Thursday, April 30, 2009

Swine Schwhine

Swine Schwhine

swine flu cartoon I talked to the kids last night about the Swine/H1N1 Flu. They hadn’t heard a thing about it. Apparently their schools aren’t talking to them about washing hands etc. I told them not to worry, it was still far away. Today there’s a school closed in Seattle because of it. Like closing a school makes any difference. So far, people seem to be treating this outbreak like…well…The Plague. We don’t even know how severe it will be. If there’s a 10% mortality rate like in Mexico…then we’re fucked. If all 306M citizens in the US get this flu, then 30M will die. I seriously doubt that will happen. However, I like to write Disaster genre novels so it’s the kind of thing I think about.

Since I’m a self-proclaimed “Master of Disaster”, let me tell you the mostly likely scenario. A normal flu outbreak claims about 36K people a year in this country. Since no one has immunity to this strain and there won’t be a vaccine available for months, it’s likely that this will spread quickly. We can expect 2-5 times more deaths, so 70-150K deaths from this. Timing is everything. Flu doesn’t spread as quickly this time of year, and people are paranoid about it, which could delay the spread enough to allow the vaccines to be distributed. So far it’s been contained mostly to the younger, more mobile population. Once it hits nursing homes and hospitals it will become much worse.

zombie attack kit So what can you do to prepare? The usual stuff. Find a place up in the hills and have no contact will people until the vaccine is available. Arm yourselves against angry mobs of looters once the government falls. Don’t forget that the survivors may be forever altered…and could turn into Zombies. Stock up on a year’s supply of MRE’s. Learn to survive out in the wilderness using traps made of maple saplings and clothes made out of bark. But don’t panic or anything. Everything will be fine. It’s not TEOTWAWKI. Yet. Just watch out for the wild dogs.

8 comments:

  1. Should I be worried? I was hugged by someone who was on an airplane with people coming back from Mexico who later developed swine flu. I'm probably doomed... :-)

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  2. You're probably fine. Might want to check if your local pharm stocks Tamiflu and/or Relenza.
    I think the lack of news about the flu is a good sign

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  3. Loved this! The cartoon made my day. Thanks.

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  4. Thanks! I just image-googled "swine flu" and found it.

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  5. I LOVE that you have blackberry listed as part of your family on your profile.

    Two shots are supposedly working for this flu. But viruses mutate and become resistant...so time will tell.

    Thanks for visiting my blog today! I hope you do post some of your stuff!

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  6. The flu is looking like just a regular flu...cept no one has immunity and there are no vaccines yet so it might be pretty bad as regular flus go.

    If you go to my blog homepage (http://blog.dawnsrise.com) and you click on the links under NaNoWriMo you can read my highly unedited seat-of-the-pants writing.

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  7. Here's my word on the Swine Flu debacle (but as so often happens with me, it sort of morphed into something else)

    http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2009/05/stay-home-if-swine-flu-is-possibility.html

    Love your blog : )

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  8. Looks like the Swine Flu Panic of 2009 is already DOA. It's just the regular old crappy flu.

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