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Episode-188- Swine Flu H1N1 Pandemic Risk — 20 Comments

  1. Here is some information from Wikipedia as to why flu season is during the winter:

    The exact mechanism behind the seasonal nature of influenza outbreaks are unclear. Proposed explanations include:

    * Because people are indoors more often during the winter, they are in close contact more often, and this promotes transmission from person to person.
    * Cold temperatures lead to drier air, which may dehydrate mucus, preventing the body from effectively expelling virus particles.
    * The virus may linger longer on exposed surfaces (doorknobs, countertops, etc.) in colder temperatures.
    * Increased travel and visitation in the northern hemisphere due to the holiday season.[2]

    Research in guinea pigs has shown that the aerosol transmission of the virus is enhanced when the air is cold and dry.[3] The dependence on aridity appears to be due to degradation of the virus particles in moist air, while the dependence on cold appears to be due to infected hosts shedding the virus for a longer period of time. The researchers did not find that the cold impaired the immune response of the guinea pigs to the virus.

    A recent research done by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) on influenza virus identified the virus as having “butter-like coating”. The coating melts when it enters the respiratory tract. In the winter, the coating becomes a hardened shell; therefore, it can survive in the cold weather similar to a spore. In the summer, the coating melts before virus reaches the respiratory tract. [4]

  2. The big reason that the flu is worse in the winter is really your diet. It starts at halloween with the candy and then all the sugar and alcohol that we consume during nov and dec.

    A good way to make sure you don\’t get the flu is Vitamin D and a good probiotic (or acidopholus the kind that needs refrigeration)

    Fresh air deters a virus so go outside and get some exercise don\’t stress and get enough sleep.

  3. What would I do?

    Things I would expect,
    possible lock down if this then
    Loss of municiple water
    loss of information tech.
    commerce shuts down
    mili hits the streets to pass out food and water.
    Rememeber Katrina?
    Wae College says 5 days on linite to no food people will steal, 2 weeks people will kill.

    We all have Bio Masks, plenty of food, gravity wter filter and much more.

    If You are a preper and prepared do not open the door for the police or military, because civil rights will be suspended. You don’t need their food and water and damn sure don’t take their medicine.

  4. I sent an email to my boss on Saturday to ask that we get things in motion to allow non-full-time employees (I’m a contractor) to work from home should it be necessary if the company closes its doors to prevent spreading the flu (or any future pandemic). He was kind of caught off-guard as he hadn’t heard about it yet. I think he may have opened his eyes a bit, so that is good.

    The company does have a pandemic plan in place. I don’t have access to it as it is a sub-page from their HR page which contractors do not have access to. I was told that it may come to shutting down in-house operations and work from home, so that is good.

    The real thing is to not panic, but prepare for THIS scenario. If nothing comes of it, you’ll be ready for the next one. =-]

  5. Friend who works at Ohio hospital called and said Atlanta CDC is calling this a pandemic and activating Joint Information Command Centers in several states. Anyone have more info on this?

  6. I have to respond to Equus

    I work for the federal government and I am on a team that would be deployed for this type of emergency response. I worked on Hurricanes Ike and Katrina. I have seen the plans for pandemic flu and you can as well because most of these plans are public records. Go to http://www.pandemicflu.gov/ because that is where most of the information is posted. If you want to see what will happen in any type of national emergency go to http://training.fema.gov/ and look at up the Incident Command System (ICS). That is the emergency management system that will be used at the local level. The management system used at the national level is called NIMS. You can look this stuff up and see all the plans for various types of emergencies so you won’t need to imagine crazy things. The only thing that I have seen that is not a public record is the projections of what would happen.

    If we had pandemic flu that is over 0.5% lethal it would shut down mass transit, most hospitals, schools, and strain government recourses to the limit. One of the big problems would be disposing of bodies because we would not have the resources to pick all of them up. Stores would run out of cold and flu medicine causing a lot of suffering. People would be encouraged to stay in their homes and transportation would be restricted. It might be 3-5 months before the quarantine could be lifted. What is really scary is that bird flu is over 50% lethal.

    Keeping telephones, internet, and water on would be a priority for the government so that people would stay in their homes. The state would probably call in the National Guard but they wouldn\’t push food and water on you. You are crazy if you turn down medicine because Tamiflu and Relenza are effective against swine flu. The problem is we won’t have enough for everybody.

  7. This incident just illustrates how far there is to go between the mind-set of this podcast’s listeners and the general public.

    I talked to several people about this, only my mother took it seriously. Others were ho-hum and one was down right hostile. On Friday I admitted that I had enough food to hole up for 90 days if need be and that I was actively seeking more information to figure out if this was a threat. This guy turns around and misrepresents what I said to other people by claiming I’m already in bunker mode and therefore a nut.

    This pretty much “outed” me and not in a way I wanted. I’ll continue to silently prep now that more holes are apparent. It’s a good drill if nothing else.

  8. ;You are crazy if you turn down medicine because Tamiflu and Relenza are effective against swine flu. The problem is we won’t have enough for everybody.

    Well you aren’t the first person to call me crazy. I work for the government too. I see the FEMA Storage warehouses where I work, what are they planning on doing with all that food and water. And no, I won’t take Tamaflu or Flu-X. You bite the bait, I won’t. I got a better measures.

  9. RE: You are crazy if you turn down medicine because Tamiflu and Relenza are effective against swine flu.

    My husband works in a clinic with a doctor who warned him NOT to take Tamiflu or Relenza. Do your homework on these vaccines. Also, look up what happened during the 1976 swine flu epidemic. Many people died or became paralyzed due to the vaccinations. I think we’d be better off taking a natural holistic approach. Try Oil of Oregano, Sambucol and Grapefruit Seed Extract.

  10. This web site tracks all types of threats and disasters all over the world. It had the swine flu last Monday, a full 3 days before it hit the media. Right now it shows 45 confirmed and 100 suspected swine flu cases in Queens NY. If that is true, it seems like this could get pretty bad.

    http://www.idemc.org/

  11. Virus DNA changes so fast that it is not the same effective strain that kills. The best way to stop transmission is to wear a mask. Families need to have an effective emergency plan to get out to remote areas. Homeland Security is not runned by the smartest people and could make very dumb decisions. Make sure you plan for you and your family first, just don’t depend on the government.

  12. I heard some great advice today from Mr. Spirko, as usual. This type of thing really helps me to focus on my "gaps". I finished our localized BO plan complete with maps and routes. Tomorrow, I will complete the regional plan. I also got off my a$$ and worked on the pantry a bit. These have been on my list for a while now. Next…I realized we only had enough TP to get through maybe two weeks. So tomorrow it’s off to Costco. TP and cold/flu meds is high on the list. Were these things on my list anyway? Yes. Why didn’t I already have them? Sometimes it’s more "fun" to buy BO bags, guns and ammo. Let’s be honest.

    Great show Jack!

    Rance

  13. Chris Said: “I talked to several people about this, only my mother took it seriously. Others were ho-hum and one was down right hostile.”

    I think the biggest problem with people wrapping their head around the swine flu is that SARS and Avian Flu have been these vague concepts that have been around for a few years. They were bombarded by the media enough that they kind of ignore it. So, when this new thing pops up in a foreign country, they feel it’s another vague “thing” they don’t have to give much thought to. I just dread the moment when they wake up and realize it’s at their front door…

  14. Just a thought on the mobile Internet; since you already have a cell phone, compare the cost of using your phone as a modem with a “tethering” plan versus the cost of a dedicated broadband card/USB for your laptop. You may be able to get a similar monthly cost without laying out a few hundred dollars in initial cost for the hardware.

    Also I know that the phone lines aren’t the best if TSHTF, and 56K is dog-slow these days, but you may also have a fallback dial-up plan through your current ISP.

    (A different Chris than the one above!)

  15. So I get a call from the Mrs. today. She calls and says “You know how you’ve been trying to stockpile food and stuff; well we should go out this evening and stock up some more.” THAT’S FREAKIN’ AWESOME!! She finally getting on-board with me. Was it from me talking about the importance of keeping X amount of food and what not in the house in-case of emergencies? Nope. She said she was watching “The View” and some guy was talking how we might be asked to stay indoors if things go ape-shit.

    As you said Jack, this just may be a wake up call for everyone.

  16. Michael W.:

    Forgetting that a drop in consumption trends will not and cannot accurately model the inability for the free market to deal with demand for petroleum, I believe you’re ignoring the ‘Energy Elephant in the Room’ —

    No single or even COMBINED source of energy… That’s right… Solar, Wind, Natural Gas, Hydrogen, Wave, Geothermal and a few others… Can meet the current and soon-to-be-rising demand for petroleum due to lack of portability, energy density, extraction efficiency and other factors.

    So — No other source of energ[y][ies] can support or current way of life… And the time to cut back consumption and ‘switch’ to alternate energy without at least a decade of true SHTF to compensate for the unwanted factors is long past.