Avian Flu

How ready are you to cope with a possible avian flu outbreak? Are Home Educators in a better position to cope that schooling families? Are you ready?

Here are Future Pundit's tips for coping with a possible outbreak.

www.futurepundit.com

1. Stockpile about 50 or 100 times more Tamiflu than you or your family could use. You can use it to barter if food and other distribution systems break down. Or you can use it to help every friend, acquaintance, and business associate you have. Want to get great deals from a supplier? Give him some Tamiflu and save his life. He'll remember.

2. Stockpile thousands of 3M N100 and P100 face masks. Again, they will make valuable barter material. Or you can give them away to people who do work for you.

3. Stockpile a couple of years of dried and canned food in a dry cool place. I'd also suggest a couple hundred pounds of salmon filets so you can eat healthy even as the supermarkets go empty.

4. Buy a house in the country so that you can avoid contact with other people. The country house should be self sufficient. That means it should have a well, two or three electric generators, and enough fuel to run the electric generators for several months. Photovoltaics in the roof and/or a windmill for electric power would be prudent.

5. If you have to stay in the suburbs make sure you have an extremely well sealed house and high quality filters on air brought in from outside. Though the odds are pretty low you'll get sick from a neighbor's cough.

6. Whether in the country or suburbs make sure your house can function without maintenance for years.

7. Stock your house with whatever else you might need for 2 or 3 years (e.g. seeds and fertilizer for the garden).

8. Be extremely ready to drop everything and isolate yourself with less than a single day's notice. Avoidance of exposure is the best defense. The news says an outbreak is ripping through Tokyo or Shanghai or Calcutta? Time to quit going to work and head for the country or at least stay in your suburban home. If you need to travel to get to a hideaway best to have a lot of gasoline in a small towed trailer to make the trip since you won't want to fly and even exposure at a gasoline station is best avoided (and under panic conditions you can't count on finding gasoline to buy anyway).

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I think I'd add a 9. which is go get your current flu vaccine, (well this coming autumn that is)...because although this will have no protective effect against a potentially lethal avian strain, the extra demand will encourage pharmaceutical companies to get their act in gear re: flu vaccines.