If Canada is worried then we should be worried in USA.

indigo girl · Aug 19, 2009

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/160981.php

Good article, oramar. If Hebert is correct, and I think that he is, we are in for a wild ride very soon. Our healthcare facilities and the public are not ready for this.

"We need to act now to overcome these access and delivery problems," wrote Hébert and colleagues.
"No immunization program is 100 per cent effective. If a sufficient number of cases are not prevented, we can expect a large number of young critically ill patients filling all tertiary level intensive care beds," they warned, adding that although most infections have been mild so far, unlike most seasonal flu strains, in more serious cases the new 2009 pandemic H1N1 virus seems to invade the lower respiratory system more aggressively, causing more severe illness.
"The world's experience so far tells us that serious illness associated with this virus often manifests as acute lung injury resulting in overwhelming hypoxemia," they wrote.
Hébert and colleagues suggest Canada needs national leadership to make sure vaccines, expertise and equipment reaches everyone that needs them. New laws may be needed to give people power to act quickly.
Each country should have a "visible independent health care czar, with executive powers across all jurisdictions and who is ultimately accountable to the highest office," they added.
After that, the priority is local leadership, including "champions" to coordinate rapid response.
They also pointed out that a second wave is likely to hit the northern hemisphere this fall if the H1N1 virus follows the same pattern as it has in the southern hemisphere. This would overwhelm our resources; for example in most areas there are still no plans on how to get the correctly trained health professionals in place to "deliver technologies to help patients survive".
Hébert and colleagues wrote "this is not a time for complacency", and urged that health czars and other national leaders call an immediate summit and bring together officials from public health, critical care, first response, and other health care areas, as well as decision makers, community planners and members of the public to:
"Communicate next steps and to ensure that actions taken by leaders will work at the ground level".
One of the ideas that health czars need to get across to the public is that everyone has a responsibility in tackling the pandemic, it is not just a top down approach, but also a bottom up approach that is needed.
An example of the bottom up approach that Hébert and colleagues referred was one being promoted in the UK called the "flu buddy" system, where individuals partner with one another and take responsibility to check each other's health status regularly.

oramar · Aug 19, 2009

People a lot smarter than me have gone on record as saying we got a capacity problem.