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You didn't even get the spam reassurance email from Kennedy? What's with his office tech people? Here's the very reassuring response I got from Isakson's office: "Thank you for contacting the office of U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson. We have received your question or concern, and we will respond shortly." That was on 7/22. I've been sitting by my computer terminal waiting to hear back from them.
Have you read Goodbye Blue Mondays a.k.a. Breakfasts of Champions by Vonnegut? I glanced at that Effect Measure page, and it's all I can think about. I'll hunt down the quote I mean later this evening and post it for you, if you'd like.
No, I haven't read any Vonnegut. Is that pathetic, or what? But I borrowed Journal of the Plague Year from the library, that's made for upbeat reading.
The best thing about emailing Kennedy is that you have to go through a form page that makes you pick the subject of your concern from a drop-down list. Rural health? Women's health? Disease prevention? Anti-microbial resistance? Stamps?
Maybe I should just send the same email every 3 days under a different subject until I get a response.
I took a quick look at the guide, and I don't think you need to make an all-or-nothing decision about how seriously to take the threat. Only a few of his suggestions require major commitments of money. Will I be getting a 55 gallon barrel to store water anytime soon? No -- nowhere to put it in my townhouse. Do I have a bottle of water-purifying tablets in my closet? Yes -- they're cheap, and useful in a variety of emergencies. It's easy enough to get a big bottle of tylenol and put it away.
I live outside of Washington DC. I figure it's reasonable for us to prepare for emergencies lasting a few days. I'm not going to worry about the very small risk of something that takes out water/power/transportation for longer than that.
That's generally been my attitude as well, Elizabeth. Though I must admit that Revere and the other bloggers working on this issue have convinced me that the risk is not so small as I would prefer to believe.
Phantom,
I confess, I've seriously considered writing a post outlining all the stuff and issues I'd have to prepare to be ready to weather the flu pandemic. But I thought/think I would look like a total nutcase. I'm worried about looking like a self-obsessed American, fiddling after potential problems while people die by the millions from malaria.
But I'll tell you, this flu stuff scares me silly.
I do think it's curious, how disaster-anxious we are these days. I mean, yes, the potential for apocalypse on multiple fronts DOES look very high, and yet...all of a sudden, our entire cultural outlook seems very 1970s. Look at the horror movies and disaster movies and end-is-nigh stuff on the blogs. Culturally fascinating...if only it weren't so rooted in scientific facts.
Maybe it's just that all the 1970s predictions are finally coming close to fruition. Now that's a comforting thought. Ha.
I find myself almost longing nuclear war fears, because at least I knew (because my mom was quite matter-of-fact about it) that we would just go outside, turn our faces toward the Honeywell factory across town, and not feel a thing. It's the thought of having to fight through, be responsible for one's own survival (or, lets face it, one's children's survival) that is scaring the crap out of me. That and dying during a pandemic, leaving the kids alone in the house with our bodies. (Did you read that Kingston, CAN woman's wiki entry imagining the flu in her town? Scary stuff.)
Where was I?
Oh yeah. I'm going to cut this short, because it really does need to be a post on my blog, never mind how much of a nutcase I'm going to look. But I'm seriously considering how to teach the kids to get by on their own for three or four days, because I think we could probably swing the supplies issue (assuming the power stays on, and/or we get a generator) but it's the "parents completely incapacitated in bed and small children left to fend for themselves" scenarios that are keeping me awake. Time to teach kids how to open cans and use the microwave, or just go ahead and eat stuff cold, I think.
BTW, I wouldn't exist if it weren't for the 1918 flu pandemic. My paternal grandmother's father saw his first wife and baby son die a few weeks apart; one of their surviving two sons was left with permament heart damage and died suddenly of heart failure during his freshman year in college, thirteen years later. My great-grandfather married the housekeeper and their first child was my grandma.
Cheers (insert bitter hard-heartedness),
Jody
Oh, god, Jody, I hadn't let myself picture that particular scenario. (I did read the Kingston, Ontario walkthough -- it inspired this rant, which I think may have led to a little reorganization of the Flu Wiki. But my heart simply stopped when I got to the parts about children left alone with their dying parents and hastily assembled government lodging for flu orphans.)
I don't think teaching self-care skills is going to be an option around here. For one, the baby is, well, still a baby, and LG can't yet be trusted to be around her without trying to step on her head. We're a long way from being able to trust him to take care of her in any way. For two, LG still has residual trauma from events last summer that led him to fear I was going to die -- I don't think we could talk to him about parents being sick in bed without triggering a lot of terror in him.
Maybe we could cover using the telephone to call for help, without provoking trauma and/or fun experimentation involving phone calls to Papua New Guinea.
Maybe I should just make sure that I have a 3-month supply of Cheerios in the house. And Joe's Joes...
I can't bring myself to worry about these kinds of things.
Why?
Because I'm diabetic. If a disaster hits that wipes out infrastructure for longer than a few weeks, I'm a dead woman. It doesn't matter how much insulin you stockpile, if the power goes out, it goes bad, so what can you do?
Besides which, it's usually the disasters you don't see coming that get you--like, "Well, we thought that war with the Spartans was going to decimate our population, but OH MY GOD THE VOLCANO JUST BLEW!"
Not to rain on teh flu parade--sorry.
I take it seriously. I have an emergency supply pack both for me and for Be Bo. I also have a few gallons of water and water purifying tablets. If not terrorists or the flu it could be a tornado. I think everyone should have something like this at the ready. I got most of my supplies at the Dollar Tree where everything is a dollar. I used 2 old backpacks to put everything in. One per person. I know that some people think that is very silly of me but it makes ME feel better. And that is all that counts. It is all stowed in the same closet as all of our camping gear because that can be used also.
Just my 2 cents *plink plink*
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