We've all seen the image. Maybe it was as the grainy output of a high-school filmstrip, filling the screen in time with the projector's familiar purr. Or maybe it was as the ominous warning of the earnest narrator of an independently financed documentary.

It is the image of the spread of disease. To the backdrop of a world map, a single dot shows the disease's foreboding beginnings. This is followed by more and more marks, huddling together in ever-growing groups. That continues, at a quickening pace, until all the marks become one, blotting out the map and, presumably, all hope.

It's an image whose time has come once again. That is, if predictions of the impending pandemic come to pass. Some scares have fizzled (remember Y2K?) but others (think SARS) knocked us on our collective ass - at least for a time.

True, lessons were learned. Awareness was raised. But has that wisdom stuck?

Talk of the pandemic has been around for some time and many authorities are concerned that the H5N1 avian flu strain will become the next influenza pandemic. Yet a new survey from the Conference Board of Canada shows that our accumulated knowledge may not have left a lasting mark. Despite information being available, despite the cautions - some measured; some not - only four per cent of the 75 organizations that responded have completed a preparedness plan.

The threat of doom seems to be doing little to spur us into action. "Canadian organizations are much more concerned about a pandemic outbreak than they are prepared for one," says a statement from the board.

Our memories appear to be dishearteningly short. Some may say this is the natural healing that must occur; others may say this is begging history to repeat itself.

Almost a third of organizations without a plan indicated that, should a pandemic arise, they would rely on existing business continuity and/or emergency preparedness plans. The problem with that approach is that relying on the old emergency plan - clearly something of great benefit in most cases - may not pan out in the new reality.

Train derailments, industrial explosions and ice storms won't last several weeks or months. Pandemics will.

That's something the Toronto Academic Health Sciences Network has taken account of in its "Pandemic Influenza Planning Guidelines." Antiviral drugs will be available to all staff members over a 56-day period, the anticipated length of the first wave of a pandemic.

The conference board survey does contain some positives. Slightly more than 70 per cent of respondents reported their organizations were working on a pandemic preparedness plan. As well, 87 per cent of organizations with pandemic plans in place or in the works have a program to prevent the spread of general flu viruses at work.

And while a pandemic will surely be a different beast than seasonal flu, the results are at least good news for general preparedness. That is not something to sneeze at, but preparedness needs tweaking in the face of the onslaught of a pandemic.

Cutting memories short, and considering pandemics to be problems elsewhere in the world, will not do. This will hit home - eventually.

And when it does, riding the pandemic wave may mean double the trouble for some. Standing paralyzed and wondering what to do after the pandemic has arrived is one disaster too late for comfort.

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