No one home

Too little, too late I think Revere and that goes for all the administrations since the last flu pandemic. Regardless of where we are on the war it would seem the demon is hungry and going to come and get a few. Money doesnt seem to affect it. We have litigated ourselves into a box and too many rights. Now the right to healthcare is going to go onto the chopping block because no one I have spoken too plans to show up in the first couple of weeks.

So for those of us who have prepared we will be staring into a bright new world afterwards. Money could be worthless paper, food might be the new exchange method and the US could become a totally agrarian economy. People like Tymp will make it out in the boonies but I fear for those at the 1/2 way mark thru the first wave. They havent done a thing even though we Chicken Littles are clucking about chickens.

Only way to do something about them is to roll them damned sleeves up and start feeding them, taking care of their kids, burying them if necessary. Then we recover after a huge illness wave or a huge illness killer wave. Some of us wont be around to blog.

I did a little math the other night on the effects of Katrina and the effects of a killer flu. It came out to like 234 bucks in lost pay per person on the planet, and only 8 bucks per person for Katrina out of the US. That is to say we taxpayers have spent an average of 8 bucks to recover from Katrina. Staggering difference. Revere, Halliburton will get the contract of course to bury people in mass graves.

You know, they will say we didnt do enough, but a trillion bucks is a lot of money to totally prepare for the unknown or beef up the health care system. Problem is that everyone wants it, but no one wants to pay for it and we always act post of something like this. It would surely save a life or two, or maybe two million. For those without it and the possibility of survival they would want it. But so far I havent seen a damned thing that would indicate that the survival rate would increase. Tamiflu is Kool Aid to this stuff now, no viable vaccine and now they are confirming a third wave strain in China. That new strain is possibly created from shitty Chinese human vaccine being used on some dumb bird that opened the door to humans.

I sit here writing this and it disturbs me to no end that a good chunk of this planets population is very likely to be gone in under three years if you buy the WHO prediction. All things that we know will change, all things that we do will change and it could take the group that would normally defend this nation out-young people. Those of us that are still here will have damaged lungs, be unable to work too terribly much and if Williams XDR-TB comes roaring in on the hind quarters of this it would finish us and nearly the rest of the planet.

Our ability in the past to survive the crap on this planet as man to monkey or just Adam and Eve to present has been our ability to adapt. Thats likely where we are going to be in short order-adapting to a really nasty problem. This is going to separate the men from the boys and the ladies from the girls. If you have to go out, its better to go swinging.

So please remind me when we first started trusting that our elected representatives could pull bunnies out of hats or mitigate social ills;nationally or globally.If this pandemic occurs(and my flesh crawls at the thought)then the survivors will most likely be the ones who have taken personal responsibility,as far as possible,for their own family's survival.We live in a time of "rights" not "responsibilities".We in the West have been fattening and softening on the public trough for so long now that we demand/expect that our governments will "save" us from our own follies;and in this case,global pandemic disaster.They will not.

It's a hard reality, that is going to put alot of us to the test. I for one don't expect any help at all: Our government, in its penny wise pound foolish non-proactive mindset caused another 6 years of increasing carbon emissions to add to the planetary overload and resultant global warming, claiming that to restrict carbon emissions would hurt the economy. Now good old Tony Blair is saying that the resultant climate change is going to be an economic catastrophe. Well, it's the same thing with the pandemic. It might cost a half a billion now to properly prepare, but in terms of a quick recovery and being able to keep the economy rolling, it would be quite a bit more cost effective than letting a billion people die, with the resultant chaos that Randy predicts. I think if this pandemic hits in it's present form, it's going to be as hard and as fast as Katrina - only globally - taking out infrastructures almost as quickly as that massive storm. Infrastructures are people-run, and sick people can't work, period. If I get sick, I don't expect anyone to come take care of me, least of all my kids. I wouldn't want to expose them. If I survive, it will be on my own with a hell of alot of luck. If I die, I don't see any point in taking others out with me. Isolation and non exposure are about the only safety net. You get ready, you get others to get themselves ready, and then you all hide out until it blows past. I have no intention of ministering to the ill, as I have no effective measures, no tamiflu, nothing I can give but comfort. And if you are that sick, you are probably not very aware of a comfort giver anyway. This is brutal, but honest. If you have ever read accounts of the black plague, people left their children to fend for themselves, doctors and nurses deserted their patients and hospitals and fled into the mountains. Brutal. Self centered. Survival sometimes is.

It's simple. We need $5 billion for hospital preparedness.

The Center for Biosecurity at Pittsburgh calculated in June of this year that each of the nation's 5,000 hospitals need $1 million for basic measures like planning, staff education, personal protective equipment, and extra supplies.

http://www.biosecurityjournal.com/TONER.pdf

For half of what we spend in Iraq for one month, we could give every hospital in America a fighting chance.

Well, yeah, it'll prolly get ugly. Some kids won't make it and plenty of us prepared oldsters aren't going to either. If it smacks the 18-40 crowd as predicted, then the population may be well winnowed.

I'd just as soon skip it. Out of my 18 local extended family members, only three of us are at all prepared. I reckon my modest Tamiflu stocks will go to the prophylactic protection of my EMT son-in-law who is a first responder for the unprepared (masks, gloves, respirators, Tamiflu,,,) Fire Dept. Can't see him bringing it home to my daughter or her daughter in the 1st wave. Doubt the Tamiflu will be prophylactially efficacious much past that moment.

We expect a 100 car coal train from Wyoming here at least 6 days out of 7 to stay juiced. Water which comes over the Rockies in a pipe and natural gas pressures have already been falling winter after winter. I'm planning on intermittent utilities with pintos, rice, chiles, canned meats and a whole lotta luck.

Randy: You catch Flags of Our Fathers? Films like that always reassure me about nuking the Japs. I thought the Navy corpsman (Ryann Phillipe) nailed the role and the story. Interesting treatment they had for severe PTSD in dose daze - tour the country pitching war bonds. Still, better than Iwo Jema, even for Hayes. Glad I missed that war though I knew several survivors of the Bataan Death March from Grant County, NM where I grew up. It was a while before they bought Japanese goods in those parts but now they're sucking up Chinese and Indian stuff w/o a thought.

It is a little late to mobilize the community. In any case, 'they' have been sabotaging effective community organizations for the last forty years.

Who benefits? More precisely, who thinks they will benefit?

ALL of the comments above are so GREAT and
TRUE!

I do not have much to add.

The "community" is not ready---nowhere is it ready.

When we know what we are dealing with, action will START in the "community".
Unfortunately, most people need to see a threat roaring toward THEM, specifically and personally, before they move and take action.

What is the "community" NOW?

The suburb?
The school?
The church?
The office?
The grocery store?
Wal-Mart?
The freeway?
The nursing home?
The daycare?
The stadium?

A HUGE problem in America is that a functioning local "community" does not exist in most places!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There will be people who become ill in the pandemic and survive. They will be the people who will need to volunteer to help others.

Every area will need to find a way to coordinate survivors helping the sick in their homes. Basic nursing skills will save many lives---and many who survive will be able to render these services.

They can keep people hydrated, try to keep them as comfortable as possible, and keep them clean. Once on the road to recovery they can feed the new survivor. This will save a LOT of lives.

We will owe the survival of many to volunteers doing the right thing.

Our federal government and its wise leaders are way of ahead of us in regard to solving this problem. On the same day the president signed the much admired Military Commissions Act of 2006, to protect us from terrorists, he also signed another law which revises the Insurrection Act and the Posse Comitatus Act. The revision of these acts removes the prohibitions on the president to use active duty military and the national guard for domestic law enforcement.
So the president can now declare martial law in an emergency. And a bird flu pandemic would be an emergency.
There will be all kinds of problems during a pandemic, including the care of those sick that have no assistance, that the military can assist with.
Recently the president signed public law 109-364, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007, which includes section 1076. Please read it carefully.
"Section 1076 of the massive Authorization Act, which grants the Pentagon another $500-plus-billion for its ill-advised adventures, is entitled, "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies." Section 333, "Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law" states that "the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of ("refuse" or "fail" in) maintaining public order, "in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy."

Earl E. wrote "Basic nursing skills will save many lives---and many who survive will be able to render these services."

Please look at, and blog about, and act about this: http://goodhometreatment.blogspot.com/

Some of us in the trenches of public health have been talking about this issue for some time, but it has generally fallen on deaf ears. It is much more exciting to plan dramatic response efforts.

What's with all the hatred for government emerging in this thread and others in EM? Aside from preparing your own household, how would you suggest that we prepare for a pandemic? Is there another social structure that can be substituted to carry out the emergency roles of government? Through what mechanism would medicine and food be distributed? Who will fund the development, production and distribution of a profitless pandemic vaccine?
I don't have any use for many of the end-times scenerios and sci-fi plots that people are associating with this pandemic strain. Get real, folks. And by 'real', I mean think about solutions, don't fantasize about the end of the world.

traumatized: ok, let's try reality. Best case scenario, the H5N1 virus peters out and never becomes a global pandemic. Worst case, it takes off H2H this flu season at its current kill rate of over 50%. The only other scenarios between is that it becomes a pandemic but is less lethal, say 10%. Of course it also depends on how infectious it is, but by definition a pandemic flu is easily transmitted H2H, so let's say 30% of population infected, 10% die. At 10% our economy and way of life would recover fairly rapidly, with only some fairly minor disruptions and inconveniences during the worst of the flu sieges. But with every incremental rise in that lethality rate, the problems expand geometrically because less and less people will be able to step in for the sick ones. At 20 to 30% lethality, our health care systems, already overburdened (talk to any nurse, my daughter's one), will begin to fail, unable to care not just for the flu victims but for all the other patients needing care. Police, Firefighters, medics, bus drivers, sanitation workers, the truck drivers bringing food and gasoline to your communities,the guys manning the electric companies, the water works, the phone companies , the cable and internet companies....more and more of these vital workers will become sick and unable to come to work. Then with these infrastructures failing come other repercussions that are not related to the actual flu virus. People unable to get food or water, riots... Oh, sorry, was I fantasizing again. Okay then, tell me your fantasy, about how it's all going to be okay and neighbor is going to help neighbor and good samaritans are going to ride in to save the day and ...oops, sounds like another Hollywood ending to me. I don't think one soul here wants an "end time"...that's why we are all here trying to be survivors and to convince others to prepare so they too can survive IF the flu should come. And I, like tymp, have failed to even convince my immediate family to prepare. So, I don't see a whole lot of hope or help out there IF the pandemic hits. The only solutions are not being undertaken. That is our point here. You got one to offer? Other than hide your head in the sand and hope that either the flu never materializes or if it does it is no more virulent or infective than the 1918 strain?

traumatized: are you so sure that an upcoming pandemic WON'T be the end of the world??? If we're going to plan at all, let's go ahead and bite the bullet and plan for the ABSOLUTE WORST that can actually happen. And that means using our imaginations to dream up just what WORST CASE could possibly be. I've done it, Randy's done it, and apparently so have many others. It ain't pretty, but it is possible. Solutions? Move to the country, learn to grow your own food, live off-grid, learn about wild foods and natural medicines.... it's a start. The world could fall apart around you and you'd still be OK. Anything short of self-sufficiency is DEPENDENCE - on your neighbors, on your government, on the economy. To sit there and hope that in a time of crisis someone is going to help you when you need it most, handing out food, water and medicines, is pure fantasy. Might happen. Probably won't. I still recall the tragic faces of Katrina victims waiting for days at the Convention Center for someone to bring them food and water and rescue them. They waited. And waited. And waited.

I went to bed shortly after reading Mr. Kruger's unhappy post. I woke up thinking about my mother in law. When she was a child of two she had the misfortune to live in a Polish village which was a hotbed of resistance against nazi occupation. The men and boys were shot, the women and children shipped to a concentration camp and the village plowed into the ground. Her father and brother were shot, her sister and twin died in the camps. She remembers digging potatoes with frozen hands and fighting with other children over a rat which they ate raw. She has never believed that disasters are unthinkable. I would like her to die peacefully in bed with full freezers and a groaning pantry. I hope her life isn't end-bracketed with a concentration camp on one end and a pandemic flu on the other.

My friends and I have a weekly local cable access tv show. It's a parody of a cooking show (the characters aren't real, but the cooking is). Last week my friend made chicken soup and oral rehydration solution (from the recipe in Woodson's manual). It's not much, and we don't have much of a viewing audience (though potentially the audience is quite large). I know a lot of communities don't have local cable access television, but it's a great resource that's underutilized for getting information out to people in the community.

Steph

Steph: and getting it there in time, that means before anyone can see through his own eyes and hear with his own ears the things they don't want to imagine c.q. believe will happen.
A pandemic will not create a howling storm and rain drops. It will come deadly silent.

Yo Tymp. Yeah I caught it last week. My Dad was on one of the carriers providing air support and met Ira Hayes when they made port back into Pearl. He was just becoming famous. So here we are. H5N1 or a cousin is really going to get the worlds attention and its not unlike WWII. It takes millions to win a war, but everything you've got to lose one. Again not unlike WWII a threat of immeasurable proportion is taking hold and depending on who you speak to, we aint doing shit or we are doing only what the law allows. Remember, Frist tried in August of last year to get more money for H5 and response but the Dems wouldnt back it. I will tell you though at as of this month, DHS budgets are being reallocated more for homeland security and that means equipment for first responders. Hospitals though are on their own and by law cannot be assisted until the event, a governor signs an order federalizing a disaster, and of course the Feds having resources to do it. William not withstanding and the Posse C. Act, they cannot act unless the governors sign those orders. Misinterpretation William-What President in his right mind is going to federalize a disaster because of the costs? Order? Who is he going to call on, a sick and dying NG or Army? Yup, rush them guys on down there to "_____" just to get them sick. Nope they will be tasked with protecting infrastructure and the orders there WILL be shoot to kill if it gets too gnarly.

No, with this one except for research that everyone pounds hell out of the pharma people for, I dont see that even spending a dime will help more than "x" number of people and "x" is a pretty low number and we could spend one crapload of money for them to have the right to die on a respirator that there are no operators for.
.
Up top of this post we are seeing spending 5 million per hospital to provide "care". Might has well be giving them Jonestown Kool Aid rather than Tamiflu. I havent seen anyone lately that survived. Can someone please describe what 5 million will get you in survivorships? Less than 15% I think right now and they did that with the most extraordinary of care. So the first couple thru the doors get the treatment and we get a bill that bankrupts the country. Money goes to zip value and thats where the crux of the matter will reside with everyone. Survived by oh shit, now I am broke.

You recall the amount of money spent from last year on that Chinese kid that made it. 50,000 USD in a ChiCom hospital for one survivor? If MIH estimates are correct and its 10% of the population that gets it and the following numbers just die...get this 300,000 x 50,000 =$15,000,000,000.00. 1918 flu killed 675,000 that they know of. Do the math. Its a no brainer that the country would cease to exist and default on every bond out there if it gets saddled with the costs of say a 30% or 50% event. Hell I am reading info from the front office that says the tipping point may be at as little as 8%.I will make a bundle off of H5 only to find that 10,000 bucks will buy me a loaf of bread. (Germany 1949-they showed up to buy bread with wheelbarrow loads of marks).

There are those that will always say that its Iraq or some other gomer war but to them the thought of using a tactical nuke to settle it is a little out there. HOLD IT FOLKS I am not saying nuke the gomers, but all things considered and if it becomes High Path H5N1 and all of the young people are dying like flies in the streets and someone gets antsy, that may be the only spear we have to throw. China could go for Taiwan, N. Korea for S. Korea, Iran for the Persian Gulf. Of course they would be sick and dying on the way but once into place we would have one hell of a time dislodging them. Its a military assessment folks, most of the time they are partially wrong. A lot of the time they get it mostly right.

TwoCrow, even in the worst of cases I couldnt see a government takeover of the system. It just wouldnt work. Too many ex-military guys out there that will survive it for that. Order? Yes. Concentration camps, no. Too expensive and definitely not on the radar unless we get some governor who goes ape-shit and tries holding the rest of the country for ransom. My big fear is that we have the incompetence of Katrina by a governor. All Blanco had to do was look out the window, sign a piece of paper and the troops would have been in there three days earlier. Some schoolteachers shouldnt be in charge of the playground.

Traumatized wants a solution: how's this...(not new, I brought it up once before, but I've expanded it just a little)? The government issues emergency preparedness cards to every household. The card allows the holder to buy basic food rations (canned meat, canned fruit, rice, beans, & spices) and simple equipment to cook them on, plus containers to get & purify water, and basic emergency health care supplies for each member of their family, from a prepared bare bones list. For those who are at or below poverty level all the things on the list can be gotten for free; for the rest of us, it's on a sliding scale according to income. The card is mailed out now, but is not activated and usable until WHO raises the pandemic alert level to say 5 or 6. In the meantime, the government begins stocking community centers with the supplies on the list so that if/when the need arises the people can go locally to pick up these things in an orderly fashion (perhaps assigned times of day/days of week by street address or alphabetically to keep the crowds low.) Those in charge of distributing the supplies could be properly outfitted with nano masks to protect them. This would minimize the possibility of spreading the virus among the population, while at the same time giving citizens the basics they need to survive in isolation. Info sheets on how to make rehydration solutions, how to find/clean and sterilize drinking water, and how to help bring down fever and give basic life saving care to flu victims in the family could be given out with these supply kits. It's a one stop shopping for everything. This could be organized and done fairly quickly. There would be very little cost to the government for this preparation - relative to the huge bucks they're talking about spending for tamiflu and hospital upgrades - if the pandemic never materializes. But if it does, they would probably save more lives in the long run with this kind of proactive isolation and social distancing plan to AVOID having alot of flu victims then the reactive approach they are currently planning, which is based on trying to care for the all the victims. I am going to continue trying to push this idea at community centers and to local government officials, but to really be affective it needs federal government support and financial backing. However trying to get anything read by those at the federal government level is next to impossible. I may send a bunch more communications out to state senators and representatives like I did a month ago and hope eventually someone with power will like the idea enough to act on it.
Maybe some of you could do the same?

MIH have you noticed that when you start hearing your own echo that you're pretty sure you're a voice in the wilderness? The CanyonLands in Utah are like this - marvelous sonic environment.

It will be more than a little interesting to see how the community self help response evolves. There will be a few people around who know what to do but will the thread pass before they stumble. Even the Federal food programs have some momentum but they are probably too far from the problem to immediately be much help and they're as subject to operational attrition as anyone. (Don't you love the theological definition of attrition?) Then there will be the folks like yourself who may yet have some willingness to pitch in with well thought out ideas despite being ignored for years. Mix will be a little different everywhere.

It's like trying to find a good seat for a trainwreck. Best not be on the train, I suppose. Not sure I'm going to recognize that seat when I find it.

Ah once again folks we are back full circle. I completely recommend that everyone register up to respond. Some of us wont make it if it comes in High Path, but hey you got to go of something. While not painless its pretty quick. Mary is right and everyone should know that the Federal Government is POWERLESS to do much in a pandemic.

It is always said that all disasters are local. Some places will do better, some much worse. Some will cease to exist. Tympo-man because he is in a local community where everyone knows each other is likely to do very well. All that will pass will, but it wont be from a lack of care. Maybe from the lack of a ventilator but not care. Places like NYC in a 8% event would be a death house. It reminds me of the stories of the Black Death in London, "Bring out your dead." Those people were paid by the Crown to haul the dead to bonfires and burn them. They were also some of the biggest suvivors. Fleas dont like fire.

Anyways MIH you hammer those guys in Hawaii because even though you are in an area that grows a lot of things, there isnt likely enough to supply the needs of a group of city dwellers and its a long swim to LAX. The military will help where they can but if you actually read the NPP then you will know that those guys are going to be tasked entirely with infrastructure security and maintenance. Retired workers are already being called to see if they will participate if it comes. Like the great Americans they are, very few have refused. One guy I saw in a rag was 86 and in a wheelchair and was a nuke operator for 36 years said as long as his wheelchair could get past the desks in the control room My kind of guy.

We can always hope that nothing is going to happen, but I fear it will.

The nuke plant should be getting stocked up to hotel and feed that vet (and, that his family is safe).

M. Randolph Kruger, we probably wouldn't be running into each other much in real life, but, I sure wish you were giving a talking to to the police/fire/town officials/cemetery workers here! (very few front-line workers can actually afford to live in our town, either, another short-sighted policy) -the more I look at how impossible it will be to restrict access to our town- (think of the intersecting lines on a dart board) and, we're not publically thinking about a pandemic year, and, we're not far enough from Boston where they are even less secure as a public- the more I think we need someone like you getting us ready.

By the way, I think those neighborhood "bring out your dead" carts are a better idea than current plans. Don't require fuel, just keep records as they go on, walk it to the cemetery (if you have horses, use 'em) and record where the id-tagged bodies are placed. Let some of the family walk to the cemetery and help bury, need security details for each cart... Mental health professional sure better get up to speed...(sigh)

Still have local business people scorning me because they think the lack of urgency in the msm means pandemic must not be very likely. Can't get some to go look into it themselves. Still don't think we are even thinking the same thing when we say "a pandemic"...

Thanks local officials, who could have started a year ago, with the WHO "ten things", and, the US fed admissions of disruptions and no help, and chose not to tell the public. You should have to go get the unattended dead and bury 'em yourself; Mortuary Reserve Corps Needs You, you, who didn't think the public could handle the truth. We still all will get the natural consequences for not trying to become more aware, educated, resiliant, households.

MRK: "Tympo-man because he is in a local community where everyone knows each other is likely to do very well."

Been a while since you were in Colorado Springs. It was a little like that in '67 when I got here but things have gone steadily downhill with the advent of Californication. Even the People's Republic of Boulder was a generally better environment when I worked out of there in the '80s and drank Rocky Flats water at my home in Broomfield.

You'd like it here though I'm not sure you could stomach Dr. Dobson either (and his numerous ilk - over 50 religious non-profits last I checked) and let's not forget all the homophobes. Many retired military and a generally hawkish bunch of defense contractors here who sing your song.

We've managed to ruin our spectacular backdrop of the near Front Range with monstrous limestone quarries so everyone can have some red gravel driveways and our infrastructure is about 15 years behind. But we have big plans for a billion dollar pipeline to the Arkansas River near Pueblo so we can water the ever expanding CSprings eastern ghetto anchored by Fucus and so nobly developed by the long dominant real estate hegemony.

The repubecans may have finally put the 5th Congressional seat at risk (dead nuts lock since creation in '72). Lamborn is so bad that even the retiring Joel Hefley won't endorse him though he leads by about 7% (47-40). Fawcett is a recently retired LTC (probably the last rank at which any good work occurs but they're whipping on him for being a lightweight) and may actually still have a grip on what needs emphasis in the defense budget and priorities in the posture. Darth Chaney will be here Friday to rub a little mugwump jism on the faithful and put this mild threat to bed. I registered Red for the first time in my life to try and get a reasonable guy out of the repubecan primary - he finished 4th. Still trying to get the bad taste out of my yap.

Tymp-I yowled laughing at this post. Yeah like the Libs we have our Religiorightests trying to take over the party. I wouldnt register red though. I silently vote a little more left when I see my party going nutshit crazy every couple of years. Fear not Libs, if Hilary runs she will lose in a tumultuous I want a recount. But the one thing that it will do is pull my party closer to the center. Thats the party that always wins, the one that holds the center.

Tymp-Sorry about C' Springs. Wonder what they would say if I advocated the nuking of Colorado in an off year election?

As for LT. Colonels and last rank at which productive work is done may be on target. The ones that were the exception to the rule are dead and cant testify. I know two or three of this type.