the second day
This was another fantastic day. It could not have started off better, as Dr. Julie Gerberding (Director of the CDC) delivered the morning presentation. It was interesting to see her present hours after learning about proposed massive budget cuts again and days after the CDC’s Community Mitigation Guidance. Her presentation focused on the CDC actions on preparedness and the lessons they have learned in the last few years. A major part of her presentation was on the Anthrax attacks in 2001 and the CDC’s response. The numbers she shared were shocking. For example, the CDC in a given month would receive 40-50 phone call about anthrax. From October 10 to November 4 they received 9488 phone calls. It can only begin to imagine all the lessons they learned from this. Nobody expected or had prepared for that many calls. An even more surprising statistic she gave was that there were over 250,000 tests preformed in the US testing for anthrax. Nobody again foresaw the massive surge in testing or the difficulty in producing the reagents for the tests. It was nice to know that the CDC is building the best they can off these experiences. I don’t envy anyone working on pandemic influenza stuff down there. The Federal plan mandates over 1600 items for the CDC to do and their budget keeps being cut. I used to think that the CDC had tons of problems and was not pushing as hard as they could. I now stand corrected, its clear they are pushing as hard as they can and their resources allow. I have a renewed and deepening respect for Dr. Gerberding and all the staff at the CDC now. They are doing amazing things, while making due with dwindling resources. That does not mean I agree with all of their guidance, but now I have a slight understanding of the difficulty it takes to produce them and the value they provide for national discussion, so the ideas can be fully flushed out and refined.
After Dr. Gerberding’s speech there where three panel discussions. They were simply amazing. It was delightful to hear experts in their fields answering questions and commenting on aspects of pandemic planning. There was a panel on human resources and pandemic preparedness, the role of business and government in pandemic planning and one on what to expect from the media during a pandemic. It was neat to see the reporters who have been writing the stories about H5N1 that I have been reading. It was also nice to see the government being asked tough questions on pandemic preparedness by the moderator and audience. We are making progress but still got quite a long way to go.
After lunch we had breakout seasons again. I was able to get to the breakout seasons on company planning case studies, which was fascinating. The presenters described their companies plans and planning process in detail and then turned the floor over to the audience for over an hour of discussion. The presentations were great but I enjoyed the frank and honest discussion that followed. It was so cool to see companies (even competitors) offering suggestions to each other on how to prepare, from the mistakes they made in planning.
After the breakouts there was one last general gathering and a panel discussion. This panel discussion was probably my favorite, just because I am nerd. The panel contained one of the best minds on vaccines (Dr. Greg Poland), a brilliant infectious disease specialist (Dr. Mike Tapper), the public health manager for 3M (Edwin Scott) and the medical director for ISOS (Dr. Doug Quarry). They were asked some really tough questions by Dr. Osterholm (he moderated this panel) on what business should be doing with vaccines, antivirals, masks and respirators. They conceded that we do not have many medical options for the world. A luck few will get antivirals and masks/respirators with unknown efficacy and far fewer will get a vaccine that probably wont protect them much.