Current national contingency plans account for possible personnel shortages within the healthcare and public health settings, mainly due to the expected influenza morbidity among workers. Yet our data suggest that regardless of the expected morbidity among personnel during an influenza pandemic, nearly half of the local health department workers are likely not to report to duty during such an extreme public health crisis. In fact, most of the workers (and nearly three out of four technical/support workers) do not believe they will even be asked to report to work.