This is a personal perspective - more references are needed.

The future will bring a pandemic, we don't know when or from which virus, we don't know how severe for individual people or how contagious among human populations.

There's reason to worry because the H5N1, just like any other flu virus, keeps doing its genetic dance (mutate and exchange pieces of genetic material with other influenza viruses) and each human case (detected or not) means one more chance for it to go pandemic. Acording to WHO, detected instances of a pandemic virus would be stoppable if detected soon and happening in a rural environment; not enough at all. H5N1 keeps being a very lethal beast, disproportionally targeting the young - so far; all of this would change if or when it becomes pandemic, but we don't know how the change would be.

Even a 2% lethality pandemic (one which infects maybe 30% of human population in 2 or 3 waves (each 5 to 10 weeks long), and kills 1% of those ill) is said to be able to bring much of globalisation to a halt, or at least we'd be in for a long bad ride. (Pandemics last for one year or more, vaccines would be available for a few people starting 6 months after the begining.)

It has been said that we're now at the same stage as hours before Katrina: it might take more or less time or it might even fizzle out but we'd better get ready.

Some good news:

There are yet-to-be-accepted vaccine technologies that could yield lots of vaccine in a couple of months. As is the case with any other pharmaceutical product, they could potentially do more harm than good and they are not easy to distribute. And we'd still have the problem of getting through those first months, all over the world, so we still have a huge problem even in the best worst case, if you know what I mean.

We know distance works if applied soon. That's why under all but the lightest scenarios the US, and likely many other countries, are planning to close schools (all schools and universities etc) as soon as there's a confirmed human cluster of laboratory confirmed pandemic flu; they also plan to keep schools closed for 4-12 weeks and, if it's deadly enough, keep children out of the streets as much as possible. (This will mean a siesta, or death, for the tourist sector all over the world.) People will have to use their creativity to redesign daily activities in order to keep the 3-6 foot rule: stay away from each other. This will mean bringing work home, staggering transport timing, doing the 3 family tribe trick or variations (2 parents care for 6 children in the larger home, while 4 parents go to work from the medium-sized home, and the smaller home stays available for Woodson's Good Home Care of Pandemic Influenza), etc. All of this, applied in an *early* (you don't wait to put off a fire), targeted (focus on the most respiratory promiscuous, then on the next most, etc), layered way (like layers of swiss cheese, each with holes but non-congruent holes) would reduce infection rates even for those who do go out. Recently the US has put out a document with very general guidance for other countries.

We know masks are not perfect but are to be used as an addition, not a substitute, for distance. And there's appropriate tech regarding masks: http://www.fluwikie.com/pmwiki.php?n=Brainstorming.SimpleMasks (you can also google for "site:newfluwiki2.com simplemasks urdar" and/or look for urdar's diaries - he's been working on that and has information on what kind of stuff would be best for home-made, washable masks). Masks need to have a good fit etc, or otherwise they are counter-productive, just as pierced condoms provide a false sense of security to hormone-blinded teenagers.

Another thing to think about: physical measures on the air around us. There's a paper describing an animal model in which guinea pigs catch the flu much less if the air is warm (as in 30ºC) and humid (as in "quite uncomfortable"). Of course, this doesn't mean you want to be in population-dense Calcutta - again, there needs to be distance for anything to work, and physical measures are an extra layer. There's also a paper from 1957 describing how UV light reduced transmission a lot in a very specific setting.[verification needed]

And there's DIY tech for http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/12/pandemic_ventilator_proje.html but I'd rather not have to use one of those, and would there be electricity and healthy people around to operate it? We should focus on the many, not on the few.

Stocking up

"EVERY Australian household should stockpile at least 10 weeks' worth of food rations to prepare for a deadly flu pandemic, a panel of leading nutritionists has warned." -- Stockpile food for flu crisis, Courier Mail, December 16, 2007

The world is arguably not in a position to stock up massively at all. First responders and worldchangers do have a reason to stock up on some food (probably starting with US recommendation for 2 weeks of food, water and OTC medicines as per Woodson's guidance, and also essentials like insulin if someone is dependent on daily doses) and lots of knowledge (and more to be found in http://www.fluwikie.com), plus ideas and networking (both personal and wireless/resilient/whatever).

See also

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