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Archived [ARCHIVED THREAD] - Are you making any preparations just in case the "avian flu" turns into a human pandemic?
Posted: 9/18/2005 2:00:47 PM EDT
If so, what?
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:04:43 PM EDT
[#1]
yes, i built a bl-4 postive pressure biosuite in my living room and have found my old biohazrd gear from the army. if you see me at the range dressed like this you know the shit has hit the fan....
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:11:46 PM EDT
[#2]
You forgot one option in your poll.


Yes, I think it's going to happen and no, I'm not ready yet.
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:15:48 PM EDT
[#3]
Quoted:
You forgot one option in your poll.


Yes, I think it's going to happen and no, I'm not ready yet.


+1

How do you prepare for 1.5 to 2 year world wide pandemic?  

Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:18:55 PM EDT
[#4]
Go live in the woods, live off the land, do not let you and yours interact with other people.
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:19:09 PM EDT
[#5]
Can I edit a poll?
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:22:50 PM EDT
[#6]
Quoted:
Quoted:
You forgot one option in your poll.


Yes, I think it's going to happen and no, I'm not ready yet.


+1

How do you prepare for 1.5 to 2 year world wide pandemic?  



...as isolated an existance as possible.
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:24:02 PM EDT
[#7]
I have a gas mask and a crap load of ducktape and garbage bags, really thick bags
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:25:35 PM EDT
[#8]
Quoted:
I have a gas mask and a crap load of ducktape and garbage bags, really thick bags



Gas mask won't last you too long.
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:27:48 PM EDT
[#9]
Dont they say this every year?

Wasnt 70% of the US supposed to die last year from the flu
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:36:51 PM EDT
[#10]
Quoted:
yes, i built a bl-4 postive pressure biosuite in my living room and have found my old biohazrd gear from the army. if you see me at the range dressed like this you know the shit has hit the fan....

photos.ar15.com/ImageGallery/Attachments/DownloadAttach.asp?iImageUnq=36955




I had some haluski for lunch on Friday and could have used that...


(btw, SF is all over this topic, as usual, on the cutting edge...

Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:40:35 PM EDT
[#11]
Quoted:
Dont they say this every year?

Wasnt 70% of the US supposed to die last year from the flu


Yeah.  It's kind of like the 'Cry Wolf' story.  The important thing to remember is that in the story eventually the wolf showed up ....

Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:41:53 PM EDT
[#12]
Yes, I'm ready.   I've already picked out several nice houses that I can choose from after all the occupants die and the place is disinfected.

Pandemic = depopulation = available housing for free.

Just being practical.

It IS only a matter of time before SOME major pandemic hits, one that will have a SUBSTANTIAL
impact on the world's population.     With population density at an all-time high and rapid travel
being common, everyday stuff, it WILL happen.    Whether it's bird flue or bubonic plague or
something else,  IT WILL HAPPEN EVENTUALLY.



CJ
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:42:48 PM EDT
[#13]
Zombies > Flu
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:43:47 PM EDT
[#14]
Quoted:
Go live in the woods, live off the land, do not let you and yours interact with other people.


Live in the woods with wild birds infected with avian flu?  I don't think there is going to be any totaly safe place.  

How about a group buy on the Bio-Dome?

Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:44:11 PM EDT
[#15]
Quoted:
Yes, I'm ready.   I've already picked out several nice houses that I can choose from after all the occupants die and the place is disinfected.

Pandemic = depopulation = available housing for free.

Just being practical.





CJ

Link Posted: 9/18/2005 2:46:09 PM EDT
[#16]
Quoted:
Dont they say this every year?

Wasnt 70% of the US supposed to die last year from the flu
they did they just don't know it yet
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 3:03:41 PM EDT
[#17]
Quoted:
Quoted:
Go live in the woods, live off the land, do not let you and yours interact with other people.


Live in the woods with wild birds infected with avian flu?  I don't think there is going to be any totaly safe place.  

How about a group buy on the Bio-Dome?


And die in 9 months sooner by starvation or asphyxiation in a failed pseudo-science project, instead?

Link Posted: 9/18/2005 3:06:35 PM EDT
[#18]
Interesting....
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 3:10:09 PM EDT
[#19]
Quoted:
Quoted:
Quoted:
Go live in the woods, live off the land, do not let you and yours interact with other people.


Live in the woods with wild birds infected with avian flu?  I don't think there is going to be any totaly safe place.  

How about a group buy on the Bio-Dome?


And die in 9 months sooner by starvation or asphyxiation in a failed pseudo-science project, instead?


Two words: Pauly Shore

Link Posted: 9/18/2005 3:13:01 PM EDT
[#20]
i'm just gonna wash my hands more often, not shake hands with people, not eat out or go to malls, movies or resteraunts. i already work at home so don't have to worry bout the office.

.. oh im not gonna eat chicken or turkey and im getting rid of all my parakeets....

Link Posted: 9/18/2005 3:16:48 PM EDT
[#21]
A pandemic is due sooner or later.  It's a fact of nature.  It happens.

Declaring it to be a folly is the same as a New Orleans resident saying that there won't be any hurricane problems this year because there were any last year.

Eventually, we're going to get smacked.  Those who have plans and preparations will probably fair better than those that haven't.

Plain and simple.
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 3:16:56 PM EDT
[#22]
Are you making any preparations just in case the "avian flu" turns into a human pandemic?  


You mean like write a will, get a funeral plan, make peace with your maker and stuff like that?

No.  
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 3:21:07 PM EDT
[#23]
Quoted:

Wasnt 70% of the US supposed to die last year from the flu


Haven't you read the papers?


CWO
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 3:22:18 PM EDT
[#24]
Quoted:
Are you making any preparations just in case the "avian flu" turns into a human pandemic?  


You mean like write a will, get a funeral plan, make peace with your maker and stuff like that?

No.  



I mean more stuff like this (ripped off from another board):


The Idiots' Guide to Flu
The Dirt Basic Guide
________________________________________
I'm not calling anyone an idiot or dummy - far from it. Comments on some threads today have made me realize though that for those of us warped enough to follow this stuff as a hobby & I've been doing that long before H5N1 became a serious concern; it's easy to slip into the 5 dollar words & forget that not everybody else follows this stuff with the passion most reserve for favorite sports. We can talk about my appalling typos, dangling participles & run on sentences later...

We're getting a lot of new members who head straight here. Many may come form other sites where they've had lots of chances to learn the ins & outs about flu & potential pandemic stuff. Many may simply have stumbled onto this site or been shoved here kicking & screaming by 'born again flubies'. These folks may be trying to figure out why many here seem so freaked out over something that after all, hits every year & that we have shots against. Here's what I hope is a quick & dirty Coles' Notes version of why the idea of pandemic flu makes some of us long for an opportunity to bury ourselves under very big rocks for a time.


Flu is a virus. There are three TYPES of flu - A, B & C. The type we're concerned about here is type A. That is divided into SUB-TYPES seen as something like this: H3N2. The H & N are structures on the surface of the virus. The H gets the virus into your cells & the N helps it get out. There are 16 H & 9 N for a total of 144 sub-types of flu. Luckily, most don't make people sick. Until recently, most of the ones that did started with either H1, H2 or H3. In the past decade we've seen H5, H7 & H9 start doing that. Over time flu viruses change so that they 'learn' to infect people. Okay, they don't think, so they don't learn but through mutation & changing their genes they pick up the ability to get into people.

H1, H2 & H3 sub-types have been infecting people for a long time. Most of the ones which can make us sick change a bit from year to year because flu viruses mutate quickly. Because they change quickly, even if you had a whopping case of an H3N2 flu last year, you might get one this year. The good news is - it usually doesn't change THAT much so you won't get as sick. Our immune systems are pretty good that way - they recognize the H well enough to be able to fight it to some degree.

H5 is a flu that up until pretty recently only infected birds. It simply couldn't get into humans The H - if you think of it as a key, couldn't get into & turn the lock into human cells. It might get into human bodies but couldn't do a darned thing. Now it seems it's figuring out how to do that. We know that over 1 hundred people in southeast Asia have become sick with H5N1 & many have died. Uuhhh - why? After all, millions of people get the OTHER H kinds of flu every year & why they often feel like utter crap for a week or more, most recover. When a new H 'jumps' into humans & becomes good at spreading from person to person, it's got a captive audience. Our bodies have never encountered this H, up to now we know very few of the 6.4 billion people on the planet have. Our immune systems have little or no defense. So... more of us get sick. Those who get sick get sicker. Their bodies get so exhausted, so worn down by fighting the flu, they're more likely to pick up OTHER illnesses on top of the flu - a real double whammy. Their bodies are too wiped out to fight it & that's especially true to the elderly, the very young & those who may already have medical conditions which tend to make them sick. People with cardiac problems, respiratory problems, diabetes & any other illness that requires careful attention on their part & a fair bit of monitoring by their health care practitioners are at a higher risk.

In 1918, H1 learned to infect humans. We don't know exactly how it happened or how the virus became able to do that. We have no patient samples from back then that preserved the virus so we don't have all it's genes to study. The important thing is - it did. The war was coming to an end & a lot of people were traveling. Soldiers were being shipped back & forth & refugees & other displaced civilians were also on the move. These folks were pretty stressed out. The war alone was stressful & many were exhausted & worn down by years of fear, moving around, not enough food or the right kinds... a perfect scenario for flu.

The pandemic became known as Spanish Flu because the first news of it came out of Spain although it didn't start there. It raced around the world in just a few months. Then did it again & was even more dangerous. It did it again a third time, not as lethal as the second time but worse that the first time or 'wave' as we call them.

It was 'weird' for a flu. Often it didn't LOOK like flu. We're still not sure why but maybe that's because it WAS new to humans. It sometimes looked immediately like pneumonia or a hemorrhagic fever. Sometimes it looked like cholera, dengue fever, meningitis or encephalitis. In some cases, it might have been those things in a sense. Maybe patients got sick with flu so fast & were exposed to the bugs that caused those other diseases right away & came down with cases of them right on top of their first flu symptoms.

It hit people really quickly. You might be fine at breakfast & literally be taken off your tram car to work an hour later on a stretcher. You might be dead by supper time. There are a lot of stories from all over the world that describe such situations & a lot of them are probably true. Autopsies of some of the dead showed incredible damage to the lungs, heart & other body organs. It must have been terrifying.

We've never known a pandemic, (world wide epidemic) of flu that bad & haven't had anything that awful since - not that fast or that severe. To be honest, we don't know that H5N1 - the bird flu that's now starting to make some people sick - will do that. We sure hope not. But it might. But we're living in 2005 - why can't we get on top of it & beat it before it hits - if it's going to hit?

Frankly, we don't know nearly as much about flu & how it makes us ill as we'd like. For all we know about the body & how it reacts to illness, there's loads more we can only really guess at. Yes we can make vaccine against flu but not enough, fast enough. It takes 6 months to make a vaccine right now & we have to know EXACTLY what subtype is causing the illness. There are only enough vaccine plants in the world right now to make, for a pandemic strain of flu - roughly a billion doses of vaccine - in a YEAR.

We travel a lot faster & more often than people were able to do in 1918. And there are a lot more of us living in very crowded cities where flu will spread quickly. By the time we make & give 1 billion vaccines, the flu might already have gone around the world a few times - those who didn't get sick during the first passing may very well get it on the 'second trip'. Either way, an awful lot of people will be sick at once & with this H5N1 flu, it seems as though it can take a very long time to recover to the point where you can get out of bed for more than a few hours.

Imagine a scene where maybe 1/4 of the people in your area are actually sick with flu? Many of those will be those who work. Who will replace them? Many of those not sick will be busy trying to look after those who are sick? And they may not have a lot of help. This bird flu seems to make people very, very sick - they need to be in hospital. The US has less than 1 million hospital beds & most of those are already filled with patients. Even if you cancelled all elective surgeries & discharged as many people as you could early, there won't be nearly enough hospital beds to take all those with flu who should be in them. And those that do get beds - well, there isn't going to be a lot we can do for them.

Viruses have no treatments. There are a few antivirals out there but they don't work the way antibiotics do & not as well. We might be able to make sure people get enough fluids through IVs & some will have respirators & ventilators to help them breathe. There's not much else we can offer. If they get sick with other diseases on top of flu & if those diseases are caused by bacteria, we can give them antibiotics & hope we have enough of those. It could be more will need them that we have available. Don't forget - people won't stop getting sick for other reasons just because a really nasty flu bug shows up!

It could be a real mess. With the possibility of a lot of people sick at once, not enough to look after them, perhaps no one to 'replace them' at home, nobody to fill in at work, life could get pretty strange. If truck drivers are sick, who's delivering groceries to your local grocery store? Who's putting them on the shelves, pricing them & who's working the cash? Who's ploughing roads in winter & making sure ATMs have money in them?

It gets tougher when you realize that the flu virus can pass easily from person to person. If someone with flu coughs near you as you're inhaling, that's can be all that's needed for you to get sick. Worse, a person can have the virus & not feel sick yet & STILL be breathing out enough virus to make those around him sick - the so called 'silent transmission' period. That makes it next to impossible to stop flu from spreading. After all, how can you make everybody go home & stay there? Do they have enough food or medicine for day to day needs? What if they're working in a crucial job? You can't stop life that easily & unfortunately that just makes it easier for the virus to spread.

We don't know this H5N1 is going to do any of this. Maybe by the time it 'learns' to easily make people sick it will be a much milder disease. But we don't know that. I wish we did. We have had 2 flu pandemics since 1918 & they weren't nearly as bad. Many more died of flu & it's complications than do most years, but not nearly the number who did in 1918-1919. I hope we'll be that lucky but there are no sure bets.

The countries which have human cases of bird flu are, for whatever reason, not sharing what they know about it with the west. So we don't know how bad it is 'out there'. The few human cases from which we have medical details are more than scary - they're terrifying. But... do they represent just SOME bird flu cases or might most end up with patients that sick and many dying?

Most of us here choose to 'plan for the worst & hope for the best'. And we hope all this discussion will prove to not be needed.
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 3:27:24 PM EDT
[#25]
APIC Reference

Link Posted: 9/18/2005 3:32:10 PM EDT
[#26]
tamiflu....get some
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 3:32:36 PM EDT
[#27]
Quoted:
APIC Reference



Your avatar freaks me the fuck out!
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 3:47:33 PM EDT
[#28]
Quoted:
tamiflu....get some




working on it
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 5:26:13 PM EDT
[#29]

I mean more stuff like this (ripped off from another board):


Nothing in "that stuff" gave any ideas on how to prepare for the  coming pandemic.  

If it really comes, and comes fast (which is the fear).  There may not be much you can do.  

So.............. make a will....................buy a funeral plan...................etc.
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 5:36:33 PM EDT
[#30]
Get Tamiflu from your doctor if possible. Waiting in line for it once the flu hits will near guarantee you'll get exposed. You'll be doing your family a favor, and a service to the public IMO by increasing the production/demand so more will be produced. Great Britain has already stockpiled it for the "important" people.

Also, read The Great Influenza.

In Europe, during the Black Death the rich fled the cities. People didn't even know what caused the Plague but because they moved away (away from the infected fleas) they survived.

My dad's dad lived through the last pandemic and had already had smallpox and he survived. Yet, I won't trust to genetics.

Link Posted: 9/18/2005 5:37:13 PM EDT
[#31]
I am a sewer worker.  

I have immunizations against all sorts of nasty things.

Also, my immune system is stronger than most, as I have been exposed to a number of nasty things over the years, and have had to combat them.

Quick question - anyone know what the US military innoculates/vaccinates against/for during basic training induction?
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 5:39:38 PM EDT
[#32]
I have farm property to bug out to.  It's isolated and access to it is easily controlled.    That and a commitment to following a series of contamination control protocols,  with suitable equipment,  should be enough to enhance my survivability.   Self quarantine would be a good starting point for anyone.

Lay in a good stock of canned food,  lock and seal all the doors and windows,  install HEPA filters
on the air conditioning,  decontaminate regularly with alcohol,  and stick to your quarantine rules
TOTALLY.   This will give you a very good fighting chance...but only if you stick to your plan.

CJ
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 6:02:39 PM EDT
[#33]
Quoted:
Quoted:
APIC Reference



Your avatar freaks me the fuck out!


Could you imagine waking up to those eyes every day for the rest of your life?



Ain't she somethin'?

Link Posted: 9/18/2005 6:05:23 PM EDT
[#34]
Quoted:
Dont they say this every year?

Wasnt 70% of the US supposed to die last year from the flu


My thoughts exactly.

It's always something.

Link Posted: 9/18/2005 6:10:50 PM EDT
[#35]
Quoted:
i'm just gonna wash my hands more often, not shake hands with people, not eat out or go to malls, movies or resteraunts. i already work at home so don't have to worry bout the office.

.. oh im not gonna eat chicken or turkey and im getting rid of all my parakeets....


Here is an interesting ( though NOT fool proof ) anecdote on hand washing.  About 4 years ago I decided to become a compulsive hand washer....I haven't been sick since.  Now, does that mean I won't catch the flu if Happy, the Blue Bird decides to sneeze in my face?  No...but I gotta tell ya the practice sure improves your chances.
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 6:11:54 PM EDT
[#36]
anyone have an idea where to get supplies to survive something like that, bet that its not cheap.

Link Posted: 9/18/2005 6:30:18 PM EDT
[#37]
If it's a truly deadly strain and spreads as easily and rapidly as the common cold, you might as well hold your breath as a defense in the long run.  Many will die, a few will get sick and by surviving become immune, and a very few will be immune to start with.  If you hide out you'll just be delaying the inevitable unless an immunization is developed while you're away and if there's something like 90% mortality most likely all the scientists will die before any "cure" is found.

Only nature has the answer for a truly virulent pandemic, namely that a few will survive and be immune.

Too many variables and of course I really don't know my ass from a hole in the ground (but I can hit the ground with my ass!).
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 6:40:33 PM EDT
[#38]
Quoted:
Self quarantine would be a good starting point for anyone.

Lay in a good stock of canned food,  lock and seal all the doors and windows,  install HEPA filters
on the air conditioning,  decontaminate regularly with alcohol,  and stick to your quarantine rules
TOTALLY.   This will give you a very good fighting chance...but only if you stick to your plan.

CJ


That's my plan.

The bad part is I'm in an apartment. The good part is it's an old SOLID building and I only share walls/floors with two other apartments, one to the side, and one below, one of which is empty.

I can stay locked up in the apartment for several months as long as power and water hold.

I can telecomute to work if I have to.
Link Posted: 9/18/2005 7:43:31 PM EDT
[#39]
Quoted:
Quoted:
Dont they say this every year?

Wasnt 70% of the US supposed to die last year from the flu


My thoughts exactly.

It's always something.


www.drabruzzi.com/images/chicken_little_on_acid.JPG


Well, every once in awhile, the flu can be a doozy - research the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak.
Archived [ARCHIVED THREAD] - Are you making any preparations just in case the "avian flu" turns into a human pandemic?
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