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When Pandemonium Strikes Will Businesses Be Forces To Close Their Doors?

Most companies state that their people are their biggest asset, however most Business Continuity plans emphasize on key processes instead of key people. In the case of a Pandemic, will your business be prepared?

When pandemonium strikes will businesses be forces to close their doors?
March 6, 2007



Abstract
Possibilities are all around us, possibilities for great things large and small. The possibility that we will find the one product that makes it all possible, that nitch in the market. Or the possibility that a rather benign flu passing through the bird population will mutate and infect humans with a strain of virus that is virtually unknown and we have no immunity against. When a pandemic hits, what will businesses do to safeguard their interest, protect their employees and insure production in a world that is literally closing it's doors?

Over the past three years the Avian flu (H5N1) has killed millions of domestic and wild foul, and has transferred to and killed over 200 people in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia and China.
Pandemic influenza is caused when a virus that is dramatically different than has previously circulated mutates into a form that is infectious to humans. There are many different subtypes of Influenza or "flu" viruses. The subtypes differ based upon certain proteins on the surface of the virus (the hemagglutinin or "HA" protein and the neuraminidase or the "NA" protein). When an abrupt and major change in influenza A virus due to antigenic shift occurs, new combinations of the HA and/or NA proteins appear on the surface of the virus. These changes results in a new influenza A virus subtype, it is extremely difficult for human bodies to fight these new viruses due to the lack of immunologic resistance to the surface proteins of these viruses.
Flu is a common term in our vocabulary today; it is used as a catch phrase to describe a myriad of symptoms ranging from fever, head and body aches, nausea, diarrhea...