Pandemic Flu / Swine Flu Orientation and Action Guide

[Vinay Gupta]

http://vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/personal/swine-flu-its-on-now-1426

Short notes for householders who are new to the situation who need to
get oriented to what is going on and make basic preparations. Have
checked it with a recognized domain expert and it's OK with them, so
I'm comfortable suggesting that people pass this text on if it seems
useful to do so.

Vinay

I have attached the blog post to this email, also.

Swine Flu: it’s on now.

Swine Flu 2009 on Wikipedia.

Here’s the skinny.

1> The Mexican Cluster has (as of Saturday April 25 AM) about 1000
cases and about 70 people have died so far. This gives us two pieces
of data. It’s not likely to be more than about 7% fatal, which is bad,
but basically within the planning envelope of many governments. It’s
also spreading person-to-person rather than just pig-to-person or
bird-to-person which is doctor speak for “we are totally screwed.”

2> There are reported cases in the US and containment of the bug is
unlikely. The “SARS II” scenario is that the virus is contained and
does not become a civilization-level threat. If we are not in this
scenario, and the virus is indeed loose, international travel will
stop, and there may be massive internal quarantine issues and health
emergencies. In a city like London, an outbreak could kill a hundred
thousand people. We could hear of cases as soon as right now if
somebody was sick on a plane from Mexico.

3> Right now, there are four things you should do.

A> Prepare to stay at home for a month while a wave of flu passes by.
This keeps you out of the way of the germs. Things to consider are
medications, food and toilet paper. You should get a three month
prescription for anything you need now in case of quarantine / supply
chain problems later. On short notice you can assume (hope) that water
supply and electricity supply will continue, although if the flu wave
is extremely severe that may not be the case.

Here is an absolutely minimalist food shopping plan.

http://files.howtolivewiki.com/how_to_buy_food_for_disasters.pdf

You should probably buy more different stuff, but I wanted to
illustrate just how little is required.

Here is a somewhat more comprehensive and gadget-oriented shopping list.

http://vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/hexayurt/disaster-shopping-with...

Readymoms have considerably more sane and comprehensive resource
guides available. You should read their stuff.

http://readymoms.org

B> Prepare psychologically for an extremely difficult period. This
means doing things like visiting your parents, figuring out your
relationships if they are in ambiguous states, making sure that you
are not your job, your car, your house or any other such thing, but
are yourself. The key to resilience is wanting to survive, putting
yourself in the driver’s seat of the situation, and being clear about
your goals. The psychological shock of a hundred million people dying
of flu in the next year (a reasonable estimate: CAR20/CFR7) cannot be
over-estimated. But the immediate challenge is not going into
Ostrich-mode and putting your head in the sand: rather, remain alert
to threats and act appropriately.

C> Understand what pandemic flu is and is not. Do some reading, not
just the news, but the “flubie” sites - there are a number. You’ll see
opinions from “end of civilization” through to “keep calm and carry
on.” Prediction is difficult, especially of the future, but
understanding the range of options and contingencies is critical at
this time. You are an individual and community actor in a situation
which is as threatening to your life as a car crash or an aeroplan
crash in many ways. The fact that the threat is large and distant does
not change that it is real. Your brain is poorly evolved to act
rationally around large, remote threats but you can compensate by
reading, thinking and acting.

D> Go out, today, and buy four things. Surgical or N95 masks, hand
sanitizer, a gallon of bleach, and a week’s worth of groceries. You
need these things not just to protect you, but to protect the people
around you if you get sick. The surgical mask stops you breathing in
infectious particles, but it’s even more effective at stopping you
infecting other people. Hand sanitizer should be used immediately on
returning home or arriving at the office: if everybody does this is
really helps protect these spaces. Bleach is a contingency measure in
case of things like water supply problems or a need to disinfect an
area. The groceries trip is practice for social distancing by reducing
your number of trips out, and gives you a little buffer. Social
distancing is about avoiding unnecessary contact with crowds and
public places to reduce infection risks. If you are in an area at
risk, make one trip, not five. Pretty soon everywhere may be at risk
at least some of the time.

All of these measures have two effects. The first is that they protect
you. The second is that by protecting you, they protect the people
around you, and if enough of us do these things, we all protect each
other.

Right now, London has no reported cases. If you are reading this in
Mexico, however, you should implement immediately. And if cases show
up in London, we are on a war footing immediately: everybody does
these things to protect everybody else, period.




--
Vinay Gupta
Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest

http://guptaoption.com/map - social project connection map

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Gizmo Project VOIP : (USA) 775-743-1851
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"If it doesn't fit, force it."

[Sepp]

Here is a report that was prepared for the purpose of countering an Avian influenza epidemic with natural means (i.e. nutrients strengthening our inherent immune protections). It would seem to me that the same nutritional precautions hold true for a possible swine flu epidemic as well.

Just something to be aware of, if you are preparing for a pandemic.

http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/docs/ANH_Avian.pdf

[Chris Watkins]

I'm reading this in Mexico - but there are no cases in Chiapas AFAIK.

This afternoon, though, I'm heading to Mexico City, transiting there tomorrow en route to San Francisco. I'm normally not a worrier, but since a traveler has the potential to spread it, I'll be extra careful, and pick up some hand sanitizer, masks and the suggested anti-virals before I head off.

Perspective on the 70 deaths -> 7% figure - we don't know how many unreported cases there are, so it's hard to estimate.

As long as it's taken seriously, I think there's a very good chance it'll be squashed without a serious risk of pandemic. But it does need to be taken very seriously.

[Chris Watkins]

I meant to add: the other factor that needs to be allowed for is always: "What if I'm wrong?" In my case this means not assuming that all will definitely be well.

Although we have much better knowledge of how to squash pandemics that they did in 1918, it would be foolish to assume all will be well. Be prepared for the worst (but don't panic - with lots of precautions and a bit of luck, we won't experience the worst.)

I'm delaying my travel for unrelated reasons, but still planning for minimal time (less than 12 hours) in Mexico City, and I'll spend that in the airport. And anyone greeting me at San Francisco on Friday, don't expect a kiss.

[SashaMrkailo]

I think it could be much much worse than in 1918. First we didn't have such enormous megalopolises then, second we didn't fly around the globe with such speed. Third, don't fool yourself thinking that health care system is efficient in Mexico, Pakistan, east Europe and other poor places like that in UK or USA.

My opinion is that such things are not civilization killers but can have enormous damaging and disruptive capabilities. Couple that with the global economic crises we already are boiling in and you have some nasty menu at the humankinds table.

One thing is bothering me, what is the alternative to the internet? How do we connect if the Net falls down (for any reason)?

[larahna]

Same thought that i've been having..and for that matter how will we get access to important tech info if the internet is compromised...

I am searching to see if anyone is compiling open source tech info in any off-internet format. Let me know if you know of any projects....

If not, that might be my next project!

L

[SashaMrkailo]

http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/images/f/fe/Building_a_Rur...

Decentralized Wireless mesh network might answer some of the problems. Coupled with file sharing, offline wikipedia, appropedia etc material. Local networks could further connect to other local networks to former more netowrk connections.

[Sepp]

For sure being careful is a good idea.

To put the outbreak in perspective: It seems to have originated in the border area between Mexico and California. The Mexicans think it may have something to do with unsanitary conditions of a US-owned hog farming operation. Here is a blog post about this:

Is Swine-flu Outbreak Linked to Smithfield Factory Farms?

The point is that there is a possibility of this being contained, although there is much push to hype up a global epidemic...

[Woody Evans]

http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=009941892632664145530:4oufa0peto4

Swine Flu Resources custom search engine. If it's useful, please use it. If not, tell me how it can be improved!
Woody

[Lucas]

Ok, so the world is now officially at Phase 4 in pandemic risk terms, meaning there's a new virus which can be transmitted human to human causing local outbreaks, but the WHO believes there are reasons to believe it might yet fizzle out. Otherwise a full pandemic, Phase 6 cos it's already a multicountry event so no Phase 5, would/will be declared.

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/phase/en/index.html

So, possible futures include:

1) This thing fizzling out and going the way of SARS. Not too likely if you ask me, because SARS had most transmission happening at the end of the transmission period which was 9-10 days, so isolating patients could effectively cut down transmission, while flu is transmitted at the onset of symptoms so when isolation happens some transmission has already happened.

2) This thing becoming the first low lethality wave of a low lethality pandemic. Could happen if this behaves like the other 2 "recombinant" pandemics: 1957 and 1968, which were caused by hybrid viruses.

3) This thing becoming the first low lethality wave of a pandemic that later has tougher waves. Which could also happen if this being a N1H1 makes it play out like the infamous 1918, also a H1N1, did some 80 years ago.

4) This thing, pandemic or not, being followed by say a H5N1 pandemic, or whatever. Cos, well, H5N1 has _not_ fizzled out after a number of years, and each time there's a human infection the dice are rolled again, and we don't know that there's a physical reason why it couldn't go pandemic, given that it has already done the human-to-human-to-human dance at least once (Pakistan, Dec 2007).

I don't think current science let us assign probabilities to those four or more possibilities, cos there haven't been a thousand pandemics for us to build such a science. But I honestly and strongly think it makes lots of sense to use the next couple of months, starting now, to prepare for the more severe scenarios using the Pareto Law, if you ask me.

And by preparing I mean helping the world make the most of the next months. Not (just) I-me-mine prepping, which is fine and good and helpful at some level, but is not a substitute at all for community resilience at the widest possible level, again if you ask me.

If some of those low-hanging fruit, high-yield actions, have to do with appropriate technology and social networks, and advance making poverty history etc, then those actions would simply be, erm, a must, I'd say.

Just saying, you know. ;-)

[Lucas]

Of course, the concept of "mild" is yet to be seen, if a non-lethal pandemic still makes many people not go to work simultaneously, disrupting systems and among them health-care systems where they exist, and specially in megalopolis.

Like we're somewhat seeing in Mexico.