The year is 2025.
A few American travelers returning from Asia die of an unknown disease, such as influenza. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms that the victims were infected with the novel coronavirus, Spars-CoV.
Nothing is known about this novel coronavirus. There is no quick diagnostic test. There is no known cure. And there is no vaccine.
The outbreak of the Spars is not as long as the global epidemic outbreak.
The CDC has found that spars are transmitted by respiratory drops and recommends that everyone practice hand hygiene and disinfect surfaces frequently. Experts have learned that spars have a long lifespan – 7 to 10 days – and are spread by asymptomatic carriers. Pregnant women and people with underlying conditions such as asthma and emphysema have an increased risk of complications and death. The WHO begins recommending social distance and isolation to suspected cases.
It is hoped that existing antiviral drugs may help treat spars, but there have been no randomized controlled trials. U.S. The Food and Drug Administration issues Emergency Use Authorization for this drug for the treatment of Spars patients. Soon, the drug is in high public demand and millions of doses are being distributed from Strategic National StockPile. However, it soon became clear that the drug could Cause serious side effects.
Things become political. Republicans voiced support for the drug while Democrats expressed skepticism. America is more connected, still more divided than ever. Rumors and misinformation about the virus and possible treatment spread on social media. Outbreaks appear to be exacerbated during this time. Within a year, a quick review of potential vaccines begins and promises are made that millions of doses will be received in a few months. But the U.S. Out of millions of people living in, who will get this vaccine first?
Conversation in the time of Kovid-19
Reading the Spars epidemic scenario is like reading the Covid-19 epidemic account. But the scenario was not an attempt to predict the future. .Lata, it was to illustrate the wide range of serious challenges public health communications can face. The hope was that by addressing these challenges as part of the training exercise, federal, state and local agencies would be ready to respond to a similar scenario in the future.
That future is now. But many of the difficulties of public health in serving as tools of education seem to have played before our eyes.
And the latter is the result of confusion.
Take Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones for example. Joanne has decided not to implement Ohio Gov. Mike Devine’s state-wide mask order, issued July 23 – a decision that could cost lives.
“Every week they change how you can catch this, how you can’t catch it. Wear a mask first, then don’t wear a mask. Then a certain type of mask. And how it spreads. It’s on the surface, then That [can] Stay in the air for 10 days. People are confused. I’m confused, “Jones told CNN’s Brianna Killer in late July.
While medical recruitment medical insights into this epidemic are not clearly articulated, community leaders like Jones ignore life-saving recommendations.
Public Health Seattle and King County Risk Communications Specialist Dr. Meredith Lee-Walmer says it is natural for public health recommendations to change over time as scientific understanding grows. But when new information is not explicitly approached, it can erode people’s confidence.
“You’re dealing with something that is unknown and where information is changing very quickly,” Li-Walmer told CNN. “All experts have to learn as they happen.” He needs to say that, he added.
“It was really important to let people know that we’re still learning.”
Need to invest in preparedness
Security. Monica Shoch-Spana, who led the Spars Epidemic Scenarios project team at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Protection, said the role of public health communications is always given less. “Communication work in public health is generally seen as an aid to ‘real’ work in controlling outbreaks,” he told CNN.
“Thus, those responsible for public communication and community engagement often struggle to gain recognition for the role they need to reduce the adverse effects of disease outbreaks, including illness and death, but stigma, trauma, public distrust and social breakdown,” she said.
The experts who wrote the Spars epidemic scenario may be different.
“Good resources exist for preparedness,” Scotch-Spana told CNN. “The U.S. government’s weakening of the COVID-1 response response lacked very good top-level crisis leadership, dismissing the readiness and response skills already present in key agencies, and replacing science and long-term public health outcomes in politics and short-term. Thinking. “
Federal loyalty to public health preparedness and response has made it increasingly difficult for public health communicators to carry out their important work; Declining federal funding has been jeopardized by access to key preparedness resources such as the SPARS epidemic scenario.
In 2008, Li-Woolmer and his team were funded to participate in a week-long epidemic flu training exercise. They got critical practice, set up hospitals in the area, organized media briefings and responded as if the epidemic was really coming.
They also laid the foundations for important relationships with other health departments that relied on them a year later when the epidemic hit the flu.
“When the H1N1 epidemic broke out – it happened a year after we exercised that week – and it really felt like that: well, we know what to do,” Lee-Walmer said. “We felt very well prepared because we would actually go through his steps physically. But the ability to do that kind of big exercises – that funding was only moved a few years ago.”
Li-Walmer says the H1N1 pandemic has halved its team of emergency specialists, and the lack of federal funding has weakened its county health department’s ability to meet critical training resources.
She is grateful that she had the opportunity to work through the Spars epidemic scenario a year before the current epidemic began. Its county health department has been awarded U.S. In the first Covid-19 case – and the first Covid-19 experienced death.
Focusing on what he learned during the epidemic, Lee-Walmer said the only thing that would have required more federal funding was to give his team more access to training exercises such as the Spars epidemic scenario.
There are countless lessons to be learned from the real-world Covid-19 epidemic. Is between them The importance of outstanding vigilanceT. When it comes to public health preparedness the threat of an epidemic seems like a distant, imaginary possibility.
“We’ll all continue to get infected after we’re gone,” Foi said. So let’s prepare for them. “
.
