Leavitt: We're overdue for a pandemic
Our belief is that if we were to see person-to-person transmission of this disease – and we have not yet, and we don't – I need to emphasize that – if we were, however – if it happened anywhere, there is risk everywhere. That is our doctrine. If we see it in a remote village in Laos or in Turkey or in Cambodia or in China or wherever, and we can confirm that it is person to person, we are going to begin to activate our National Response Plan in appropriate and aggressive ways.
Question over here.
Q: Maggie Fox with Reuters. Secretary Leavitt, there have been a couple of surveys published recently that show that a large proportion of health care workers would be afraid to come to work if there were a pandemic. Are you doing anything specifically to address that?
LEAVITT: Yes. I will say, first of all, that it won't be just health care workers. If the – if history – if past is prologue, we will see every sector of the economy affected in those ways.
It will be true for police officers. It could well be true for school personnel. It could be true at colleges, anywhere where people begin to in fact accumulate. And that's the kind of planning that needs to be done. It's the reason every business needs a plan. It's why every school needs a plan. It's why every college needs a plan. It's why every news organization needs a plan.
In 1918 many of the major newspapers in our country for extended periods of time were not able to publish – big papers.
It's very possible that if we got into a severe pandemic – and I – what I've outlined today is the most severe we have ever known; it's the worst case – it's very possible that if we had a pandemic disease, it could be substantially less than that, but we prepare for the worst.
But if you have the worst, it's not inconceivable at all that news organizations would be required to help us teach people how to care for others in their homes, because – think about the pandemic surge.
Now, a pandemic generally will roll out in two or three waves of six to eight weeks each. They have a shape that looks like that. I mean, the surge is immediate. It's viral, literally.
The goal of a pandemic planning is not to eliminate or to avoid the pandemic, because that's impossible. It's to reshape the response of the pandemic or to reshape its impact. Instead of looking like that, hopefully it can look like that. And in other words, it can be a shorter peak; more people can get health care, more people can feel the certainty.
But we may well be dependent upon on each other for things like caring at home and how – and using the media for that. So it'll be every part of the community that needs to have a plan.
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