Pandemic Flu Awareness Week

“Not to rain on your honeymoon parade and all,” Liz “I Speak of Dreams” Ditz wrote to me in an email, “but this is a pretty big issue.” (No problem, Liz. Part of my mission statement is to use my blog powers for good!)

The week of October 3rd through 9th is Pandemic Flu Awareness Week on the Flu Wiki. The flu, epsecially avian flu, is an issue big enough to garner headlines on CNN today.

Here’s what the Flu Wiki has to say about this week:

The purpose of Pandemic Flu Awareness Week, and the Flu Wiki, is to allow the dissemination of information down to the local level so that everyone can use each others’ experience, planning and ideas so as not to be left unawares should an actual pandemic occur. Like hurricanes, when a pandemic occurs can not be accurately predicted.

Nonetheless, that which can be done in advance should be done, because eventually something will happen. Planning can only help, even if at the local level it can’t prevent.

Liz also pointed me to a page of Pandemic Preparedness Guides and Tara C. Smith’s blog, Aetiology (“Discussing causes, origins, and implications of disease and other phenomena”).

I’ll have to ask my sister more about this. She’s the assistant director of health for Peel Region, which includes a big vector for diseases: Lester B. Pearson International Airport, which some of you baggage tag-watchers know better as “YYZ”.