Corporate & Securities Law

Pandemic Legal Planning

By John Wallbillich

The concerns about a possible swine flu epidemic are building; the U.S. government’s main website is here; the CDC’s is here (they are going avian a bit by Twittering here).

Going back in my archives, I found this Department of Treasury pandemic scenario planning site here. There is some excellent information there, summarized in an overview document.

Also, here’s other resources from the DOJ and the ACLU.

If this influenza spreads, in-house lawyers will be spending a lot of time with security, operations and HR personnel (hopefully not medical). No one has been through one of these; you will have workers who can’t come to work, and many others who won’t want to. Imagine what happens when someone enters a full conference room sniffling and then launches a major sneeze.

Working remotely will be an attractive option for many; it’s probably also worth investigating some flexibility on personal time off. You don’t want sick people coming to work because they’re low on or out of PTO. That’s why sick days used to accrue rather than being changed to the more flexible (but less protective) PTO.

Let’s hope this outbreak will be small and contained quickly. International air travel spreads a virus faster than anything.

Taking the big picture approach, here’s a Google Maps bird’s-eye view of where things stand, allegedly updated in real time (click on this little map, and move your cursor on the full-sized one that opens up in your browser):

Full post as published by The Wired GC on April 27, 2009 (boomark / email).