Pandemic Planning 101
Exactly what is a pandemic and why are we even concerned?
Each year we all experience flu season. Some years we get sick and some years we don’t. The flu is a predictable illness and everyone has become pretty adept at recognizing the symptoms and knowing what to do. An epidemic is when the flu or other illness, spreads at a rate greater than the norm and infects more people than in a typical year. An epidemic is localize and affects a limited region. A pandemic spreads very quickly, affects entire continents and spreads world wide. A pandemic is difficult or impossible to treat in it’s early stages so it is important for all of us to be prepared to quickly begin taking care of all of our own needs.
The last large pandemic occurred in 1918, the Spanish Flu. It killed over 50 million people world wide. Unlike the people of that day we have much improved communications and we will know that a pandemic has begun almost immediately. Unfortunately, the next one will spread much more quickly than the 1918 pandemic because of increased use of mass transportation. In 1918 few people traveled more that 100 miles from home in their life times. Now we travel that distance on a regular basis. Due to this, when a pandemic strikes, those living in larger cities may have only a day or two to prepare and those of us in more rural areas a week. Over the next months we will prepare so we are ready and won’t have to compete with panicked crowds trying to purchase supplies.
During the 1918 pandemic there were communities which experienced very few or no illness or deaths. All of these have one thing in common. They self quarantined. A military base on Yerba Buena island in the San Fransisco bay stopped all contact with the outside world. They had supplies delivered to their docks and after the delivery boats were back on the bay they retrieved the supplies. This lasted for two months. A community in Colorado blocked their streets and would only allow traffic to drive through without stopping. If you stopped you were quarantined for several days to make sure you have not brought the illness with you. Other communities and private schools found the same success.
The government has advised that this same approach will most likely be taken by many communities, because it works. Everyone laughed a few years ago when Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt told us to prepare for a pandemic and store cans of tuna under our bed. Now the government is advising that a three month supply of food is a good idea. With the devastating hurricanes, floods and tornadoes of the pat two years it has become obvious that during a major emergency we need to be ready to care for our family ourselves. There are many who can not physically or mentally provide this care and the government will need to, and should, care for those individuals first. We need to be proactive and take steps now to protect those we love.
Our goal is to become prepared to self quarantine within our own homes with: a three month supply of food, medications and other items to treat the flu, a plan for continuing our income during a crisis, guidelines for caring for those who are ill, and providing distractions and entertainment when leaving your home is not an option.
This week please purchase or find a binder in your home that you can dedicate to Pandemic preparedness. We will be adding articles, instructions, inventory lists and more, to your binder over the next several months. Please take this week to spread the word among your neighbors and friends so they can follow along also, after all, if they are ready they won’t be knocking on your door asking for help in feeding and caring for their families.
To get an idea about what the experts are saying check out these links. If you have any questions please send me a note and I will be thrilled answer them. Our daughter and her family have a family motto which applies here: We Can Do Hard Things .. Together we can do this, so let’s get started!
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/phase/en/index.html
http://www.pandemicflu.gov/general/index.html
There are a number of very good links on pandemic preparedness. Thank you for your help in this. I have also visited the following links and have found very helpful information about how to talk about preparedness and specific items to purchase in the event that we experience a pandemic.
http://www.fluwikie.com/
http://www.psandman.com/index-infec.htm
Also, if you have the opportunity to find and read the book, The Speckled Monster, by Jennifer Lee Carrell, it will give you an idea of the problems experienced during a time of uncontrolled illness in a community. This book is historical fiction which chronicles smallpox, for which there was no cure at the time. A flu pandemic would be caused by a virus for which there would be no cure at the time.
Hi there, it’s really good to see a well written blog that’s insightful as well as entertaining. cheers!
Dr. Miller, member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness teaches us how to avoid a flu pandemic–see his whole article at
http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller27.html:
“….A creditable hypothesis that explains the seasonal nature of flu is that influenza is a vitamin D deficiency disease. Cannell and colleagues offer this hypothesis in “Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D” (Epidemiol Infect 2006;134:1129–40). They quote Hippocrates (circa 400 B.C.), who said, “Whoever wishes to investigate medicine properly should proceed thus: in the first place to consider the seasons of the year.” Vitamin D levels in the blood fall to their lowest point during flu seasons. Unable to be protected by the body’s own antibiotics (antimicrobial peptides) that this gene-expresser engineers, a person with a low vitamin D blood level is more vulnerable to contracting colds, influenza, and other respiratory infections (e.g., respiratory syncytial virus)…”
Donald Miller (send him mail) is a cardiac surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is a member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. His website is http://www.donaldmiller.com.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller27.html