No! I'M Not Ready Yet!

Students love missing school when they are sick. They finally get a break from the lectures and note taking. Their alternative to this is watching all the good old cartoons on television. In the future though, the reason for being sick could not just be the "sick of school" sick, but a worldwide pandemic. Scientists have predicted its arrival and the world is waiting for it to hit. While they are waiting though, the world is not preparing for the actual outbreak. They are currently not able to promptly isolate people who become infected due to the density of the population. When a vaccination is developed, it will not be able to be distributed around the world. As this will be a new virus, people will not have immunity to it and will be more susceptible.

Due to the vast amount of people in the world that live so close together, if some one is infected, many around them will have contact with the virus and not even know it. People travel frequently and quickly. It will be hard to find everyone who is in contact with the virus and they isolate them. The American Government says that "persons who become ill may shed virus and can transmit infection for up to one day before the onset of illness. Viral shedding and the risk of transmission will be greatest during the first 2 days of illness. Children usually shed the greatest amount of virus and therefore are likely to post the greatest risk for transmission."[1] This means that people who have the virus will not be aware they have it until they have affected other people. As children are more susceptible to the virus, and they are contained more than adults for longer times, they are much more likely to come in contact with the virus. This makes it very hard to promptly isolate people who have the virus. The North Carolina Public Health department believes that the quick isolation of people is too difficult to try, so they are preparing for limited use.[2] There are measures that can be taken, but the world is not following the guide lines of the World Health Organization to be better prepared.

While people tend to live in urban communities, many do not and with this does not come with important resources. This can lead to a rush for valuable, life-saving necessities that people in urban communities will have an easier access to. In this case, if there ever is a vaccination for the pandemic, people worldwide will require the vaccination almost immediately. "If an influenza pandemic happened today, most of the world would have no access to vaccine."[3] This has the potential to be tragic for the rest of the world, as people who are not priority for receiving, will be just because of their location. The lesser developed countries will be disadvantaged and therefore will have a harder time preventing the pandemic from destroying them. The World Health Organization realizes this and notes that when a pandemic does break out, it will not be equally distributed and there will not be enough available.[4] This worldwide will be a problem because if the vaccine can not be distributed properly, then there is now way people can be protected from the pandemic. There needs to be a system set up so that when a vaccine is invented, it is able to be distributed around the world quickly to the people who need it the most.

This pandemic will not be like you common cold that you can build immunity to. Whichever strain eventually becomes dominant, humans have not had contact with it for about fifty years. This lack of exposure mean hundreds of millions of people are more susceptible to