Something like a Pandemic

I'm suffering from H1N1 fatigue. It seems like we've been talking about nothing but since the first wave hit. Now, I know that it's a serious disease and that some people have gotten quite sick and died from it. I get that it's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to disease prevention. But man, haven't we heard about it enough already?

I think that part of the problem has been in the communication and the messaging around this whole pandemic thing. I'm not actually sure that we can even call it a pandemic at this point. To me it seems like so far, the number of people sick with H1N1 has to be similar to the number of people who usually get sick from the seasonal flu. Is that a pandemic? Maybe, maybe not –I'm not a scientist. But if it's not a true pandemic, why call it a pandemic and just freak everyone out. Why call it SWINE flu? There has been so much misinformation out there. So much fear and paranoia. Way too many communicators making conflicting statements. H1N1 is in your face all the time. The information is overwhelming and it's confusing.


Granted, this hasn't been easy. The situation continues to change almost moment to moment with this thing. While I think the people in charge of health in this country have messed up when it comes to the pandemic plan and their H1N1 communication, I get that this is pretty much a nightmare for a PR person. Yet, I'm not even really sure there have been PR people involved. Maybe if there had, this whole thing would have gone a lot more smoothly.

There is no simple answer, but I really think that we would have benefitted from one person being appointed on a federal level to head a pandemic communication committee. That person would be the source of all the official messaging and would pass that message on to a representative in each province. Each province should have had the same priority list and the same vaccination rules. Maybe this kind of set up would be impossible given how governments tend to be set up, but a little bit of organization when it comes to communication would have been beneficial. Because isn't the point in a situation like this to keep people calm? The best way to keep people calm is to keep them informed.

One silver lining of this whole thing: many medical professionals are saying this pandemic is not going to be as bad as originally thought. Part of that may be that many high risk individuals have been vaccinated, which is great.  Hopefully, at the end of the day, most people don't get seriously ill and this circus becomes a valuable test run. Hopefully everyone involved learns from the mistakes they made this time around, and applies that knowledge to a plan for a future pandemic that might be far more serious.

As a side note: I do have to credit our nurses, who have been volunteering and working long hours at these vaccine clinics. When I got the shot a few weeks ago before the shortages hit, I was impressed with the organization and the speed at which they moved people through. So to those on the front lines: kudos for a difficult job well done.

Update:  Here's a great article out of the UK that delves into the "is it a pandemic" issue.