Bird Flu pandemic

[rick_reno]

Assuming this comes to fruition - we get an outbreak of a flu pandemic in the region you live in. Also assume Bush gets his wish and has prior approval to use the military in a law enforcement role. Let’s say they detect this outbreak in “Your Area”, wherever that might be. Comments I've seen indicate the authorities think they can shut down a pandemic in a matter of weeks with quarantines and effective distribution of vaccine. What do you do when they quarantine “Your Area”?

Please don’t discuss Bush and his plan to suspend Posse Comitatus here, that’s probably being discussed elsewhere. Just talk about what you do when the military takes over and you’re isolalated.

 

[Lone_Gunman]

There is not much you can do, except ride it out. If you try to leave they will shoot you. Best thing to do is stay home and live off your supplies until the pandemic runs its course and the quarantine is called off.

 

[JamisJockey]

Agreed.
Hmmm...probably oughta get some masks, surgical gloves, and more food/water......

 

[Sinsaba]

I think it would depend on the quarantine plan...

Herd us all into centeral locations? --- I'd have to think real hard.
Pass out vaccine and impose curfew? --- I'd likely put up with it.

Just what KIND quarantine are we talking about?

 

[bogie]

I think the best thing to do is just to settle down and ride it out. Make friends with your neighbors, but keep to yourselves. Remember that anyone see on street/walking/whatever who is armed is likely to be targeted by either military or civilian PD, or even criminals.

Quite frankly, the bug scares the heck out of me. I think that most of us here have a greater chance of death via flu than death via gunshot.

 

[lee n. field]

Herd us all into centeral locations? --- I'd have to think real hard.

They'd be complete fools to do that, but it's the kind of thing a gov't would want to do.

It's a bit scary how diseases seem to spread without anyone noticing until "there's something going around."

 

[R.H. Lee]

All you can do is ride it out. Stay isolated, wear a mask, wash your hands. The hardest part would be watching a family member or members die and not a damn thing you can do about it.

 

[Moondoggie]

Since I live in a town of 5K that's a smidgen off the beaten path, I guess I'd probably stay home and ride it out. No other large towns/cities within 50 miles of us, so we're pretty easy to isolate. A good sized river to the east and another to the south make it pretty easy to control access to our town if that were necessary.

If it required a lengthy isolation, I could deactive my DOT authority on my one truck, suspend my insurance, and reduce my business expenses to practically zero. I've got enough in the bank, plus my retirement income, to be able to sit tight for several months. Ditto for food and supplies. Especially if electricty, water, natrual gas, and cable are functional. Since I travel to Chicago every week, I'd expect to be restricted from that area before I'd be confined to my hometown.

I don't expect any great degree of "civil unrest" here, at least not from the local folks.

Probably come in handy that our local NG unit is an NBC outfit!!!

 

[Jeff White]

ANY talk about violent resistance to the lawful authorities and this thread is closed and the member who posted it BANNED.

This thread will be confined to posts that deal with how to live in an area that is temporarily cut off from the rest of the country. We will not discuss vaccines, medical treatments or anything not related to mission of THR or the thread is closed like the other Avian Flu threads.

You can discuss those things that fit into THR's mission statement of promoting safe and responsible firearms use, the same as in any other SHTF thread.

Jeff

 

[NCP24]

For what its worth here is the link to the US Department of Health and Human Services http://www.hhs.gov/nvpo/pandemicplan/index.html and the World Health Organization http://www.who.int/csr/disease/influenza/pandemic/en/

Consequences of an influenza pandemic

In the past, new strains have generated pandemics causing high death rates and great social disruption. In the 20th century, the greatest influenza pandemic occurred in 1918 -1919 and caused an estimated 40–50 million deaths world wide. Although health care has improved in the last decades, epidemiological models from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, USA project that today a pandemic is likely to result in 2 to 7.4 million deaths globally. In high income countries alone, accounting for 15% of the worlds population, models project a demand for 134–233 million outpatient visits and 1.5–5.2 million hospital admissions. However, the impact of the next pandemic is likely to be the greatest in low income countries because of different population characteristics and the already strained health care resources.

If an influenza pandemic appears, we could expect the following:

 Given the high level of global traffic, the pandemic virus may spread rapidly, leaving little or no time to prepare.

 Vaccines, antiviral agents and antibiotics to treat secondary infections will be in short supply and will be unequally distributed. It will take several months before any vaccine becomes available.

 Medical facilities will be overwhelmed.

 Widespread illness may result in sudden and potentially significant shortages of personnel to provide essential community services.

 The effect of influenza on individual communities will be relatively prolonged when compared to other natural disasters, as it is expected that outbreaks will reoccur.

This doesn't sound good at all.

 

[Third_Rail]

You know, the truly worst part of all of this is that it isn't "if" this will happen, it's just "when".

 

[The_Antibubba]

That's the time to bug IN.

 

[LaEscopeta]

This is one time when I agree with a draconian government plan. The best way, maybe the only way, to stop an infection with no effective treatment from tearing through a population is keep people from moving around, taking the infection with them and infecting other people. As stated above, stay inside and live off of stored supplies until the infection dies out from lack of hosts. Remember you can last 3+/- weeks without food if you really had to (even if you wouldn’t like it.) The more people who stay in isolation the quicker the infection will die out. If people are running around, trying to escape, find food, demand vaccines, etc, its going to take a long time to die out, any a lot more people are going to die with it.

I understand standard procedure for distributing a limited supply of vaccines in the face of a pandemic is to ring the area that already has a high concentration of infected people. Then vaccinate people in a widening ring as more vaccine becomes available. So if the government listens to the public health people, you will get a vaccine when you need it, if you sit tight. (I know that is a pretty big IF in that last sentence.)

 

[bogie]

If the thing jumps, I think that the only solution would be to suspend travel, effectively quarrantining the population. Allow military and OTR kinda stuff, keep infrastructure going, but try to keep everyone else at home. Frankly, IMHO, this is one of the reasons why we have the military - not just defense from foreign threats, but assistance with domestic problems. They're organized, they have a command structure, and they're one entity without the bureaucratic infighting that you see in the Washington groups that are "here to help you."

Idea: Free cable for everyone - all movie channels, etc.. Electronically narcotize the population.

 

[hso]

Bug In

If you were permitted to go to the store you'd want to have masks and exam gloves and ziplock gallon bags. You'd don the mask and 2 pair of exam gloves, enter the store, make your purchases for as much of 3 weeks as you could tolerate, put the groceries into large fresh garbage bags, doff the outer pair of gloves into a ziplock, open the car and load groceries then drive home.

Set up decon station outside the house. You'd have a clothing drop, large garbage bags, garden sprayer and bleach solution and garden hose. You'll want to bleach spray everything bought at the store before taking them into the house and you'll want to drop your clothes in a garbage bag and spray yourself down too.


That's the full paranoid approach.

OTOH I think the mask and double gloves are the minimum PPE for a trip out to the grocery store and that spraying down the grocery cans would be a good idea, but I don't think the full clothing drop would be needed.

In our case I live at the end of a long road through the woods with very few families. We would not expect to see anyone come down the road. If a 24hr curfew were put in place we would pull the posted chain across the road and isolate ourselves.

 

[Omni04]

How soon after a quarentine is announced before a perimeter is set up? I don't know much about the subject. Would it be possible to forsee events, and possibly bug out before it is completley closed off?

 

[Sinsaba]

... Would it be possible to forsee events, and possibly bug out before it is completley closed off?

Why would anybody want to??

For example ...

• All of your supplies are there (unless you didn't prepare and then SHAME ON YOU)
• All of your comforts are there
• You are keeping away from people that might be infected
• You can control contact with other people
• You have a measure of control over your life

You give up all of these things to a greater or lesser extent if you bug out.

My largest fear is that the powers that be would think it easier to a) treat, b) control, and c) confine an outbreak by centeralizing the affected/infected/potential carriers

 

[itgoesboom]

I think a quarantine, if done properly is the only way to get rid of the virus if it hits. As long as the military doesn't try and herd people into camps, or evacuate people, I think everything would work out in the end. Evacuations or "quarantine camps" would be the wrong way of doing it.

Chances are that I would already quarantine myself as soon as the virus started to hit the area, so the enforcement by the authorities wouldn't really affect me.

I have preps at home, food, water, and other things that would be essential as well. I could last a few weeks even if the water wasn't pumping, and 5-6 months if the water was still working.

I have a feeling that if an area was quarantined, soldiers would probably bring by some MREs so that people wouldn't leave their home, and to prevent looting within the area.

If so, I would stick those in the back of the supply closet, just in case I need them later, but not so that I rely on them.

If not, then I would expect people to start looting pretty quickly when they discover that the quarantine will last 6 weeks and they have only 3 days of food.

I don't think that will fly on my street though.

I.G.B.

 

[george_co]

I don't have the right to Kill 50 Million People

If I lived in an area that was determined to be infected with the virus I would want to sneak out to protect myself and my family!

But, I don't have the right to risk the people in the rest of the Country with death because I might be carrying the disease and not know it. Because of the ripple effect my passing through other populations I could be condemning literally millions to death even if I survived.

You have ten people in a lifeboat, one person comes down with the unmistakable signs of a disease that is 80% lethal and 100% communicable within 24 hours of showing signs of the disease, what do you do? Do you throw the individual overboard? Or, do you leave that person onboard and condemn 8 more people to death?

In a situation like that I could not morally ask that I be left on Board, even though I have a 20% chance of living, not even if the chance was 50%. And, I would argue that you could not morally leave me onboard even if it were 100% certain you were condemning me to death.

In a situation where you cannot administer an effective treatment, where you cannot stop the spread of the disease through vacination, where the only way to protect the rest of the country is through quarantine and isolation then yes the military must be employed, because police forces don't have the manpower or other resources necessary.

I would balk at confiscation of weapons. The sad truth is that any action will be too late, except for the most fast acting of any biological threat. The spread of the disease will quickly outstrip even the military's ability to coup, particularly once you figure out that they will be coming down with the disease as well as the rest of the population.

If this situation comes to pass, then we all are going to have to take our chances where life finds us at the time. I don't have the right to jeapordize the rest of the THRers because I want to be with my family, and you don't have the right to condemn my family because you want to try and save yours. This situation will call for a lot of adult thinking, and foregoing of our own selish desires. I wonder if we Americans are up to it?

It doesn't hurt to pray, even if your agnostic!

George

 

[Balog]

The odd thing for me is that the Corps is traditionally the favorite for armed in country work. Creeps me out to think I might end up holding a gun on fellow Americans like they were hajjis. God willing I'll EAS long before any of this becomes an issue.

I'd also wonder if you'd run into legal problems trying to strictly enforce "No trespassing" on your property. If things are as bad as is predicted, I'd be inclined to shoot anyone illegally on my property (thinking of private citizens not fed.gov agents here, Jeff) and burn their potentially infected carcass. However, I can only imagine the post-SHTF lawsuits that'd be brought for pursuing that course of action.

Hmmm, horrid death from disease vs lawsuits. Only in America would that be a tough choice.

 

[Tokugawa]

Well I am glad to see that this is finally a topic fit for conversation. In my less than humble opinion, you can trust the gov. to do as well as they do in most things- really poorly. They are not going to learn from nola.
You can expect martial law. You can expect the civil disturbance to dwarf the epidemic. Item- people are a lot less civil now than in 1918- much less duty ,honor, country and a lot more me, me, me. Most of our food today comes from over 1000 miles away- compare to 1918 when it was locally grown. Do we think the food distribution infrastructure, dependent on vast numbers of trucks traversing long distances is going to fully operational in a quarantine?

 

[brerrabbit]

I'm kinda freaked on this one, What is every one else doing to prepare. based on the WHO advisory, a pandemic is imminent. I just bought a large load of staples, beans,rice,canned meat, etc. I'm kinda actually hoping for a military enforced quarentine if this thing strikes.

 

[itgoesboom]

I'm kinda actually hoping for a military enforced quarentine if this thing strikes.

Yup. Sad isn't it?

There is no other alternative, really. Contain the disease or millions more will die.

I.G.B.

 

[Venkman]

I live within 3 minutes WALKING distance of Fort Detrick. My coworker got to see armored troop transports patrolling her neighborhood on and after 9/11 (with GIs on foot carrying their M16's), and especially after Ollie North suggested that one of the hijacked planes was originally targeted for Fort Detrick while he was live on one of the news netowrks (freaked poor old mom right the hell out).

If something like the bird flu hits, you can be sure they are gonna lock down the area around my house tight as a drum. I don't think there will be much I can do about it besides sit inside and find a way to pass the time.

 

[dsquared]

Pandemic

They have been saying it's not if, it's when the next pandemic comes. Riding it out is the only responsible thing to do. With most infections, people are contagious before you're symptomatic. People who wig out and try to escape the area will only spread it. In the 1918 pandemic, the young and healthy were the ones that died, and many were in out of the way small towns.

The same general strictures that apply to any emergency, whether it's a hurricane, terorist attack or influenza epidemic apply. Be self reliant. Be able to provide food, water and security for your family.

If it's as bad as it could be, there could be a breakdown in services and utilities because the employees are all sick. Power, water, public safety such as fire and police could be spotty. It could be pretty wild.