Time to return to a theme we have sounded on numerous occasions in the past three years. In a recent post we called for a renewed investment in our public health and social service infrastructure as the best strategy. The object is to harden local communities and make them more resilient to all kinds of shocks, not just a pandemic. We should have added, however, that this means local preparation can't be too local: only looking after ourselves and our families. Of course families should prepare, to the best of their ability, and having some reasonable stockpile will stand them in good stead whether it is a pandemic, a flood, a hurricane or a blizzard. But the more important point is that making a community more resilient requires structures that allow us to help each other, not just protect ourselves.
People react in different ways to community disasters. Some hunker down and wall themselves off from their neighbors. In a pandemic, this will serve a useful purpose and I don't condemn anyone for doing it. But experience shows many people will also try to help their neighbors, even if it entails added risk to themselves. If you aren't a helper, you could easily be among the helped. Communities where the impulse to help is encouraged and facilitated will do much better than those where helping others depends on individual heroic initiative. In practical terms, this means looking ahead to organizing and using volunteers efficiently, establishing means of communication (like neighborhood visiting groups) that allow others to know when a family is in distress, having community stockpiles and resources available for those who need it (e.g., essential medications or baby formula) are all part of thinking like a community, not just acting like anonymous individuals and isolated families.
It's easier to prepare individually than to get your neighborhood or community moving in the right direction and individual prepping is a good thing. But it's not the only thing.
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Two links to add:
Socialized Emergency Preparedness (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Community Effort)
and
Libertarian Reluctantly Calls Fire Department
In the post, you state "Communities where the impulse to help is encouraged and facilitated will do much better than those where helping others depends on individual heroic initiative."
Is this based on actual research?
If you look at the threat potential of H5N1, the odds of emerging unscathed as a volunteer could be less than 50%.
How many would want their young sons and daughter with young children to volunteer?
How many in high risk age groups are currently employed in healtcare settings, either directly or in support positions?
How many would not only sacrifice themselves but their families?
How many would accept this level of 'calculated risk'?
What we need to acknowledge is that the hospitals will do well to stay open to treat non-pandemic conditions as they are today...
...then we must design a system for our families to treat pandemic influenza at home.
...Please!!
Tom and Revere, Dem from CT. The amount of money that is needed to back this up are absoulutely incredible and it aint gonna happen. Each state should belly up to the bar and start alloting a certain amount of cash for this. Sooner or later there's a quake, a Katrina, tornado's.
In the last year I have pulled my supplies and support out three times due to inclement weather. My subdivision I think now knows what to do and how to do it. It only took me three years. The Federal government of the US admits that there are severe shortcomings but they are working on it. 800 million goes a long way, but not for respirators and people to work them. That is if the power is on.
I fear that the worst would happen in the US and it wouldnt be BF. It would be anarchy and I am sure they blamed Ramses too. Regardless of the Presidency the real battles are going to be fought in the states. The people in the boonies will survive the best, the cities the least. Rotate that food every three months and dont forget the friggin seeds, alternate sources of heat, light, water, and fuel. Above all get your friends to as well. If everyone got ten families to prepare once a week and they also did ten, we could all weather the flu watching satellite reruns in our homes.
Tom, I dont think the hospitals will be taking any cases beyond the first week. After that, there is no reason to show up based on THEIR supplies. Two weeks for most under normal usage, they can tag up their suppliers for about another two, but then thats it. The USGOVT's money has been spent for this year and will get more next year... about another billion I am told. But food alone to feed a city the size of Memphis is 540,000 square feet and 33 feet high.The cost? Estimated at 750,000 not counting storage, rotation costs per week. Therefore, iIt HAS to be mostly personal responsibility. God help Canada and anything higher than the 40th parallel if this happens in winter. They'll lose them from starvation AND the cold.
As for treating them and if the CFR's are as high as they are now, I really cant see what difference it would make except to try to quarantine the sick and isolate the remainder of a family away from them. All sorts of crazy ideas are going to come up for flu, food, water, treatments. As in the Black Plague, some will work but priests wearing masks in the form of a bird will not be on my list.
Anyone who thinks we can reverse in time the decades'long move towards "individual responsibility" will be disappointed. Nonprofits are struggling, and most people are working too many long hours with no societal supports themselves and so can't volunteer much. We have been conditioned to not look too closely at suffering, including the war, the uninsured, the homeless, the poor. IMHO, we are more than ever a nation of isolated families and individuals, and it will take time for a new progressive movement to take hold and move us out of this failed view of the world. But pandemics don't wait for societies to change. To paraphrase one of our recent "leaders", we'll have to face the pandemic with the society we have, not the society we wish we had.
Doctor Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist who lead the team that identified a single change in a viral protein of H5N1 bird flu virus, that allows the virus to infect cells in the upper respiratory system of mammals; stated the virus is now capable of infecting a wider range of cell types, and is more easily spread through coughing.
Kawaoka is an internationally recognized authority on influenza; and he is convinced it is only a matter of time before the bird flu virus evolves into a virus capable of causing a pandemic.
At this moment there is a 5 person cluster of bird flu in Indonesia. The latest individual infected in this cluster is a hospital administrator that it is claimed had no contact with birds. WHO has already recognized that the virus has gone human to human, where there is very close contact.
In Indonesia the fatality rate is about 75%, meaning it you become infected, you have a 75% chance of dying. If, after the virus causes a pandemic; the fatality rate stays at about 75%, and you are a doctor, nurse, or other health worker, would you report to work? Medical staff have twice the probability of contacting tuberculosis. And I would assume it would be even worse for bird flu.
In Australia, which is much closer to Asia, where there is a lot of human bird flu infection; some doctors, nurses, and paramedics have stated they would not report to work during a pandemic, for fear of themselves dying, and the fear of infecting their family members. This does not mean all medical staff would refuse to report to work, but many would not. So even if you managed to arrive at a hospital after you became ill with bird flu; there may not be anyone there to care for you.
Communities begin with neighborhoods and that is where we should focus our preparation at this point to do the most good.
Those of us that follow the flu boards have, by now, learned how to prepare for our families. Sometimes I think some of us have become a bit overly confident of our ability to take care of our own.
Have we all done a realistic skill assessment of our survival needs and training? I did and found quite a few holes in my capability. Luckily, some of my neighbors have the skill sets I will need and I have some to share with them. Mutual aid at the neighborhood level.
It's time to help prep our communities from the bottom up.
Can we really afford to wait for the government to do this for us?
The Ready Moms campaign has shown us all a way to do this.
Local libraries everywhere would be a great place to add a display similar to what Dem linked to.
Let's work on WE will survive and get off of the island.
When Revere wrote about helping neighbors, I thought of phone calls, leaving cooked meals on the neighbor's doorstep, those sorts of things. I'm not going to spread any disease if I don't have to, but that doesn't make me helpless.
There's a difference in sending out pamphlets and actually preparing. Many people read a pamphlet, think about what's in their house and figure they're all set. It's not until you actually back a bag and head out for an overnight camping trip that you realize you are woefully unprepared. Even most campgrounds are within a short drive of a convenience store to shore up the supplies; of course these will be out of stock in a disaster. Zombie Squad has an annual ZombieCon where members camp in the remote wilderness for a week. The goal is to test out the equipment and person's knowledge to make sure what you have is correct.
During any pandemic, reliance on the government assistance is going to be spotty at best. I'll find the study, but the results were those who took it upon themselves to make decisions, and did the opposite of what the authorities told them to do, tripled their probability of surviving the disaster. The individualism has been statistically proven to increase your odds; assuming the study was valid. The US is not Switzerland. We don't take preparations to the logical conclusion; merely outsource it to the lowest cost supplier. You can't rely on your government, local or otherwise, to make good decisions for you.
Unless you're part of the very first to leave, flight in a pandemic is going to be nearly impossible until some large portion of the local population becomes immobilized. And by then, your ability to leave will be controlled by the government. This is especially true for people in suburban and urban areas. You'll be forced to "bug in" as they say.
If you can get your close neighbors to prepare, then at least that small group greatly improves the chance of surviving. But still, it relies upon one or two people with the brains and experience to make good decisions. Governments make actuarial decisions, where losses can be necessary. If your neighborhood falls into the "50% casualty band", then you're already in trouble from the start.
CERT, Ready Moms, local governments are the best place to start. Using the media to raise awareness also helps. I may dress up like a zombie hunter and talk about the zombie apocalypse, but replace zombies with any disaster and the lessons and teachings are the same. Everyone knows zombies. People aren't a petrified when you talk about the undead invasion. They are scared to death when you talk about the realities. They shut down and ignore it because the alternative is horrible. Zombies? I see those in the movies, in the end the living always win.