"Black Dawn" A New Pandemic Tonight on The Fifth Estate

Tonight on CBC at 9:00 pm The Fifth Estate is airing 'Black Dawn" The New Pandemic.

It is a dramatization of events leading up and during the outbreak of a worldwide Avian Flu Pandemic.

Watching the advertising of this program gives a certain rememberance to the Orson Wells broadcast of 'War of the Worlds'

Maybe they should be airing this in Turkey as well.

Wow... I watched this show lastnight and it sure made you walk away thinking. The biggest thing is having enough food for 6 months to a year for your family, as there will be no food to buy only rations maybe! I don't think I will depend on my gov't to help, the best plan is to prepare for your family yourself. All the experts agree that it will happen but when no one knows for sure, or at least thats what they tell us!!!
I'm posting the website if anyone is interested.

Black Dawn: The Next Pandemic

mod edit: fixed link

[edit on 12-1-2006 by sanctum]

www.cbc.ca...

I'm sorry I missed this show, I'll try to catch a repeat.

THE DOCUMENTARY

Black Dawn: The Next Pandemic is a docudrama about a hypothetical pandemic of avian influenza (H5N1), from initial outbreak through mass transmission and global spread.

Although fictional, the scenario is very much grounded in scientific fact and inspired by the research and pandemic preparedness efforts of the world’s leading thinkers on the subject.

The key elements of our timeline are based on the research, modeling predictions and planning assumptions used to prepare pandemic plans by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Public Health Agency of Canada, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the UK's Health Protection Agency.

The link Hobby posted has a problem, so I reposted it with a bit from the page.


Edit: I found the air dates for the show.

Black Dawn:The Next Pandemic
Friday, January 13: 10pm
Saturday, January 14: 1am, 4am & 4pm
Sunday, January 15: 2 am & 7pm
Tuesday, January 17: 3am

www.cbc.ca...

[edit on 12/1/2006 by anxietydisorder]

I watched this show and I want to make something clear here:

This show was extremely skewed. It basically gave you a scenario where the virus mutation stayed in the same state as the current one (only now the virus can go human to human) and also the scenario depicted had many gov. / org. efforts failling (almost all failling). Also, it depcited the virus as completely unstopable and sugested the majority of people in N.A. were effected.

Basically, this is a wildly unlikely scenario for the following:
1) Most experts agree that the current mortality rates are extremely inaccurate and that if/when the virus mutates it will not be as deadly as in it's current state.
2) Government efforts are going to be effective. The U.S. and Britain are taking huge steps. This alone makes it highly likely that the virus will not be as wide spread as the show depicts. The spanish flu infected 30% of the population with very little cordination efforts to minimize infection and quarantine.
3) WHO efforts and gov. efforts at quarantine will be effective. Remember SARS? It came and was contagious and was new. What happened? It was isolated and never became a serious pandemic threat. It even reached N.A. and was isolated to one city and never moved.
4) Spread will be MUCH slower then TV show depicts. Remember, this is a flu people. When do flues do almost all of their spreading? During cold season because we get runny noses, sore throats and dust in our noses which cause us to sneeze because we are indoors more (all of these activities spread the flu). If the flu hits say in november, it has pretty much 30-60 days max to get here and cause us a major concern with spreading. Likely scenario: the flu starts up, massive isolation effort insue, we slow it down from comming here until winter passes. We then make a vaccine (usually takes 6 months but with this kind of threat I bet it could be 3months probably), and we vacinate enough people who are at risk before the next winter season hits.

Long story short: This program assumes many likely things which should occur dont. Making it not very accurate.

Cayoo

Maybe the ineptness on the parts of some governments is what is really being depicted here. Hurricane Katrina and Fema for example.

The procedures we have in place may well be served to some degree at the time but until we have all the facts, which may not come to light until it is too late, we cannnot assume that even with the proper protection and emergency procedures that they will be carried out responsibly.

Human nature sometimes has way of contributing to human disaster in collosal proportions.

Not trying to be negative, just looking at the 'dramatization' of a pandemic
in a different perspective.

I caught a repeat of the program on CBC late last night.

My short review is that it was dramatic enough to hold my intrest, and it was informative enough to give me some indication of a possible outcome from a global pandemic and some of the preparations that I could take.

If you get a chance to see the show, I think it's worth watching.
If only for the thought it provokes on the subject.............