Preparation key to averting bird flu tragedy

In difficult or challenging times, events conspire to give some news stories a life often larger than is deserved. Tragedies, or potential tragedies, it seems, are especially conducive to generating a sense of worry that sometimes obscures rational thinking and a clear path to a viable solution.

Recent history provides no shortage of examples. Remember the Y2K scare a few years ago? Depending on whom you listened to, when clocks and calendars turned over from 1999 to 2000, all manner of computerized system failures, we were told, had the potential to bring the world to its knees. Yet the date came and went with nary so much as a glitch.

Shortly after, the September 11 terrorist attacks provided another media-fueled public frenzy when the anthrax scare elevated any trace of unknown white powder nearly to the level of a national emergency.

Whether the ultimate fizzling out of each situation was due to overstated dangers in the first place or the simple palliative effect of preparation and increased awareness is debatable. But there is no denying the power in knowledge and the positive effects of advance planning.

To that end, more than a dozen state officials are in the borough today and tomorrow to participate alongside Valley leaders and emergency responders in seminars about the deadly bird flu. In recent months, much has been made of the dangers of the disease. But as can be the case with such high-profile stories, emotion and hype often outpace reality.

What we already know is enough for concern. First detected in Asia in 2003, the notorious virus is spreading across the globe. Although it is difficult for humans to contract the disease, it has claimed more than 100 human fatalities.

The biggest concern among world health officials is that the virus might mutate into a strain that could wipe out millions. So the goal of the seminars is to help local communities establish their own response plans.

The Mat-Su seminar will consist of more than 20 presentations dealing with everything from quarantine procedures for an infected population to general disaster preparedness. A special presentation is set for medical staff at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center to help clinicians positively identify a pandemic flu.

The event will culminate Wednesday afternoon with a tabletop exercise, where community leaders will participate in a mock planning exercise that assumes a pandemic flu has infected the Valley.

It may sound like more hype, but it's the kind of activity that should make us all feel a little bit safer. While the seminars are designed for those who would respond to a possible pandemic, a town hall meeting for the general public also is planned for 7 p.m. today at the Central Mat-Su Fire Department in Wasilla, where the general public is invited to learn more about a possible flu

pandemic.