The bird flu cometh

Im a fourth generation funeral director and we receive lots of information all the time and indeed it is not a question of if but when. We were told that for the expected amount of casualties the Worcester DCU center would be turned into the first temporary morgue in our area and the details go on and on like a list of world ending scary shit.
 
MrsWildweasel said:
I wonder how many are prepared for it?[grin]
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What do you really do? Walk around in a full SCBA Level A Hazmat suit?

I know that I don't have the money for the types of vitamin therapy this guys talks about..

http://www.cqs.com/influenza.htm

And from the .gov

How can I protect others and myself from pandemic flu?
You can protect yourself and others from pandemic flu the same way as you can protect yourself from seasonal flu. Wet droplets spread pandemic flu. Wash your hands often with soap and warm water, or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Avoid touching your nose, mouth or eyes. Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze. Never cough in the direction of someone else. Cough or sneeze into a tissue or the inside of your elbow. Clean things that are touched often like door handles, telephones, etc. Avoid holding, hugging, kissing, or shaking hands with anyone who has a cold or the flu.

What is “social distancing”?
“Social distancing” is the term used to describe various ways of slowing the spread of a pandemic flu by avoiding having people congregate in large groups where transmission of the flu to a lot of people would be likely. Closing schools and theatres, canceling large public events, etc. during a flu pandemic are examples of “social distancing”.
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So, then what do we do? Other than put on the tin foil hats?
 
We were told that if you choose to stay on the front lines w/ all the other first responders to kiss your familys (literally) goodbye lock them at home and don't plan on going back for 6 months to a year if you make it. It would be the first time that the US has ever had to do mass cremations, and with death tolls of upto 100,000 dead per state, mostly elderly and children. Sorry to be so morbid but thats what I do.
 
WHEN it happens, lock yourself in your house, and don't let ANYONE in.

There's more to it, but if you do have to go out, wearing a mask, and gloves will be the first line of defenses.

You are stocking up on N-95 style masks right?
 
Adam_MA said:
WHEN it happens, lock yourself in your house, and don't let ANYONE in.

There's more to it, but if you do have to go out, wearing a mask, and gloves will be the first line of defenses.

You are stocking up on N-95 style masks right?
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Our funeral homes fully comply with preperations for bird flu outlined by CDC and OSHA. They, the supplies are also protected by Rock River and HK
 
C-pher said:
What do you really do? Walk around in a full SCBA Level A Hazmat suit?

I know that I don't have the money for the types of vitamin therapy this guys talks about..

http://www.cqs.com/influenza.htm

And from the .gov




So, then what do we do? Other than put on the tin foil hats?
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Stockpile anti-viral drugs and get the pneumococcal vaccine.
 
Adam_MA said:
WHEN it happens, lock yourself in your house, and don't let ANYONE in.

There's more to it, but if you do have to go out, wearing a mask, and gloves will be the first line of defenses.

You are stocking up on N-95 style masks right?
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Exactly. Stock up on food and supplies so the less that you have to go out the better.
 
Interesting thread - Good to see other folks paying some attention to this.

Information about this is typically buried in the news these days, and from my perspective it continues to be one of the most significant threats to our way of life and society as we know it. The government and large corporations are paying attention. The general population is not. I'd also add that the government is making little to no effort to get us to pay attention.

I am, however especially pleased to see the morticians are being prepped. Given that the current fatality rate of H5N1 is 60% (% of humans who die when contracting it) you guys would have your hands full should this go pandemic.

For those interested in more about the spread of this as well as discussions on prepping, check out my Pandemic Preparedness post in the survival forum. There are several links to great sites where this topic is discussed in great detail.
 
We prefer Funeral Directors now a days [smile] But your right after initial call, hospitiliaztion or home quarentine when you kick it everyone is going to turn to us and say we need closure how do we mourn? It is really sad that the majority of the human race walk threw life an put off the inevitable [sad] but when it comes down to it if you don't have a clue most families are going to be so lost for years. Look at the Katrina stories, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, murders 5 fold, the sky's the limit for how bad the shit will hit the fan if a natural disaster hits are country. God bless the 2nd Amendment
 
I am on the Pandemic planning committee at work and the stats are almost make you laugh, cause the alternative would be too depressing. We interface with the state.....are they prepared....not even close. With the current mortality rates stuff like Social distancing will be a law enforced by persons with firearms because the alternative is ending up like the Stand.

Want to be really depressed, you can anticipate that the health care system will be overwhelmend within weeks and go completely pro-bono after that if at all because the system will financially collapse.

Best hope is that that it starts somewhere else and ravages that part of the globe as we shut our borders.

If we could find a way to insulate the young, a good culling of the older population would ease much of the social issues we face today. Social Security - funded forever, Medicare.....costs no longer ballooning. Huge transfers of wealth not depleted by time brought down to younger generations. Oil shortages....not with 60% less consumers, Provided the system doesn't totally collapse, it would have the makings of the start of a golden age.....unless you are in the 60%
 
springer said:
Stockpile anti-viral drugs and get the pneumococcal vaccine.
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Good point, but have you seen the price of Tami-Flu lately?! You'd better keep those trauma shears close to protect you stash! [smile]

Also, I was reading another article but cannot find the link again. Basically it was confirming that bird flu can be passed not only from moist human to human transfer, but can also be contracted through contaminated drinking water sources (infected bird dies in reservoir) The reason this is so bad, is they are now discovering that the H5N1 virus is fully resistant to chlorine bleach, which also happens to be the way public drinking water supplies are treated!
 
Just a simple question

People: Just a simple question - Do you have your gloves and masks?

I just bought 30,000 surgical masks for my company that will last each employee and their family members for 15 days if needed for a pandemic. If I have money left in the budget next year, I'll buy 30,000 more. http://www.millerproducts.com/apparel.html

They have a "BFE" (bacterial filtering efficiency) of 99%. http://www.astm.org/cgi-bin/SoftCart.exe/DATABASE.CART/REDLINE_PAGES/F2101.htm?E+mystore

Hand shaking will come to an end and everyone will stay 4 feet away from all other people (the safe distance to prevent inhalation of other people's aerosols from their exhale). You will NEVER rub your eyes or touch your nose or mouth without washing thoroughly first (or removing your gloves).

Remember the SARS pictures on your TVs? People walking around with masks on in Toronto? The low tech approach is better. The government will attempt to provide a vaccine 2 or 3 months after the pandemic is identified. Municipalities are planning for mass casualty care in gymnasiums and other temporary hospital areas. But, the government is not stockpiling gloves and masks!

The gloves and masks need to be check annually, because the plastic degrades over time. My Y2K TB-rated 3M surgical masks that I use in my shop at home as dust masks are 8 years old and the elastic is still good. But, I check them annually anyway.

What do I know? I am the Biosafety Officer at my company. I am a member of the Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) in Cambridge. I am a certified WMD Technician by the DOJ. I did anthrax sampling for the Post Office in October 2001.

Regards,

Bob
 
P-14 said:
The government will attempt to provide a vaccine 2 or 3 months after the pandemic is identified.
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That's wishful thinking. Many experts have said it will take AT LEAST 6 months to even develop the vaccine once the strain has mutated. With many lab personnel being infected themselves, and the following mortality of those lab techs, that 6 months could easily be stretched to 8+ months to simply develop the vaccine, let alone mass production, and distribution.
 
Adam_MA said:
Many experts have said it will take AT LEAST 6 months to even develop the vaccine once the strain has mutated. With many lab personnel being infected themselves, and the following mortality of those lab techs, that 6 months could easily be stretched to 8+ months to simply develop the vaccine, let alone mass production, and distribution.
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On the money - 4-6 months to create a vaccine and another 6-9 to mass produce it. Current annual vaccine production capability worldwide for flu vaccine is 300 million doses - and most are made outside the US!! Take a look at the Gov's Pandemic plans on the Pandemicflu.gov site and you'll understand that any vaccine that is available will go to key officials and first responders. We'll be WELL into a pandemic once any vaccine gets to our level. What will you do in the meantime??

The government has recently released a community mitigation plan (seen on Pandemicflu.gov) that speaks to social distancing i.e. stopping all public gatherings, closing schools for up to 12 weeks at a time If you're supposed to stay away from others for 12 weeks and stay home to take care of your kids, wouldn't you think they'd recommend preparing to shelter in place for 12 weeks as well? Nope - still recommending 2 weeks of prep - go figure..

You need to be prepared to feed yourself, care for yourself and for the inevitable breakdown in infrastructure (food, water, power, electric, medical) caused by our Just In Time economy. One trucking stopage nationwide would bring us to our knees today. This would be a Katrina in every city in the US

To answer an earlier post - I've got my gloves and masks too The majority of medical supplies in this country including 90+% of all N95 masks are made in asia - good luck getting those or anything else from Asia once a pandemic starts
 
I hear ya. You know, most survival types tend to try to prepare for most everything with little focus on one specific type of event. In the grand scheme of things I think it is MUCH more likely that a global pandemic break out, than us getting nuked by China. While it would be nice to be prepared for any possibility, I think ones best course of action would be to find what they think the most likely scenario of a "SHTF" or "TEOTWAWKI" and plan to that FIRST!

Some might not like to think or believe that TEOTWAWKI is even a possibility for mighty America, but think of what would happen if a pandemic were to break out. None of the truck drivers were willing to go to work, food runs out in grocery stores (think that's impossible? think again a grocery store only has a 2-3 day supply of food on hand) people not showing up for work in public works jobs, people are sick and dying, power goes out, water stops flowing, markets are closed, global economics break down, starving and desperate people looking to take what you have....

Not a pretty picture, and one that HAS been painted, and confirmed by people at a MUCH higher pay grade than me. They say WHEN, and not IF...
 
The most alarming thing about the MSNBC page is that cases are starting to show up in Britain. There is so much travel between Britain and the US that sooner or later it is going to make it's way here. The nitwits who run our govt. will probably not do anything about this until it is too late - the illegal immigration problem and the mess that Katrina turned into is good proof of this.

Does anybody know of any good websites or books that can be used to to get real information on how to prepare for something like this? The wife will think I am crazy - but stocking up on a few supplies that will hard or impossible to get once this breaks out doesn't sound like a bad idea.
 
calsdad said:
Does anybody know of any good websites or books that can be used to to get real information on how to prepare for something like this? The wife will think I am crazy - but stocking up on a few supplies that will hard or impossible to get once this breaks out doesn't sound like a bad idea.
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Each of the sites listed below does a good job of rationalizing preparedness with a Pandemic in mind. Not necessarilly a survivalist approach, but rather examining the risks and impacts of a Pandemic and creating a plan that mitigates the problems. Of course if you prep with a Pandemic in mind you pretty much prepared to handle most situations. You'll find a lot of nice people, great advice and lively discussion

http://www.fluwikie.com
Comprehensive informational site with links to preparedness guides as well as a great discussion/news forum. On the home page under "flu Topics" Choose "personal preparedness" Two great prep guides by Will Stewart (also a book) and by a board member Dr Dave - Very comprehensive and achievable

Two other great Flu boards
http://www.pfiforum.com Pandemic Flu Information
http://www.planforpandemic.com
 
dwarven1 said:
You might try www.zombiehunters.org - they're a survival-related website that looked pretty interesting as they also have a "real world" organization - actually doing fundraisers and preparation drills.
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ZombieHunters is awesome. They are quirky and sometimes you can't tell if they are legit or just a bunch of new-age hippies with necrophilia. However, they are a great org.
 
From what I've seen, they take disaster preparedness seriously, but they have fun doing it. Goofy coveralls, but they wear them when giving public lectures on how to prepare. That sort of thing.

It'd be very cool if a New England branch started up; I'd join in a New York minute.
 
PBS will be having the 1918 (not positive on that date) flu on I think this weekend. Channel 2 Boston. Check it out, VERY spooky stuff.
 

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