The CDC plans to quarantine cities - a Hallmark moment?
Some may think my blog and the associated thread at PFI about New York City during a pandemic may be a bit over the top. Discussions of people trying to flee in panic when the military imposes a quarantine. I mean, really. Someone's watched Escape from New York one too many times.
Of course there is an Executive Order signed by the current resident of the White House giving him the power to do this. And he did indicate back in 2005 that he thought it would be a good idea. Bush Pushes for Military to Quarantine Avian Flu Breakout.
But is this really being planned? If so, wouldn't the CDC be involved? Where to go to answer these questions? The Hallmark Channel of course! Turns out they have a 2 part movie called "Pandemic" coming out on May 26 and 27. The premise is that a virus, with symptoms very similar to H5N1, is brought to Los Angeles by a passenger on an international flight. You can see a preview if you go here. If you don't mind plot spoilers, you can read a synopsis here.
Here's an excerpt from the synopsis that caught my eye:
At City Hall, Mayor Dellasandro addresses a crowd. He assures the public that things are being
handled and their health is the greatest priority. Looting is seen in the city. He orders all schools
and public shops closed. The worst projected scenario is that they could lose up to half a million
people right here in Los Angeles before it blows over, and Kayla says they need to quarantine the
city.
Whoa. Quarantine Los Angeles? Seems like you'd need more than a few guys with automatic weapons and Hazmat suits (from the preview) to accomplish this.
But wait. Wasn't Hollywood supposed to be getting advice from the CDC so that their shows were realistic? Well, it turns out that the writers of "Pandemic", Bryce and Jackie Zabel did get advice from the CDC.
INTERVIEWER:Your script also suggests that, in a pandemic situation, there will be
problems that the medical community can’t address. There could be people breaking
quarantines. There could be people hoarding drugs, food, water and other supplies.
There could be outbreaks of crime. There would be chaos.
BRYCE ZABEL: “It’s reasonable to assume such things could happen. Our CDC
adviser told us that they had done a model test, where they pretended to quarantine
Denver. The thing is, when you do those models, you’re getting your first responders to
practice what they would do. But what about the political paranoids who don’t want to
respect the quarantine? What about people who feel they’re entitled and they break out of
your quarantine and the world be damned? There are going to be many different places
where the sieve can leak. That’s why I hope that if we do have a pandemic here, as many
cool heads will prevail as possible. Otherwise, it could be even nastier than it has to be.”
Say what?! The CDC did a practice model to pretend to quarantine Denver? And the CDC advisor told the Zabels that one of the big problems would be "political paranoids" who don't respect the quarantine? Could this be right?
Without much hope that I'd find anything, I searched the CDC site for "Denver", "Quarantine" and "Pandemic". To my surprise, I found that in May 20-23, 2000, local, state, and federal officials participated in Operation Topoff. This practice exercise used an outbreak of plague to test their plans for handling a bioterrorist or pandemic flu outbreak.
The process of isolating plague patients until they are no longer contagious and identifying
close contacts is typically straightforward. Isolation, however, was not possible during this
exercise. The hospitals had too many patients and worried-well persons and too few
health-care workers and empty rooms to permit isolation of pneumonic plague patients.
Case reporting was delayed, and there were too few trained public health workers to
conduct interviews and locate contacts in a timely manner. As a result, an executive order
was issued quarantining all persons in metropolitan Denver in their homes. With infection
control in the general population supposedly managed by the order, we could turn our
attention to securing additional supplies, staff, beds, and equipment for the hospitals.
However, quarantining two million persons is not simple. Essential workers must be
identified, be given prophylaxis and protective barriers, and be permitted to do their jobs.
Other members of the community can stay in their homes only a few days before they
need fresh supplies of food. Therefore, a one-time, blanket quarantine order is unlikely to
be successful and cannot be enforced unless these and many other issues are
addressed. The hospitals were quite demanding in their requests for reinforcements, and
we made great efforts to assist them. However, by day three of the exercise it became
clear that unless controlling the spread of the disease and triage and treatment of ill
persons in hospitals receive equal effort, the demand for health-care services will not
diminish. This was the single most important lesson we learned by participating in the
exercise.
The paper I cite above, written by Richard Horton and Jane Norton of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, is pretty reasonable. They realise that any city quarantine is not likely to work unless issues like food are dealt with. However, the CDC apparently learned nothing from this exercise. They have done nothing to assure the food supply of cities like New York, Los Angeles and Denver. Instead, they are apparently directing Hollywood to portray stockpiling as hoarding and characterising people who wish to flee a megacity descending into chaos as "political paranoids".
If you read the synopsis, you'll see the Hallmark show ends the way you'd expect a Hallmark show to end. But given the failure of the CDC to learn the appropriate lessons from Operation Topoff, I don't think a real pandemic is going to have a lot of Hallmark moments.
Monday, May 14, 2007