13-06-2009, 08:13 AM
It took me quite a while to work my way back to this thread ... I had significant computer problems and had to delay my membership ... and I quite agree that this whole mess can be as replete with misinfo and disinfo as any other ... my apologies if my 'crap detector' was low on batteries at any given moment.
The subject is of interest to me given my background and experience in emergency medical services, tabletop war games, mass casualty incident management and planning, emergency management and its exercises, and related simulation gaming applications.
I wrote two proposals, numerous articles and one white paper in the field. One of the proposals resulted in the development of "Incident Commander" by BreakAway Games. I was also the SME for the design of a "virtual exercise distributed to desktop", designed to help civilians manage the breakout of 'bird flu' in Georgia (USA) funded by DARPA with input from the USDA -- project killed).
The 57-page white paper "Coalescing Effective Community Disaster Response: Simulations and Virtual Communities of Practice" was posted in full for the month of March 2006 at the International Associaton of Emergency Managers website.
The white paper was written immediately post-Katrina after a long-term provocative telephone conversation with a physician who informed me of the importance of a 'cytokine storm' in the outbreak of a human flu pandemic, what it was, how it is treated, why it is so deadly, who it will kill, et alia. When asked -- in a public forum for people in the field about how to prepare for such an outbreak -- about the syndrome and why pharmaceutical firms weren't being asked to develop a potent drug to counteract the massive fluid overload of the lungs in such a 'storm', a leading public health official, a physician, said he'd never heard of the syndrome, and couldn't answer my question(s). So, should you see reports of young healthy people dying in large quantities in ICU's [is that what's happening down under now, Magda?], then you know you have a pandemic on your hands.
Anyway:
This, yesterday, via the LA Times (direct source) and Citizens for Legitimate Government (indirect source):
"Kathleen Sebelius, the new secretary of Health and Human Services, said May 22 that the department would devote nearly $1 billion toward vaccine development and manufacturing. The department has already placed orders with five manufacturers for $650 million worth of antigen and $287 million worth of adjuvant, Schuchat said.
The Department of Defense has also awarded development money and contracts for vaccine."
The subject is of interest to me given my background and experience in emergency medical services, tabletop war games, mass casualty incident management and planning, emergency management and its exercises, and related simulation gaming applications.
I wrote two proposals, numerous articles and one white paper in the field. One of the proposals resulted in the development of "Incident Commander" by BreakAway Games. I was also the SME for the design of a "virtual exercise distributed to desktop", designed to help civilians manage the breakout of 'bird flu' in Georgia (USA) funded by DARPA with input from the USDA -- project killed).
The 57-page white paper "Coalescing Effective Community Disaster Response: Simulations and Virtual Communities of Practice" was posted in full for the month of March 2006 at the International Associaton of Emergency Managers website.
The white paper was written immediately post-Katrina after a long-term provocative telephone conversation with a physician who informed me of the importance of a 'cytokine storm' in the outbreak of a human flu pandemic, what it was, how it is treated, why it is so deadly, who it will kill, et alia. When asked -- in a public forum for people in the field about how to prepare for such an outbreak -- about the syndrome and why pharmaceutical firms weren't being asked to develop a potent drug to counteract the massive fluid overload of the lungs in such a 'storm', a leading public health official, a physician, said he'd never heard of the syndrome, and couldn't answer my question(s). So, should you see reports of young healthy people dying in large quantities in ICU's [is that what's happening down under now, Magda?], then you know you have a pandemic on your hands.
Anyway:
This, yesterday, via the LA Times (direct source) and Citizens for Legitimate Government (indirect source):
"Kathleen Sebelius, the new secretary of Health and Human Services, said May 22 that the department would devote nearly $1 billion toward vaccine development and manufacturing. The department has already placed orders with five manufacturers for $650 million worth of antigen and $287 million worth of adjuvant, Schuchat said.
The Department of Defense has also awarded development money and contracts for vaccine."
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"