Bird Flu ABC special

While I was away Elizabeth taped the bird flu ABC special for me and I've just watched it. It did seem to cover briefly all the aspects of the flu, but in much too much a sensational manner for my taste. Here are the weaknesses as I see them:

1. While ARDS was mentioned once in passing, I doubt that any viewers really got the sense of cytokline storm that hit the first victim and accounted for his early death. Certainly is was not explained as it would have been say in an episode of CSI.

2. I just damned sick of seeing the insides of bodies on all these current television shows. I've buried most of my family and learned what killed them and why without having to see inside their body cavities. This is just exploitive sensationalism.

3. The ending was unrealistic. It is highly unlikely that two mutations would occur in such a short time and from my understanding of the 1918 precedent they cite, this was simply two waves of the same virus strain as it moved in and out of a population. There have been three pandemics this century and another will come in some form, some time. When has there ever been two in a row? And what are the odds that they would be both worst case senarios? The pandemics in 1957 and 1968 did not capture my attention at the time. They were mild killers.

4. Survival techniques were not dramatically developed. Everyone did the wrong things. Once couple was plain lucky and so they could dance on the top of a building, but no one managed to survive by preparation. Part of this is because they present the urban and suburban population but no one from rural America. Quarrantine was seen as a stupid idea imposed by government, rather than the major way of waiting out the distribution of vaccine. The message again was that communities somehow working in close connection with one another (without masks or gloves by the way) could win somehow just with a smaltzy sense of love. The truth is that small groups, hunkered down and staying out of group meetings have the best chance of survival especially if they get some food in ahead of time.

5. In the end this movie provided no hope. It was like the fighting of the movie monster. Just when you thought the coast was clear, up comes Jason again out of the lake, his chain saw running. I see pandemic as very different from other massive disasters (global warming, nuclear war) because the individual and small family group can prepare and provide, as long as they don't wait until the last minute. And the wait in quarrantine is just until vaccine gets distributed and the 50% of people who do contract (but do not die from the flu) get working again. The movie might have shown an example of a rural family who had provided ahead of time and who waited out the vaccine manufacturing and distribution delays?

6. On the other hand it did present some of the problems: food and supply shortages, insurance company defaults, economic difficulties, panic in the streets, looting and loss of lawful control of populations, overcrowding of hospitals. It did a good job showing the need to take respirators away from very sick people because there are not enough of them available in today's hospitals. And the politics seemed very believable. It balanced the information on the effectiveness of Tamiflu. Good cast too. I like these actors, especially old Stacy Keach and Justina Machado, who is such a cutie.

7. Mass graves is an exaggeration.

And in the end I am glad they did it because it rasies the consciousness of people. But we had guests this weekend whose final resistance to preparing even a bit was to say, "I don't think I really want to survive such a disaster anyway." This movie would not help those folks move from fatalism to acts of survival.

This review seems pretty sound:

http://www.pandemicflu.gov/news/birdfluinamerica.html