In today’s Washington Post, Business Section page one is a pretty decent article about how Fairfax County VA is planning for a possible pandemic.
It all seemed fine until I got to theg raphic, where they are showing in a mild, mderate and sever case, how many people could be sick, need hospitalization, and could die.
They are using about 1 million as the population of the county. They say in a worst case scanario, 30% of the population could get sick and 694 die.
I want to be sure I am getting this — their WORST CASE scenario is a .25% CFR?
To be fair, that is the same rate as their MILD scanrio, I think — mild means only 20% of the population is infected, and “only” 462 deaths — again, it seems the CFR for that case is also around one quarter of one percent.
Sarge, I understand you have been seeing planning estimates of around .44% and that number has been worrisome to you — I also thought I had read somehere that jurisdictions had been told to increase the CFR for planning purposes to 1 or 2 %. Has ANYYONE been seeing these estimates of .25%?
Am I wrong, or is that what just plain old regular flu kills? I’m not minimizing seasonal flu, and I know it can be quite deadly. But I was under the assumption that people were trying to make plans for something a bit more severe than seasonal flu. I’m not expecting Fairfax County VA to suddenly start trotting out plans for a 25% CFR or anything like that — I know such plans would take a long time coming and even longer to see the light of public knowledge — but it seems given the current H5N1 fatality levels, something higher than .25 % would be in order.
Oh, here’s the link to the graphic
One more thing, for what it is worth — KUDOS to Fairfax County Virginia, in my book. I just checked out their pandemic flu web site and briefly skimmed their FAQs and they are way ahead of the curve, compared to most other locations. (Makes me wish I still lived and worked there, instead of on the other side of DC in Prince George’s County, which has NOTHING as of yet to speak beyond “Wash yer hands, cover yer mouth when you cough.”
Here is a link to Fairfax County’s web site:
OK, I read part of the Fairfax County Pandemic Plan and have answered my own question. They were using the CDC estimates of nationwide 90 million infected and either 200,00 die (moderate pandemic wit CFR of about .25%) or 2,000,000 die (severe pandemic with 2.5% CFR) — the %ages here are my own stimates as I am not good at math — just rounding/estimating.
Anyhow, Fairfax County seems to have chosen to use the “moderate” pandemic for its modeling… moderate being .25% of those infected will die. Their only variable in the plan seems to be whether 20% or 30% of the population will contract this novel influenza, the rest being protected by…. masks I guess? Why wouldn’t the other 70 to 80% also contract the disease?
(“Why wouldn’t the other 70 to 80% also contract the disease?” Wishful thinking? Ow!)
The Congressional Budget Office macroeconomic report gives the 1918–1919 pandemic estimates as high as 11% fatality rate in those stricken. (Can’t remember if it said that % back in Dec; it has been revised this summer but I’m not sure in what way) http://tinyurl.com/kxatc
We have three times the ammount of people on the planet now, and thousands of people travelling in airplanes at any given time; very unlike 1918, for sundry reasons. Can make arguments why we’d have a worse time in a global H5N1 pandemic than they did back in 1918.
It doesn’t help that the feds “worst case” scenario also would be what most of us consider “best case” - 2mil dead in the US (assuming 30% infected and 2% CFR). So if Fairfax is listening to the Feds’ “worse case” it’s no wonder their assumptions are even lower. Nobody seems to want to admit that actual CFR may be much, much higher. Yes, I know the theory that is will lower as it becomes more contagious, but we don’t know that for sure. Even if it does, it has a long way to go from 50% mortality to 2%. And they are doing the public a great dis-service by using such low figures. If you look at those numbers, you calculate your personal odds and think - “that’s not so bad.” There is not enough stress on the fact that currently 50% of the people die. Get that message across and you’ll se a whole lot more people prepping.
The 30% attack rate is probably an approximation of the 34% from the Ferguson study Strategies for mitigating pandemic (which is the one that everyone uses, scary!) modelling spread in the US and UK where the results that they got was that if R0=2, about 68% of people would be infected (cumulative), of whom half will be symptomatic or at least be ‘known’ as symptomatic.
How accurate these numbers are is anybody’s guess. I’m certainly not qualified to comment. But I will make one point. In the 37 page supplementary information file, if you search the word ‘assume’ you get 81 results.
Red Cross is expecting it could be as bad as 50% CAR and 20% CFR or higher, based on documents I have seen.
What kind of documents is that OnandAnon? Have not seen that
I thought it was a 30% per wave. Each time a wave passed through the city or area, 30% would get sick and 2–8% or so would die depending if it was a the mild wave or severe wave. I suppose a certain percent of the population would never get it. Then once most people developed at least some antibodies to the disease, also it would loose it’s severity, the pandemic would be over. That’s how I understood it, but correct me if I’m wron.
that should say correct me if I’m wrong.
OnandAnon – at 21:22
I would also like to see the document that says 20% or higher CFR from the Red Cross. Got a link?
With respect, I have this suspicion that for a public servant to predict 20–30 percent CFR’s would be simply regarded as alarmist and result in being fired.
To put it another way, the possibility of a “civilisation buster” is simply too awful for people to even contemplate.
anonymous
“civilization buster”…I don’t think we could be that unlucky.
and your right about the not want to contemplate part!!
Docs not publicly posted sorry
anonymous — I’m not expecting any county or local government to make public plans for a pandemic with a 20 to 30% CFR.
I would like to see plans estimating for a Worst Case scenario of other than .25%
How about .44% How about 1% CFR? How about 2.5% for a WORST CASE scenario?
It would be at the higher rates, say 1 to 2%, that people would see that the health care issues will be the least of our problems.
At .25% CFR a pandemic is a very big health care issue. However, in my opinion, people will be willing to go out to work and take their chances.
At 2.5% CFR a pandemic will be beyond a health care issue. is a severe economic issue — people WILL NOT want to go to work. Local authosities willl want to close whatever borders they can, leading to the cascading issues of food and other supplies not being transported.
In my opinion, people in Fairfax Country VA when reading the news of this plan, should be told “This is a plan for a mild pandemic,” not “This is a plan for a Worst Case Scenario.” (Which is what was implied though not specifically stated in the article ins the Washington Post.)
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