Power Infrastructure Gets Short-changed in Pandemic Plans

by Anthony L. Kimery

'An effective overall and public health response depends largely on the availability of electricity' Buttressing what a variety of catastrophic emergency public health authorities have warned about for some time, a new report by the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy (CIDRAP) has sounded the alarm about the need for protecting the nation’s electric power grid in the event of a pandemic. The report, “Pandemic Influenza, Electricity, and the Coal Supply Chain,” explained that “during the next pandemic, the demand for critical products and services that we depend on for immediate health and safety will likely outstrip supply, prompting shortages that could exacerbate morbidity and mortality.” “One example of such a critical product is electricity,” the report emphasized,” pointing out that “coal … is the primary fuel for power generation in the United States. Usage varies by region; the Midwest, for example, generates approximately 75 percent of its electricity from coal, whereas the west coast generates about 5 percent from coal.” Yet “despite regional differences in coal usage, a pandemic is likely to break links in the coal supply chain, thus disrupting electrical generation. This has the potential to severely endanger the bulk electrical power system in most of the United States,” wrote the authors of the report, CIDRAP Director Dr. Michael T. Osterholm and Nicholas S. Kelley, research assistant with “CIDRAP Business Source” and a doctoral student in the Divison of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health. Osterholm and Kelley stated that “an effective overall and public health response depends largely on the availability of electricity. Preventing disruptions in the coal supply chain is paramount, and such an effort will certainly require a financial investment. But the consequence of failing to prepare may be catastrophic. We believe the nation must reduce the risk that a pandemic poses to the generation of electricity and the collateral damage to society that will occur without electricity.” The report urges the federal government to “assume primary responsibility for ensuring that coal miners and their supporting infrastructure personnel have priority access to antiviral drugs, pandemic vaccines, and other critical products and services (eg, critical pharmaceutical drugs and food)." Currently, coal miners and other essential electric power generation infrastructure personnel are not identified as a priority in either federal or state plans to support critical infrastructures during a pandemic. A paper in a recent edition of Biosecurity and Bioterrorism tends to support the CIDRAP report, noting “the critical relationship between intact societal infrastructure and health.” “Significant breakdowns in infrastructure could lead to devastating secondary public health effects and neglect of those most in need,” states the paper, “Ethics and Severe Pandemic Influenza: Maintaining Essential Functions Through a Fair and Considered Response.” A collapse of the nation’s power system could lead to “significant outbreaks of other infectious diseases,” such as drug-resistant Hospital Acquired Infections and multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis – emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases which are a growing problem today, as HSToday.us has reported. The CIDRAP report asserts that federal pandemic plans have failed to "conceptualize the magnitude of supply chain disruptions that will occur in a global just-in-time economy; address how to prevent pandemic-related electric power disruptions; and offer guidance on how to respond if electrical power is disrupted during a pandemic." "Current levels of pandemic planning are likely insufficient to sustain the coal supply chain during a pandemic; the link between the public health response and reliable access to coal-fueled electricity is neither understood nor addressed in current pandemic plans in the United States,” the report stated. Osterholm and Kelley wrote that the public health sector would have great difficulty functioning without a stable supply of electricity during a pandemic. Echoing other pandemic planners who’ve taken a big picture look at the inherent problems stemming from a pandemic, Osterholm and Kelley say pandemic planning has largely been relegated as a public health issue, avoiding meaningful conceptualization of broader pandemic-related supply chain disruptions in today's just-in-time supply chain economy. They further blame a lack of leadership in pandemic planning for the nation's critical infrastructure – especially electric power.