Today’s Occasional Read:
Dori B. Reissman et al.
Pandemic Influenza Preparedness: Adaptive Responses to an Evolving Challenge
Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management
V. 3, No. 2, Article 13, 2006
doi: https://doi.org/10.2202/1547-7355.1233

Welcome to our new reality.

As the country slowly shuts down due to the CoronaVirus pandemic [https://perma.cc/3P5T-GZ2D], I decided to return from my long hiatus of reading and writing about a scholarly article to focus on the literature that discusses the psychological impact of dealing with a global health crisis like this.

This article was written in 2006, in response to the avian flu virus, but it honestly could have been written yesterday. I found so much content here that is extremely relevant to life today.

The authors begin by defining a pandemic virus as having four characteristics; (1) it’s a new virus emerging from an animal-related source; (2) people don’t have immunity to it; (3) people get sick from it; and (4) the virus spreads easily and efficiently, “through coughing, sneezing,or a hand-shake.” (p.1)

Check, check, check, and check.

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