Avian Flu: the System Perturbation in search of a pandemic

■"Experts Confront Major Obstacles In Containing Virulent Bird Flu," by Keith Bradsher and Lawrence K. Altman, New York Times, 30 September 2004, p. A1.

Just the preparations the world is making for the possibility of the avian flu becoming a pandemic killer of millions isóin and of itselfógenerating new rules across the system. Like the scheduled Y2K event in information technology, the much anticipated pandemic flu (and the avian version seems the best bet we've seen come along in a very long time) to rival the Spanish one of 1918 seems to be generating a precursor wake of sortsóI guess you could call it a bow wave that hits you long before the boat reaches you.

Drug companies love to cite all sorts of reasons why you can't do what the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Controls are trying to do with such an unknown flu as this one (like stockpiling vast amounts of vaccines that can't really be tested in advance)óbefore it really even appears as a pandemic. But guess what? The system of connectedness across the Core is so dense that almost no one is willing to wait, so new rules ensue on vaccine creation and testing, and genetic techniques to isolate the strain and map its essential building blocks. Those rules can't wait on 20 million dead to make it a comfortable profit margin.

And that means that the avian flu is already becoming a System Perturbation of sorts within the global medical community. Here's hoping it stays there and doesn't spill over into the economic, political and security realms.