The Third Wave-what is this stuff about waves

Yesterday with a person working with the CDC I did an interview. This was a doctor and had sent me a message through someone at the VA requesting I contact her. I still have data sent to me indirectly from CDC to post. But I wanted to share with you some of that interview.

I cannot name names- but this person also worked with the Red Cross and was a chief coordinator at the incident at the Virginia university where the student killed many people. She stepped in and literally directed the law enforcement and other resources in the disaster response, as well as supervised the social workers and psychologists dealing with students who were either shot or severely traumatized by the incident.

.gov is rather specific as to how we writers present ourselves. Although I am directly involved in terms of being a licensed RN and now hooked to disaster response, I am just the messenger, and have no official capacity. There is a fine line amount of support in terms of giving me information so that "my book can be more accurate and useful and most of all include resources all ready in place that people should use. CERT is one of these", and I posted a separate thread on that.

In a previous interview Dr. D,  educated me in terms of the process of the assignment of "someone to run the show at a disaster scene." There has to be a primary person in charge. Also she was involved in the writing of the Virginia Disaster Response Plan for Influenza as well as is very active in West Virginia.

She knows me, and the other person involved knows me personally and is actually one of my best friends. We have "jogged" together- as much as I am capable of jogging. This person is deeply involved in the community planning effort as well was working with mental health and specifically with soldiers coming back from Iraq with PTS.

I had prepared a list of questions and will try just to focus on the exchange. I probably could have taped it, but I just took notes.

First, a primary topic of our conversation was Waves of the Pandemic. This is becoming kind of catch phrase and highly relevant topic. As was posted earlier, most of the recent Pandemics have had 3 waves. This is not a new phenomena. In terms of my "behavioral AI type stuff" some things can be extrapolated not by numbers but by behaviors. As in working on Chaos theory- basically - we can look out and say - well it is raining, it is snowing. Who teaches the rain to rain? Is there a divine intelligence or organizing something to the universe? Beyond regular science, diseases exhibit  behavior patterns. And looking at the spread of a disease, its behavior without numbers, can still give you a way to predict what will happen next with that disease.

Point. Since most Pandemics have 3 waves, there is an almost inevitable probability that this one will have a second wave. What does this mean?

We discussed this and here is the gist of what the doctor and I exchanged.

A new virus is like an infant. It is born. It kind of pops into existence after there is mutation, reassortment, or recombination of genetic material - within the virus or with other viral strains to make a newbie.

This little guy is just learning. I believe viruses have some I call sentient intelligence which is far beyond the scope of this post. But they don't think- but crystals and viruses  have a lot more in common (another discussion) than people might think.

He, or she, if you want to be anthropomorphic (make people like) is wearing a new outfit- like camouflage which allows it to get through and past the immune system. He is learning. He doesn't do so well. Yep, he can infect the new host and make them sick. But he gets clobbered and often can only make people a little sick or not appear to be sick at all.

A genome carries markers. These are specific spots on the sequence (list of the all the pairs in the RNA) which can tell how nasty this critter can be. How infectious, how pathogenic. This science is evolving. We know some and people at CDC are looking at the current Swine Flu and saying they are not seeing scary markers. We don't know all the markers. And there could be new markers which are scary which they could see and not know are  indicative that this one is going to be high path.

So- the first wave. Very much true to form of the name, it spreads from one source outward, infecting people, and is rated by how well it does it, and how many people die who get it. Unfortunately WHO got all into defining their alert levels based on spread rather than dead.  So we can go to a level 6- and still not have a real killer.

Dr. D was commenting on the fact that after awhile the virus either mutates, reassorts (mixes its own stuff) or recombines with other viruses. If you take a deadly virus and combine it with a fast spreader- you get a Pandemic. And then you have a real killer. The Bubonic Plague killed 30-50% of the population of Europe.

Now- we have a problem. This guy(the virus) went into pigs in Canada. This guys going south for the winter and play around in Latin America and Australia during flu season and get a lot of practice and also evolve POSSIBLY to be meaner and more efficient and deadlier which then brings us to-

The Second Wave.

CDC, WHO (especially and Dr. Margaret Cho) has plainly stated this is likely- the .gov sites are putting up get prepped (which is not characteristic of .gov sites)

Somewhere on its path the virus will change and then begins the Second Wave.  A second wave is so nasty that those getting sick the first time may have no immunity or only partial immunity to it. But because it will be (could be) 3% or more- the Infrastructure goes boom at 5% for sure and some of us are working on not having that happen.  At even 2-3% you have a serious Pandemic - 50-60% of the work force - some say only a third- but after several studies we did and others in asking groups of people - will you stay - home the real numbers are higher.

Nurses- near 50% are not going to work. Mothers- in one study 70% are staying home with the children.

Well, so second wave gets nasty real fast. How much can the infrastructure take and keep the power on, the Internet on, and food transporting and fuel and communication up.

It won't take a lot to crunch all of the above. We are pretty vulnerable. With plans working off numbers like .2% it makes our system look pretty together. Well, as together as it has ever been- it does have problems.

But the Dr. indicated we probably have a second wave coming.

It is absolutely imperative that we don't scare people. People in shock (that is one of the big 3 rough ones to handle, and we have met with psychiatrists and people are over reacting more than anyone though they would.

Specifically there is hostility (the .gov euphemism is sincere concern) toward panic spreader who for notoriety or money get out there and terrorize the masses. They gets them a lot of attention, they become experts (sometimes legends in their own minds) and it can be embarrassing. When you put yourself out there, your gonna have to run the gauntlet. People are going to disagree. People are going to attack you personally or professionally. People are going to argue.

Restating facts, more data, is far superior to arguing. In a Peer review- you leave your ego and emotions at the doorway outside- and become an objective scientist responding to questions and suggestions as an adult. There are many grown up children in the world.

So- we talked about the Second Wave and we talked about scary alarmists terrorizing the media, trying to make a big name for themselves and how Medclinician would not be either of the two. How my book would not have a stamp of approval- but maybe a nod or so as being credible, non-alarmist, and useful.  You can sell more books and get more attention by being scary. You can help more people by not pointing fingers and complaining and providing solutions and not being overly scary. If you are a bad enough alarmist you go on a list somewhere and you get monitored. Such is the way of modern times. You become a potential threat to .gov.  Because .gov does want its military and law enforcement getting killed by crazy people all worked up to a frenzy and some not considering how what they say will effect people, can do that.

It was very interesting and of course there were other things she went over. The citizens readiness program- me possibly being able to go back and increase my training- I have a lot of mass causality both in Army and medical courses- terrorist attack- bioweapon units stacked up- but not only leading a team- but also being an instructor is even more useful.

I will post more wave stuff on this thread and do feel free to comment or add material. The Second Wave is pretty much the doorway to a bad Pandemic. And the Third Wave- well that's the whimper. That's like the Black Death- which was even more gruesome coming after the Bubonic plague.

My mother-in-law creeped me out yesterday with Skye. I had been working on this stuff and came over to play with Skye who she was watching.. and they were dancing and singing

"Ring around the rosey, pocket full of poseys, ashes, ashes, we all fall down." Skye giggled intensely as they sat down at the end of the song.

I said- do you know what those words mean? I did not tell Skye. For now at 2 years old,  things simply go bye bye for good if they die.

Ring around the Rosie, A pocket full of Posies, Ashes Ashes we all fall down.

There was a plague that happened in the thirteenth century, it was called the Black Death, or Black Plague. So many people died that they thought it was the end of the world.

Ring around the Rosie is because one of the parts of the plague is that you would get black sores all over your body (your rosie is around the center of the back of your hand), A pocket full of posies is because people would carry posies around to not smell the sickening scent of dead bodies everywhere.

Ashes Ashes we all fall down means the ashes from all the bodies being burned on pyres (because they burned the bodies when they died). We all fall down is because they died

There are people who hotly dispute this. I personally think that is the origin of the nursery rhyme.

This would be - The Third Wave

Medclinician

Your nursery rhyme is different to ours. It is the sneezing that carried them off

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Not sure about other states but in South Carolina, the governor can invoke the Emergency Health Power Act and force essential workers to go to work.