mojo city bird flu

What else can we do
to survive the Bird Flu?

a consideration of the coming disaster, by Cody Barstow, Ph.D., (we've been having some fun at Mojo City for a while now, but things have become serious.)

Bird Flu. Survival.

There are no real guidelines for what we can do. We've never faced this kind of threat and potential all-around disaster before. But our government has already proven that it will not have the imagination necessary to understand these new conditions and how to help the rest of us live through this.

Nor will our government have the courage to face the facts of people starving inside quarantine zones, possible rioting inside those zones, and other bigtime bad scenarios.

The federal government has a solid record of failure in response conditions. Witness Katrina, and the failure to perform. Witness the inability to maintain order in Iraq, even with the best military in the world in place. Witness the inability of this government to ensure that we had enough simple flu shots last year that were not potentially contaminated.

In addition to its proven inability to perform in crisis situations, the federal government cannot afford to send troops to any number of locations. The potential for spread of disease by troops, and the contracting of disease by the troops would be too high. This would be a repeat of one of the conditions of the Spanish Flu of 1918, in which troops returning to the U.S. from WWI in Europe brought the disease to these American shores.

The lesson we must take from all this is that what is federal will likely break down, and everything that has a chance to work will be local.

Local people, their organization, and their leaders will be what permits our people to get through the coming disaster.

We must begin to develop the training for local people and the logistics structure of response and support.

This has nothing to do with local politics and political players. It has everything to do with first-responders, everything to do with making room for recognizing the emergence of new leaders from the population, and everything to do with neighborhood-level planning, coordination, and interpersonal commitment.

We cannot trust current government. It has proven to be blind to the facts. Want proof? Okay, when did you last hear your mayor talk about Bird Flu?

We need to create a new government that has the courage to deal with reality, not silly wishes that things would just go away.

The facts are that fuel will become scarce, and communication will be spotty. The ability to govern and respond beyond neighborhood levels will be severely limited.

But logistics will need to reach beyond neighborhoods when it comes to supplying areas with food, fuel, and water. Systems must be set in place now, before they are needed, to coordinate these distanced supply systems.

We need leaders with the ability to think creatively, not in the way things are ordinarily done.

What needs to be reconsidered? The following is just a starting list of possible categories:

Health Care & Triage
Health Care Riots
Food Provisions
Energy Production
Income and Cash/Card Spending
Fuel Access for Transportation and Home Heating
Burial of the Dead
Protection of the Home
Quarantine and Breaking out of It
Food riots
Communication (maintenance of the Internet and phone systems)
Law and Order, and the Courts
Care for Orphaned Children

Below is just the beginning of one issue and how we may begin to develop some innovative responses to the others. In keeping with the above, this is based on local response.

Health care.

"Symptoms of bird flu in humans have ranged from typical flu-like symptoms (fever, cough, sore throat and muscle aches) to eye infections, pneumonia, severe respiratory diseases (such as acute respiratory distress), and other severe and life-threatening complications. The symptoms of bird flu may depend on which virus caused the infection," from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention @ http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/facts.htm

Certainly, it appears that respiratory distress is a critical concern in terms of survival. We need to understand how this factor has been treated in-hospital for survivors and develop mass at-home care procedures and technology in keeping with those current best-practices. This is something that has never been done before.

We civilians need information to know how to respond to these issues. For example, is a respirator a vital tool in surviving the disease, and can it be brought to home use? Can we preposition this equipment in homes, and through community centers for use by civilians? How difficult would training be?

We must face the fact that hospital care will not be available to most of us, and as such, we must equip our homes to be able to provide care. The medical profession must loosen its grip on care provision, and engage in an active civilian training program.

The medical profession must also work intensively with the providers of medical equipment in order to provide at-home machinery that will address the most common and lethal aspects of what is expected of Bird Flu.

There must be a moratorium on lawsuits against equipment makers and medical providers regarding the use of this equipment by civilians.

All of the above violates current thinking. But it is creative and it addresses the issues in positive manners, while old-thought has no way to even begin considering the problems we face.

Do we let ourselves die because we are afraid to think the original thoughts that can save our lives?

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Taking Direct Action

How we beat this thing.

9 out of 10 infected kids in Thailand died from Bird Flu.

Is using the 50% kill-rate irresponsible fear-mongering?

What else can be done?