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intervjuu Dr. Michael Moore'gea, Nationwide asepresident ja meditsiinidirektor

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One of the things the federal government is telling people is that if you have a vital substance that is the lifeblood of your company, then you should make sure you have a supply of it that will last from two to four weeks, because your supply chain may not be reliable. Suppliers are going to have 40 percent absence rates, just like everybody else. So we want to raise awareness of that reality.

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We also want to get word out to our employees and say, “Make sure you have a survival kit at home.” So we’re going to include a post on our internal Web site that specifies what a survival kit should include, such as how much water per individual per day, and for how many days. We will advise them to make sure they have enough of the medicine that they would normally take during a two- to four-week period, because their drugstore may not be open. We will advise them to make sure they have enough food, flashlights and other necessities.

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Q: Explain the “green-yellow-red” worksheet that Nationwide’s Avian Flu Working Group has devised.

MOORE : Here’s how it works: If situation X happens, we’re in Condition Green; if situation Y happens, we’re in Condition Yellow; and if situation Z happens, we’re in Condition Red.
We’re in Condition Green right now, because there’s been no person-to-person transmission and nothing here in North America yet.
We would go to Condition Yellow >if person-to-person transmission developed outside of the U.S. , or if a case of avian flu is reported in North America .
Finally, we would go to Condition Red if person-to-person transmission were to hit North America .
And each one of those events triggers a certain level of action on our part.

For example,
Condition Green is basically preparation; it’s about making sure you have cleaning supplies. A lot of the things that the government is recommending are very simple steps: Make sure you have cleaning supplies with antibacterial agents that you can use to clean common touch areas, such as doorknobs, stair railings and elevator buttons. Make sure you have gloves available so that if you find something that’s been exposed, you don’t inadvertently expose more people while trying to clean it up. Make sure you have hand cleaner available for people so that they can frequently sanitize their hands.

If we were to ever go to Condition Yellow, only the most essential business travel would be permitted. We would certainly minimize, if not outright ban, travel to any place in which there is person-to-person transmission. We would begin to look at alternative work environments so that people can work from home. A lot of what we do can be done on a computer. Approximately half of our people have VPN (virtual private network) access, so they can get into our systems to do what they need to do to properly do their job from an alternative location. VPN is what our systems people do so that employees can safely get into our systems and still have a secure environment. The idea is that we try to keep the people who are healthy away from the people who are sick, and keep the people who are sick at home and out of the office.

Condition Red would take effect if person-to-person transmission were to occur in North America . In that situation, we would be utilizing what we call “social distancing,” or keeping people from congregating. For example, instead of having a meeting, you would have a teleconference. You wouldn’t shake hands with people. Instead of me walking over to the other side of the building to tell somebody something, I would call them. People who would normally be going to conferences or meetings would dial in instead. We would try to keep people that are able to work out of the office, out of the office so that they are not exposed and are not exposing people to different elements.

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Q: Are there any particular stages or aspects of preparation that you think are being overlooked by many companies?
MOORE : At this point, I think that if anything, people are not giving it the attention it deserves. The reaction I received after talking with some of the CEOs at the ACLI Executive Roundtable was, “Well, I heard about this, and I knew it could be a problem—but I never knew it could be that big a problem.” I think many people are thinking of it in terms of localized, weather-related disasters that we’ve dealt with in the past and saying, “Well, we did fine with the hurricane.” Well, a flu pandemic is not like a hurricane. True, it’s not going to knock down buildings, but when you start talking about a 50 percent mortality rate among people who have tested positive for bird flu, you realize this is a different scenario. Also, most people think of flu as affecting just the very young and the very old, but among those who have contracted bird flu, the people who are having the highest mortality rate are ages 15 to 40. That always surprises people.

The other thing I would tell people is, begin now. If you wait until we start to see person-to-person transmission, even in Europe , you’re going to be so far behind, you’ll never catch up. There is a possibility that a pandemic won’t occur, and a few years from now, we may look back and say, “Boy, what were we all worried about?” But this is a disaster for the poultry industry overseas. They’re reporting that about 200 million chickens have been killed in an attempt to stamp out bird flu.
The other news item that broke recently is a reported case of H5N1 in Iraq . And one of the main vehicles by which the Spanish flu spread back in 1918 was GIs returning from World War I. So when I read about the H5N1 case in Iraq , that sent a chill up my spine, because we’ve got hundreds of thousands of American soldiers over there who are rotating back after their tours of duty, not to mention all the private construction people and other expatriates over there who keep returning to the U.S. That sounds eerily similar to what happened in 1918.

I think that we at Nationwide are probably ahead of the curve, in terms of being prepared. But even then, at times it feels like we’re playing catch-up. So if you haven’t begun to think about this, it’s time to put this on the fast track.