffected. Good planning can help businesses adjust resources as needed. Furthermore, no one knows what a pandemic will look like. It doesn’t have to be a doomsday scenario. What if just 10% of employees are out during a pandemic? You still need a plan.
The biggest problem with many existing disaster plans is that they are good at responding to structural disasters but not very good at the extended “labor strike” scenario, where a significant percentage of employees suddenly can’t - or won’t - show up for work. “We see many of our clients preparing for a pandemic, as much because they recognize the threat of a disruption caused by absenteeism from any source, not just disease,” says Steven J. Ross, Firm Director at Audit and Enterprise Risk Services/Security & Privacy Services at Deloitte & Touche.
As an aside, I asked Ross about this week's story. He disagreed with the premise this week’s story that interest in planning for a bird flu outbreak is waning.
While that may be true with the general public, as reflected in the Ipsos poll cited in our story, he says Deloitte’s own survey of enterprises shows that many corporations are in fact paying attention. “The research performed by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions shows the opposite result: There is a greater understanding of the risk of a pandemic currently (as of the end of 2006) than the year before and a considerably greater number of companies have developed plans for dealing with one.”
But even assuming the worst case scenario, Rasmussen thinks businesses with a plan will come out ahead. “To not prepare means the organization shuts down and the organizations really resembles anarchy. Even if society should be in a state of anarchy itself and government is the sole respondent there needs to be plans in place for bringing the business back as society stabilizes.”
BF Ping.
They might if they were operated by robots. But they're operated by people, with families and friends and personal lives outside the "business with a plan".
In any kind of disaster, those personal ties, complications, and responsibilities will *vastly* outweigh any conceivable "need" of a business entity.
Businesses will recover (or not) in direct proportion to the recovery of their employees and the 10,000 other variables out of the purview or control of the business.
No need for "a plan" unless it emphasizes the private welfare and recovery of the employees.
And that would be a **huge** "waste of money". /sarc
There are several extremely effective things that businesses can do to both protect themselves and their customers.
It has been proven that the vast majority of pulmonary contagious diseases, like colds and flus, are *not* spread by coughing and sneezing, but by hand contamination. Typically, if people are out in public during a flu epidemic, if they use hand sanitizer or wash their hands 6 times a day, they will reduce their chances of being infected by 60% or more.
1) Therefore retail businesses should not only encourage all employees to use hand sanitizer and wash their hands on a regular basis during the day, but provide large amounts of hand sanitizer to the public at their store entrance.
2) Retail and office businesses should also provide inexpensive dust masks to employees and customers during an outbreak. Importantly, these masks do not need to stop viruses, they only need to stop the large water droplets caused by coughing and sneezing that *contain* viruses, either being inhaled or being expelled by ill employees who are not yet showing symptoms. If everyone is wearing them and have sanitized their hands, the chances of infection become very small.
3) Business restrooms should be thoroughly sanitized on a daily basis, and if diarrhea or vomiting is a common symptom, a bottle of bleach should be available for them to add a cup full to the toilet *prior* to flushing, to strongly reduce spray contamination when the toilet it flushed. An inexpensive UV light fan (not passive) air cleaner in restrooms would also be a good idea.
4) When the symptoms of avian flu become commonly known, employees that show symptoms should be sent home immediately as a matter of policy. Their work area should them be sanitized to include their desktop, telephone, commonly handled objects and wastebasket. Sick employees should be contacted on a regular basis, as the mortality for avian flu is extremely high, and replacements will be needed.
5) Preparations should be made for telecommuting as much as possible. Duty contingency plans should also be made for each employee, so that as soon as one employee is entered onto the sick list, their work is automatically distributed to non-sick employees. Managers should have clearly written work schedules and calendars prepared, which should be reviewed by others prior to their being incapacitated.
6) Businesses can also put temporary employment services and contract employees on retainer to fill critical functions when permanent employees are unavailable.
7) When vaccines are available, the company should verify that all employees have been vaccinated.
8) Reserves of critical production materials and spare parts should be stockpiled. Production should be increased so that retailers also have abundant stores.
9) Liquidity should be increased, on the assumption of an economic downturn during and after the epidemic. Unions should also build up their funds. A review of the company health care plan should be made.
10) Coordination should be made with local, State and national governments to determine what their contingency plans are, and how their will affect the company.
Ping...(Thanks, blam!)
All this pandemic panic mongering is like untying the knots on Coue’s string.
When your’re sick, stay home.
Cross train your employees so that, when practical, every employee can do at least one other employee's job. (The added benefit is that you might find some misdirected talent).
What is not mentioned is that the more individuals are prepared, the less basic preparation (for any disaster scenario) falls in the hands of government and industry.
Something as innane as building a small 'pantry' of nonperishable but frequently used items, rotating your stock of canned and other goods, will take a tremendous strain off of food and other distribution networks in the event of suppply interruptions. Even an extra 30 days worth of the basics, things you would normally use, could make a significant difference on the demand on distribution networks not operating at full capacity. Rationed, a 30 day supply can last twice as long or more, so the effect of having those individual inventories could free up considerable resources (human and otherwise) for other needs.
With the Congress and MSM cheerleading for invaders of most any stripe and especially for the terrorist factions in the world, having the groundwork laid to shift to a disaster (or war) footing at home might not be a bad idea.
Preparation precludes panic. Well laid contingency plans can mitigate a disaster.
Immediate fear is energizing, prolonged fear is enervating.
Agreed.
But if 'fear' is prolonged, there are some serious holes in your contingency plan.
Part of the reason for having one is to reduce 'fear'.
We’ll we still get payed?
If there is a real pandemic, with a death rate of anything over 5%, you can expect that these businesses will not need to worry about the contingency plans. That is because they will be shut down by the public health agencies. In the largest pandemic in history, the 1918 Influenza outbreak killed 20 - 40 million and caused schools, theaters, military units, grocery stores, and churches to be closed, depending on where you were. Businesses were severely restricted to prevent too many people from being in the same air space. The duty and responsibility of going to work and hoping to earn a paycheck will be way down everyone’s priority list at a time like this. Truckers will refuse to even make deliveries because of the danger of transferring the disease from town to town. I am not just making this stuff up, most of these events actually took place during the last major pandemic. It would be so much worse now, because of the preponderance of Katrina like folks in the world.
To tell the truth, the businesses contingency plans should be more on the lines of... What steps do we take to get running again after this thing is over?
I would be prepared to not be paid.
As long as everyone keeps announcing that one is imminent or inevitable the fear is reinvoked each time.
Where are the assurances that would need to accompany any progress being made on response strategies?
Epidemics are neither fair nor evenly distributed. The only noted strong pattern in influenza epidemics is that they tend to come in two major waves, over the course of a 3-18 month window. In a pandemic, entire cities may only get a limited number of infections, but other cities may be devastated.
Typically, influenza vaccinations were given to the very old, very young and sick. But this has been changed for the Avian flu to an older pattern: emphasis on school-age children who are the greatest human vectors, and to outbreak areas.
However, our vaccine production capability is limited, so that once we have the actual threat virus, within six months we will only be able to produce some 30 million vaccinations.
Another important variable are animal vectors. The US has a great advantage in having most of our animal production in low population rural areas; however, the Avian flu is also noteworthy in that it crosses many species, including canine, feline, and some varieties of fish. I have not seen any information about it affecting horses, cattle and sheep, however.
The biggest advantages the US has are a high public awareness of personal hygiene and a superb communications system. And because of 9-11 and Katrina, our federal and State authorities are far more prepared to deal with mass disasters than ever before.
Even local governments can set up inexpensive phone banks to automatically contact all residences with information, to solicit information, and to maximize emergency services.
Using an analogy of the epidemic being like a wildfire, individual, local, State and federal efforts can have a multiplying effect to create “fire breaks” that might strongly limit the spread of the disease.
Other factors, as they become known and disseminated, will also help in limiting the effects, such as the incubation period of the disease, who is most at risk, and what are the most effective measures to combat the disease.
New antiviral agents will also be introduced, as well as other methods to limit the severity of the disease, such as cytokine storm inhibitors, substances that prevent cell adhesion by the virus, and substances that inhibit virus reproduction slowing down the course of the disease.
So while the potential threat is extreme, active planning is essential both to remain functional as long as possible, to recover as quickly as possible, to have surplus materials and cash on hand, and reducing exposure and damage as much as possible.
In our pantries. I'm not counting on much else.
There is no way to measure the planning progress short of the event or something similar.
The remediation of Y2K (before the event) caused it to be a non-event, and anything but the most brutal diseases will appear the same, if the proper planning has been done and steps implemented.
That has practical limits, to be sure, who knows how many millions (billions) of dollars in supplies moldered, fell prey to vermin and scavengers in fallout shelters during the cold war and afterwards. Few griped about that because somehow there was a more definable and evil appearing imminent threat, even though no nuclear exchange ever happened.
It is ironic that today, we place incredible faith in government and the health-care industry and are, quite arguably, less indivudually ready for disaster than people were decades ago.
To continue your irony, we now are witness to tons of ice kept frozen since Katrina’s initial response efforts melting into the sewers along with so many other government “good intentions.”
That way, the supplies could be better tailored to the needs of the individual, their climate, and terrain than some one size fits all deal. Not only that, it would eliminate a lot of waste and spoilage if people had their own.
I know, there are too many low-lifes and no-loads to make that happen. Even if they were issued supplies, they'd be stolen, trashed, sold for whatever in some quarters, and those are often the ones who demand the government take care of them.
Most people couldn't financially stand more than a few weeks out of work without pay. Mortgages, rent, car payments, taxes, etc., come due as well as ongoing expenses. The slowdowns in business would snowball.
People would get desperate for money, fast. A pandemic would cause economic chaos in today's supply-on-demand economy. Today's economic structure is much different from the 1918 epidemic when personal debt was not so high and people were much more self-sufficient and many lived on farms.
It would be an economic and personal disaster for the country and personally for many.
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