Hello -

We are facing a large scale public health crises post y2k. Water and sewage will be a problem for millions, both in the USA and around the world. Cholera vectors to humans via bad water, it can be deadly, especially for the aged, very young, and the infirm.

I brought Cholera up at our morning meeting on 11May with Paloma O'Riley and Jim Lord. My concerns are several. Lack of enough vaccine. Lack of time to vaccine preparation. Apparent lack of CDC notification to the pharmaceuticals alerting them for the need to prepare 500M - 1.5B doses of the vaccine.

Any right minded Plan B's must confront and deal with the need for large scale population vaccinations for Cholera and the host of other diseases which accompany large scale human gatherings in sub-optimal conditions.

We must prepare also for the need to deal with very large numbers of dead bodies, which in and of themselves will become disease vectors.

Immediately, two actions need to commence. First is a steady pressure upon CDC to notifiy the pharmaceuticals to manufacture the various vaccines high priority. Second, all local Contingency Planners must begin awareness training within their communities about dealing with large scale water borne and dead body diseases. These include public awareness and action campaigns for innoculations, and the creation and funding for plans for the collection and disposal of dead bodies.

Thank you.
Mitch

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), June 06, 1998

Answers

Mitch,

Good points that need to be taken into serious consideration.

Related (via "ounce of prevention" category) is the following. People may wish to subcribe to the public list, and pass the "private list" address (just copy, paste, forward, snail mail, or deliver this message) on to their local water utility people:

From: "Y2K Water" y2k-water@parousie.com
To: "New.Subscribers" y2k-water@parousie.com
Subject: Welcome to the Y2K Water Discussion Group
Date: Tue, 12 May 1998

Welcome to the Y2K Water List Group,

The purpose of this group is to exchange relevant information concerning Year 2000 compliancy of water utilities. Messages and answers should be sent to

y2k-water@parousie.com.

Please include your email address within the text of your message if you want to be answered directly.

In addition to our general list group, we have a private discussion group for water utilities. This is to insure confidentiality if any water district needs help, but is afraid of asking to a general list. We don't want this kind of fear to slow the y2k remediation process in any way.

You can pass this information to your local water utility and tell them they can register by sending an email to dcormier@parousie.com with the mention "SUBSCRIBE". A verification will be made to make sure they really are a water utility y2k employee before the activation of their subscription.

Messages sent to my personal email address dcormier@parousie.com will be considered confidential and will not be forwarded to any group.

Thanks

Daniel Cormier
Y2K Water Discuss Moderator
514-389-8889
Montreal, Canada dcormier@parousie.com

I subscribed to this list by sending Daniel Cormier an email asking him to send me directions on how I could do that, and how my local water utility person could subscribe to the private list. He just went ahead and signed me up. The above note was his reply. Anyone wishing to subscribe should just drop him an email and request to be put on the general, public list.

Bill

-- Bill (billdale@lakesnet.net), June 06, 1998.

Check out the Centers for Disease Control Website: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/diseases.htm

This is the "additional diseases sections", listing the plague-type diseases. All healthcare information is shown, from symptoms to treatment, and prognosis for a considerable list.

Also worth noting: "View Info: shows that these pages have been very recently updated; I would assume the information is quite up to date - no inferrence that there is outdated info...

The CDC has lots of information there available; I heartily suggest that it be at least reviewed throughly. Excessive rains have resulted in heavy grasslands; this, in turn, has resulted in a higher rodent population already. As several of the nastiest of these plagues has already turned up in various US locations, it might be wise to start using appropriate precautions now!

-- Kate Thompson (nymphidia@yahoo.com), August 05, 1998.