Were there companies that made money off this potential disaster, yes. I’m sure companies are making money off the Haiti Earthquake too. Nothing any of us can do about that.

Was the potential danger from H1N1 real? Absolutely. It was up to the virus itself on whether it would turn deadly or not. Even though it didn’t turn deadly, being prepared for it wasn’t wrong.

I am a disaster planning consultant, so I err on the side of being prepared rather than waiting to see what’s going to happen. If we wait too long, we will have no defenses. In April/May, the pandemic timebomb started ticking…..no one knew how big the explosion would be. It could have been a dud or it could have been nuclear. Fortunately, it was a dud, but that doesn’t mean we were wrong to be prepared.

And of course the drug companies are going to be first on the scene when a pandemic hits. That is only natural. It is their business, so not a big deal in my mind.

If you study past pandemics, you know that the first wave could be a dud and the second wave could become very deadly, just as happend in 1918 when 40-50 Million people died, most in 3 months. Being prepared with vaccine and anti-virals, masks and gloves, hand sanitizer, etc. is still required.

Keep getting prepared. There’s still a pandemic on the horizon.

Harlan Dolgin
Director of Continuity Services
Bick Group
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.