U.S. Swine Flu Advice Fails to Prepare for Worst, Report Says

Peter Sandman is a liar and is covering his ass. He has previously stated that pandemic preparedness for Americans is on the back burner ,where it belongs. Now, he is changing his tune and trying to put himself in a good lite. He has done more to hurt you and your family than most.

May 20 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. has failed to prepare Americans for a worst-case swine flu pandemic and should urge people to stockpile food, water and medicine in addition to advising good hygiene, a commentator in the journal Nature said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “smooth bedside manner” recommends hand-washing, covering sneezes and staying home when sick, said Peter Sandman, a New Jersey risk- communication consultant who has advised the U.S. on nuclear waste hazards. The CDC also should urge citizens, schools, hospitals and local governments to “stock up on tinned fruit and peanut butter” and prepare for the worst, he wrote.

“Officials need to ask themselves whether they see the public as potential victims to be protected and reassured, like young children, or as pandemic fighters -- grown-ups -- who can play an active part in the crisis that might be ahead,” Sandman wrote in today’s edition of the journal. “The difference in tone could save lives.”

The spread of H1N1 swine influenza to about 10,000 people in 40 countries has pushed the World Health Organization to the brink of declaring the first global flu pandemic in four decades. Overstating the threat is preferable to reassurances aimed at preventing panic, Sandman said. The U.S. should be prepared for the possibility of a pandemic akin to the Spanish flu of 1918 that killed millions, he said.

While Richard Besser, the acting CDC director, and his colleagues have done a “superb job” of explaining the uncertainties of H1N1 virus danger, the officials have failed to offer people an understanding of what a bad pandemic might be like, Sandman said.

CDC Responds

“His failure has been subtler than that: sending the message that the CDC will do whatever it takes to protect us, and that we need do little or nothing to protect ourselves,” Sandman wrote.

“We’ve mentioned quite often the need for people to be prepared for emergencies, including in the context of the current outbreak of H1N1,” Tom Skinner, spokesman for the Atlanta-based CDC, said today in an e-mail.

Aside from a protective vaccine against the virus, communication between health authorities and with the public is the most important weapon against a pandemic, said John Barry, author of a book on the 1918 pandemic, in an accompanying essay in Nature.

During that crisis, U.S. officials added to public fear, absenteeism and the collapse of the health-care system by communicating about the disease in the same way it disseminated news about World War I -- by seeking to reassure people and bolster public morale instead of telling the truth, Barry wrote.

Risky Communication

More recently, China’s government put the world at risk and contributed to near-panic in Beijing by not telling the truth about an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in 2003, Barry said. The following year, Thailand and Indonesia withheld information during the first outbreaks of H5N1 bird flu, Barry wrote.

“Although a false alarm can be damaging, it is not nearly as damaging as silence -- the type of silence that makes people believe the truth is being withheld,” Barry wrote.

Barry’s book is called “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History”