Scientists say pandemic is certain

[Antaletriangle]

http://www.disasternews.net/news/art...articleid=3856
BY STEPHANIE BACKUS | WASHINGTON, DC | March 7, 2009


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When you tell people to listen to warnings, they don't listen. . .There are warning labels on everything. We've heard the warnings over and over and over again, that we've become deaf to them. Ignoring the warning has become an art.
—P.J. Havice-Cover, Colorado

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It was 1999 and the world was buzzing with talk of Y2K. Banks were unsure if their computers would crash at midnight on New Years Eve or if they would switch over like nothing happened. People were stockpiling emergency items with fear the world would go back to prehistoric times. Then at midnight on December 31, the world paused, and took a collective sigh of relief. There were few glitches and many people started laughing at everyone who said it was going to be a big deal -- at everyone who made emergency preparations for the event.


Now, scroll forward 10 years, and part of the world is once again preparing for a different kind of disaster -- a pandemic. A pandemic is a disease that spreads across a major geographical region including an entire country or countries.


Many scientists are now sure that a version of H5N1, or the avian flu, will cause a pandemic in the future. While speaking to health officials at the National Emergency Management Summit Thursday, several experts said the issue was no longer an "if" issue, it was now "when." Without knowing when a pandemic will hit, many hospitals and the government are doing what they can to try to prepare the U.S. for the event.


"In 2005 then President George Bush announced a national startegy for pandemic influenza," said Dr. Robin Robinson, senior project officer of the Public Health Emergency Preparedness Office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. "It was a pandemic influenza implementation plan."


Robinson has been partly responsible for making sure the U.S. is ready such an event. He said the plan initially had several parts, including the ability to make an influenza vaccine available for 20 million people who are at high risk for getting the H5N1 flu or are essential in a time of national emergency.


"We also wanted to make sure we could have everyone in the U.S. vaccinated within six months of the pandemic declaration," Robinson said.

Initially the plan was to have the ability to do that by 2011. Robinson said the government has the capability today to get everyone vaccinated in six months. By 2011, he said that time frame could be down to a month. According to Robinson, the government looked long and hard for enough vaccine to accomplish this goal.


"We actually found on the black market a season of influenza vaccine priced between $400 and $600," he said, noting the price of a normal vaccine is less than $20. "Imagine when everyone is scared and will want something."


Robinson said the government has also prepared to be able to provide antiviral drugs to 25 percent of the population, once the pandemic hits.


"We also wanted to provide drug stockpiles for strategic limited containment at the onset of the pandemic," he said.


All the preparations could wear some down, though, according to P.J. Havice-Cover, a mental health professional and program coordinator for the state of Colorado.


"With a flash bang event like the Oklahoma City bombings or 9/11, we spend a lot of energy planning," said Havice-Cover. "But this is a slow burn of a public health event because you have a protracted response that lasts a whole lot longer. It wears people down."


Havice-Cover said we are over-warned in our lives and that causes a numbness to warnings for major events like a pandemic.


"When you tell people to listen to warnings, they don't listen," she said. "There are warning labels on everything. We've heard the warnings over and over and over again, that we've become deaf to them. Ignoring the warning has become an art."


Havice-Cover said once the pandemic comes, people will likely shrug their shoulders when they are told to prepare for it, until there is nothing left with which to prepare. She said once store shelves are empty or the pandemic hits close to home, people will start listening.


"There is so much information coming at us, we don't know the seriousness of an event. You are going to get no action from the public when the pandemic hits," she said. "It's the primal shrug -- the attitude of 'so what,' until we get to the tipping point and they realize what it means. It's when they go to the ER and they can't get in, or they go to a mobile triage site and they are told to go home. That is when they'll start to realize."


Havice-Cover stressed the importance of preparing mentally for a pandemic. She said people will go through several stages, including depression and anger.


"Grief and loss is a certainty in planning for the pandemic," she said. "You can respect and normalize people's grieving processes by giving them updates on progress. Don't just ignore the losses. If you're in a position to inform the public, talk about it. Community memorial services are very important."


She said it was also important to be prepared to be quarantined for months at a time. She said stockpiling food was important, but there was another aspect to that preparation.


"It's important to be prepared to entertain children for long periods of time. We've become a society that works, so some may need that preparation. We also need to be teaching kids how to cover your cough and the importance of handwashing as well as how long and the best way to wash hands," she said.


Quarantine could be an important part of the fight against a pandemic.


"When you're talking to people, voice your appreciation for those in quarantine. Talk about how they're hometown heroes and doing waht they need to be doing in order to protect the community," said Havice-Cover.


According to Havice-Cover, eventually the pandemic will subside, but it is important not to expect life to begin quickly again.


"Once the community is allowed to return to normal activities, some people are going to do that, but some are going to be very cautious. These are both very normal responses.


But Havice-Cover was confident people would get through the pandemic.


"Resillience and change is a given; challenges help us grow."

[alyscat]

ya, rite. Let's see, at some point we're going to want everyone off the streets (for whatever reason - bank closures, economic meltdown, not enough money to bring the troops home, any number of reasons I can think of) - maybe that will be the time to have pharma company X send out a bunch of flu vaccine with H5N1 in it. Oh, wait, didn't that just happen? sheesh

color me suspicious.

alys

This is good news. I can turn up for my shot, grab it and run, then sell it for stupid sums of money to someone I don't like.

Or is that very 'old paradigm' of me?

[pyrangello]

I'm not in the medical field but I am of the opinion that they cannot create a vaccine until the strain is established, thus once this baby takes off then they can start working on it, 6 months minimum and thats providing the virus doesn't change in the mean time. I remember reading an article about the 1918 strain which is the same as this one. An army soldier went to a fort in Kansas coming back from Africa, within 24 hours in the area he was bunking up in , ALL 600 soldiers were sick.

Just remember , if you end up getting this if it happens you have a 50% chance of not making it . And from what I have heard if you do get it and make it , your gonna wish you were dead while you had it. A friend of mine who is a nurse said they only expect 1/3 of the hospital staff to show up when this hits. She said they have a plan to give 3 members of her imediate family the tamiflu if they come to work during this crisis. The other obsticle is ventilators, If you get this your gonna need to be on a ventilator. So lets do the test, how many of you have actually seen a ventilator except on TV. If I remember right there is only 80,000 ventilators in the U.S. So old man A comes in thats 80 and young boy B thats 8 comes into the hospital and they both need to be on ventilators. You got it now.

The real key is to stay away from people, When the black plague hit in the 1600's , the nobles stayed in the countryside villas for 3 years and most made it, they sent the help to go get things , BY the way , if this hits and lets say your family member comes from a populated area , your gonna need to quarintine them for 2 weeks before you have close contact with them. I'm not trying to scare you just educate you. Now we all know you can't stay at home for 3 years let alone 3 months so then that goes to preperation .

www.planforflu.com/home , cheap breathing masks are available www.galeton.com N95 masks . I have no affiliations to these sites, only personal relatives that passed away in the 1918 strain and stories and a buddy who is a surgeon who is very real .

I've heard helpful remedies like eating garlic soaked in cognac, consuming tumeric, or oregano oil. Not sure on these , maybe someone else can help here. Here in the state of michigan we are at a stage 2 out of 5 for this bird flu, the state rep said if it went to a stage 3, there would be many changes happening. Hope this info is a help.

[alyscat]

What does stage 2 out of 5 mean?
Yes, at the very least, 3 months worth of food on hand - and with everything else coming down.....
alys

[pyrangello]

Hey Cat, I don't have an answer for that but will try and find out tomorrow. The one guy here in town that runs the old time flour mill and sells grains, dog food, ect. went to a state run seminar with his wife last fall, he had a chance to go to 3 different forums and he picked the avain flu. There was a panel from the state of 5 answering the questions after the briefing . My buddy from the flour mill said there is a state appointed person handling just the avain flu. Her answer was where its at in stages was a 2 out of 5 and at every # stage there are componets in place that get enacted. I am GUESSING that when the H5N1 lands here in the states , not michigan it goes to a 3 or a 4. I'll try and get an answer though.

He said during the seminar they spoke about how the processed foods pose no threat to us. Then he asked the answer on a what if ? What if a flock of geese carrying H5N1 land in a corn field , leaving feces in the field, and that corn is harvested and it gets fed to the farm animals unprocessed , pigs or cows, this is important ,or say perhaps another organic product, what exposure is there then? He said everyone on the board had that deer in the headlights look as none had thought of that scenerio. And there was not a recommended answer either.

There are bugs everywhere, the state did a study on ecoli and found the 2 worst places for ecoli . Are you ready, #2 was the seats at the movie theatre and #1 was and this will change your lifestyle of shopping, It's the seat in the grocery cart at the grocery store, gals put their purses in there or a loaf of bread while you are shopping and then you bring it home and put it on your kitchen counter, all of it on your counter including the ecoli. This doesn't give you card blanc on the anti bacterial soap, stay away from that stuff. Just use some common sense.

I'm certainley not a bacteria paranoid person, we clean out repo'd houses here and if you want to talk about disgusting stuff I have tons of stories about that, just use some common sense with common knowledge. I'll let ya know tommorrow on the stage 2-3 thing.

Remember the H5N1 has been around for 9 years , it went from 70% fatal to 50% fatal, that sounds good which is what I thought only problem is the less fatal the more communicable it is. And also remember too Pigs have very close organs to us, I read 2-3 weeks ago in Manilla they slaughtered 8000 pigs , some had the ebola virus, Thats a big fear of the flu jumping from a bird to a pig then to us , it's only a few combinations away from going that way and aways remember A VIRUS WANTS TO LIVE LIKE US.

Just the best advise I tell everyone, stock up for 3 months and forget about it, if it happens you won't be going to the store or the bank. Live your life as everyday is very precious. Many of us would hide in a canning jar if we concentrated on all the stuff that is happening in the world that is going around. But your best line of defense is educate yourself and your family and put together a plan , your own stage 2 or 3 . Look for my post tommorrow.

[Antaletriangle]

Thanks for the helpful insights Pyran.Appreciated mate.

[alyscat]

Thanks, Pyrangello - the sentence makes more sense to me now, although I'm assuming it's a prep stage 2 of 5, and 5 would be full alert.

Have 3 months worth of food and 3 months worth of money, and pray that you can still access your internet bill pay LOL.
alys

[oldpaganfreak]

and the hundreds of millions of dollars that governments have spent on 'tamiflu' didn't hurt the pharma giants at all.
however, it has been pointed out in other threads that the h5 avian flu is not affected by tamiflu.

weird, huh? anyone else think that this stinks?

No more than usual. Big pharma doesn't care if the vaccine works or not, they just want to sell it and make a huge profit. If you combine that with the stated aim of a pandemic, what better way to start one than by mass infection of the population through the very means they've offered to keep the population safe?

My mum got the flu jab at the end of last year while my dad didn't. Mum is months away from being 60, dad is 63. My mum has been very ill twice with a virus the doctor didn't care to identify, while my dad has had a minor cold.

Mum doesn't work anymore but my dad drives a cab for a living. Of the two, who would be more likely to catch something nasty?

I realise this hardly constitutes scientific evidence but its worth considering.

[alyscat]

Closer all the time:


http://www.torontosun.com/news/canad...7/8560781.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aTo3LbhcA75I


US MSM are NOT covering it, of course.
alys

NEVER ingest pure oregano oil (as mentioned above) as it, full strength, will burn. I can only imagine how terribly sorry anyone would be doing that. IF you ever get that on any mucous membrane, even sensitive skin, it will burn like the dickens.

I rec'd a phone call yrs back when I was studying essential oils... the son of a very close friend placed a drop on his testicles once (for herpes) and, at 21, he was crying like a baby (you know how they can scream).

IF one ever gets that in the eyes or other sensitive areas, do NOT use water to wash off, water makes the burning worse. As it's an oil... only another oil, such as olive or another benign vegetable oil can be used to dilute it off the skin.

I write this because there are people who might believe everything they read.

It's published as true that certain essential oils will kill bacteria, even virus on contact, however you don't want to kill yourself in the process.

So, do your research. If a pandemic did occur, I would certainly utilize essential oils, diluted, on my hands and even use a nebulizer to treat my home's air. I'd also ingest lots of cayenne and even take activated charcoal tabs (I know that is best for food poisoning, works like a charm, but I'd still use it).... hydrogen peroxide on everything...

Excuse this interruption, I just winced a big Owie grimace when I read that suggestion above!

[pyrangello]

O.K. Epip , Oregano oil is definately out for the testicle experiment, LOL. I'm not a doc so thats why I asked for some help on those three I mentioned. I think we can safely say cognac and garlic are o.k. , By the way , cognac was created when the settlers were coming over from europe and ran out of water while they were at sea so they tried to boil the wine and it produced Cognac. No wonder they even made it here sailing after that experiment.

Maybe cooking with oregano oil??? And tumeric ??? Anybody want to chime in on Apple Cider Vinegar ?? That stuff does great for a sore throat , just got to hold your nose when you gargle with it. I'm looking for some help here with your suggestions or what you have read. I'll get back with ya later today. Thanks Epip.