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Article VIII:  "Viral Damages To The World":
Around the world, millions of people are still sick of viral pandemics such as AIDS that has killed more than 40 million people worldwide.  As of 2021, 27.4 million people living with HIV were on antiretroviral therapy, up from 8 million in 2010.  While this leaves over 10 million people still untreated, the United Nations intends to narrow the gap with their ambitious 90-90-90 strategy, which aims to end the pandemic by 2030. 
The primary goals of the 90-90-90 strategy were meant to be met by 2020, namely:
  • Diagnosing 90% of people living with HIV worldwide
  • Placing 90% of the diagnosed people on treatment
  • Ensuring 90% of those on treatment have an undetectable viral load
It is known that by achieving this level of viral suppression, people with HIV are far less likely to pass the virus to others. By doing so on a global scale, UNAIDS officials strongly believe that the pandemic can effectively be ended by as early as 2030.  But is it really as easy as all that?  Even the most ardent supporters of the strategy acknowledge that such targets have never before been achieved in the history of public health. In the same breath, however, most will also agree that without the aggressive expansion of existing national HIV programs, the window of opportunity to stave that global crisis could be all but lost.  It was this latter reality that eventually led to the endorsement of the 90-90-90 strategy at a United Nations High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS, held in New York City in June 2016.
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After more than three years of COVID-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that over 763 million infections, and nearly 7 million deaths, have been attributed to COVID-19. Vaccination was deemed crucial to prevent the continued spread of the disease, protect those infected from experiencing severe effects, counter the rise of new variants, and ultimately end the pandemic.  The WHO has lifted the Public Health Emergency of International Concern, but ending the ongoing threat of COVID-19 still depends on vaccination and other protective behaviours. Understanding the effectiveness of vaccines remains crucial.
The WHO announced on May 5th, 2023 that COVID-19 is no longer a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).  Meanwhile, a new pandemic may already be on the horizon as the global and interspecies spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza is raising growing alarm. The adoption and now lifting of the PHEIC declaration during the COVID-19 pandemic, and actions taken by governments in between, offer clear lessons if the world is willing to learn and apply them.
True recovery from the viral pandemics is a difficult goal to accomplish, and it is expensive.  For example, who is the real "Patient Zero" of HIV?  Is it human or animal like chimpanzee?  In my view, it is an animal like infected chimpanzee.   Therefore, we need to perform Disaster Recovery (DR) planning and implementation activities.  DR is an organized method of regaining access and functionality to its infrastructure after disaster like viral pandemic, natural disaster like storm, or some other type of disaster.  In other words, DR is consist of best practices designed to prevent or minimize damages from catastrophic disasters.
Many people neglect to develop a reliable and practicable DR plan.  Without such a plan, they have little or no protection from the impact of such disruptive disasters.
A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is a set of detailed, documented guidelines that outline critical assets and explain how the organization will respond to unplanned incidents. Unplanned incidents or disasters typically include terrorism, system failures, power outages, natural disasters, equipment failures, or infrastructure disasters.  More specifically, a DRP measures how capable an organization’s ability to restore its functionality and access to critical resources, regardless of the disaster event.
A DRP should identify the responsibilities within the organization, outline the step-by-step instructions for the disaster recovery process, and create plans to mitigate and reduce the impact of the incident so that the organization can resume basic operations as soon as possible.  Without these plans in place, organizations can suffer catastrophic damage in form of data loss, data exposure, significantly reduced productivity, penalties and fines, reputational damage, lost revenue, and unplanned recovery expenses.
Creating DRPs, along with Business Continuity (BC) and Incident Response (IR) plans, can help build confidence with stakeholders, investors, clients, and business partners that demonstrate the capability and preparation to deal with any incident.
Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is similar to DRP, but a continuity plan is an overarching plan that outlines the steps needed for a business to continue operating in the event of an incident or disaster. A disaster recovery plan considers a more structured approach to the recovery process rather than the continuity process.
Incident Response Plans (IRP) are critical to any security program because they provide detailed actions for responding and reacting to specific incidents. An IRP is focused on handling a cybersecurity incident and its fallout from start to finish, whereas a DRP is a more robust plan that considers the potential of serious damage to the whole enterprise and how to restore technology.
Ultimately, the aim of a DRP is to facilitate quick and complete restoration if disaster strikes that results in downtime.  However, the cost of business downtime is not always easy to calculate and recover.  Amazon, online retailer,  reported revenues of $107 billion in 2015, which comes out to $203,577 every minute in today's numbers, or a $2,646,501 price tag for the 13 minute episode of downtime.
Cyber attacks target physically or logically that have one or more vulnerabilities that can be exploited. As a result of the attack, the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the resource may be compromised.  UpGuard's platform for digital resilience ensures that the infrastructure is at all times compliant, hardened for strong security, and free from misconfigurations  that could cause downtime.
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by Naveed Khan and World Wide Web (WWW) pages; 1/4/2024

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