Here's one scenario for us to consider.

Say - you have a sick child. Say - your child is sick with cancer. Say - you are in a hospital, hooked up to several time-sensitive infusion pumps, administering all kinds of good stuff to your kid.

The clock goes 'tick' - the hospital switches to a stand-by generator but one of your infusion pumps stops functioning. You are trying to call for a nurse, only to find out that the nurse-call system is down. You are running out - the nurses are running around trying to find working devices - not finding any, since the management dumped the old ones when they purchased those new, fancy pumps. ( actual situation in UCSF, for example )

Meanwhile - the pump has to be turned off, since no one knows how to fix it and it just continues to behave strangely, exposing your kid to either overdose of chemicals, - or to the lack of pain-killers, which the children need to cope with the side-effects of chemotherapy. ( Same thing for the post-op patients in ICUs etc. etc. )

Then, - the water supply gets screwed up intermittently ( hopefully ) - and you need to give your child showers four times a day, otherwise his or her skin will be blistering from the chemicals. What do you do then?

Yes - it is nice to stock up on water and have an alternative power source. But, please, - visit one of them chidren cancer lists - and see what those parents are talking about. Most of them spent year-after-year just trying to keep their kids alive. Y2K is going to kill some of those children - and some of those adult patients ( 10,000.00 in England alone, according to one of our correspondents .) Who is thinking about them now? And who is going to answer to these people when it strikes?

Do you think that they are going to care if the banks are closed? If their employer is out of business? As of now - most of the people we've talked to have lost their jobs at least once since their child disease. They aren't going to be terribly concerned with the businesses and their survival. Their priority will be their children.

Is anybody thinking about anything but themselves?

-- Full Name (Councel2000@netscape.net), November 04, 1998

Answers

You have obviously spent some time in hospitals. You have a right to be concerned. As for the specifics in your post, most IV pumps have a built-in battery backup. Furthermore, hospitals are required (in most states) to have an auxillary power capability. (its usually tested once a year.) I wouldn't count on more than 24-48 hours of backup and I'm sure some hospitals will find out the hard way that their diesel gen needs some emergency surgery! Those with difficult, life threatening medical conditions are likely to be hit hardest unless serious preparations are made prior to the BIG DAY. Address your concerns directly to your doctor and the CEO/president of your hospital. Get an appointment and have your say. If enough people do this, perhaps the medical industry will get off its butt and prepare. Right now, with the exception of a few large hospitals, most are doing NOTHING to prepare. No contigency plans - NADA, NYET total denial. For all those lurkers out there, keep yourself and your loved ones out of the hospital from 6/99 on unless its truly life threatening. Its likely to be a mess.

-- R. D..Herring (drherr@erols.com), November 04, 1998.

Please, Full Name...

I believe that many of the folks who frequent this forum think about others constantly. Perhaps you missed the thread which stated that we must prepare ourselves so that there is someone to help the many who will need us.

For my own part, I have tried to convince my physician of the coming trouble; he humors me. I'd hoped to enlist his assistance in increasing awareness in the local health care community, but so far, no progress. Closer to home, even; I've bombarded our volunteer fire & ambulance leaders with information to the point that they hide when they see me coming. They say that they don't need to worry too much, because they don't really use computers all that much.

I could go on, but I get very depressed when I think of all the people I've FAILED to convince.

I think the reason you may not have seen much of the concern you seek is that there are SO many situations and people who will suffer horribly and die terribly because of Y2K. What of the elderly who live alone in the cities? Who will ease the suffering they will experience when the world stumbles and falls because of a technology that still seems more fiction than science? What of the mothers who will quickly realize the food is gone, the water is gone, and her children are dying of deprivation with a market only half a block away? What of the children who will die slowly, going from robust to emaciated a day at a time?

As I said, we think of others constantly. If we can't make them believe us and take action, we can at least be here to save as many as we can when believing doesn't matter anymore.

-- Arewyn (nordic@northnet.net), November 05, 1998.

I recall the 1965 East Coast blackout. (I was elsewhere at the time, no problem.) Later we read in retrospective accounts, that one NYC hospital had a state-of-the-art power backup system, diesel generator, backup generator, fuel, procedures, alles in ordnung. But when the power failed they discovered that the generator used an electric starter.

It's the unexpected, unforeseen details that bite. Who can say "never happen?"

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), November 05, 1998.