Plandemic Panning
2nd June 2007


When the Man from the Ministry arrived at the seminar he was so encumbered with baggage I thought he was on his way to or from the airport. Apart from the obligatory laptop – the modern manager’s bowler hat and brolly – he carried an oversize shoulder bag and a smaller briefcase.

As we watched – twenty-five primary school principals in a stuffy room on a slow Monday afternoon - he unpacked his bags, producing a data projector, two large speakers and a tangle of cables which he meticulously re-ordered, his face a study in concentration. We waited, trying to guess his purpose.

When all was prepared the Man from the Ministry delivered a short prologue – “You are about to see Operation Cruikshank” – and pressed Enter.

Operation Cruikshank flashed onto the big screen at the front of the room. There was a news desk, a brief opening title, and a severe young woman describing an outbreak of avian bird flu spreading through New Zealand. We crossed to the parliamentary reporter standing in front of the beehive, cut to pictures of soldiers sealing off streets and a selection of closeups showing boxes of medication and white-coated health workers with face masks.

Operation Cruikshank rolled out like a snore. Talking heads from government agencies and security services described how they will react when the pandemic – bird flu or other – reaches our shores. A slightly deranged traffic light flashed coloured security levels as the epidemic expanded – from orange to yellow and final, fatal red.

By the end of the afternoon the authors of Operation Cruikshank had convinced us that when the long-anticipated pandemic strikes we will talk the bloody thing to a standstill.

I have endured several pandemic planning presentations. There is a small, bilious corner of the public service dedicated to, nay, enthralled by the theatrical potential of disaster preparation. It is a bureaucrat’s dream, a fantasy of forms and regulations, of action plans, backups and contingencies, of Orders-In-Council and sirens in the streets.

Civil service planners seem unphased by some small realities: the much-anticipated bird flu pandemic shows no sign of rousing itself and even if it does their plans will never work. On one hand pandemic planning is a no-brainer, on the other it is a hospital pass.

The plans will never work because there seems to be no coherent set of responses to mitigate the effects of a determined virus.

Take the influenza pandemic of 1919, for example. Even with the country on a wartime footing the epidemic went where it pleased. The Man from the Ministry reminded us that we are far less well prepared today.

“Oh, I dunno,” intoned a voice from the back of the room. “They may have had the army, but we have powerpoint.”

And sadly, we do. We have, through the miracle of information technology, the capacity to tie ourselves in knots.

I am exhorted by the Men from the Ministry to prepare a pandemic plan for my school. I am encouraged in this by the provision of hundreds of pages of forms
and spurred by the promise that the Education Review Office, the government’s pitbull, will audit my preparations on their next visit.

There are schools in New Zealand where pandemic planning runs to 40 pages of densely typed procedures, where committees and sub-committees have been formed, wardens appointed and students drilled to divert sneezes into their elbows. When pandemic strikes the students in these schools will be laid waste while staff decipher procedural point 44, sub-clause 23B.

Diligent schools hinge their preparation on sending work home to students. They conjure hopeful scenarios of teachers in their own homes emailing assignments to students, marking the completed returned work and generally carrying on as normal.

The Man from the Ministry burst that bubble. “Keep cyberspace free from unnecessary communications”, he said. With the population at home and the regular infrastructure curtailed the internet will be needed for essential communication. We must avoid overloading it with worksheets. Send home a few paper tasks when the kids leave and forget anything else.

As we suffer this plandemic I regret lost opportunities to join other, more vigorous, branches of the public service. I bet pandemic planning is more exciting for police or firefighters. I bet they don’t have to endure Operation Cruikshank. I imagine them throwing rings of steel around neighbourhoods, storming central city buildings, letting off smoke bombs, squirting fire hoses and shouting “bang! You’re dead!” All this while I sit on my backside in a stuffy room.

I’ve thought hard this week about pandemic preparations for my school. I’ve consulted staff and community and we’ve come up with a plan. It is simple and, we believe, effective.

1. Close the school.
2. Reopen when we’re told to.

That should do the trick.