Most importantly start in your own community. Go to your church and ask them to devote one service to public education. Ask them what they will be doing at the time of a pandemic and start to organize your local community. If you belong to a civic group, homeowners or condo association, PTA or even the local Optimist Club, have special meetings. Here is the trick. We all have networks of other chapters such as Mothers against Drunk Drivers. The national chapter can notify all local chapters and then they can help educate their own members. Do not be afraid to call a local chapter and put in a request for them to notify their national chapter. Take the lead and ask your church to notify all the other churches of their denomination, then go one step further and have all religious leaders of all faiths get together and have them notify their perspective churches. For instance, the Pope needs to ask all Catholic churches to come on board and do one service of Pandemic Planning. In fact I am quite sure the Pope can pick up the phone and call all top leaders of all faiths and get them to educate their parishioners. Ask your boss what plans your company has for a possible bird flu and if they think you are nuts, have them go to the government’s web site to verify what they should be doing. Ask your employer if they can be involved in helping the community. Be a leader. Be your own leader and help spread the word. You do not need a boss’s or someone’s permission to help educate your loved ones or people you do not even know. Again I say to you, the government cannot handle a pandemic and your local hospitals can't either and the only way to make it better is for pubic education to take hold. We have all heard the words “Take the ball and run with it!” Today I hand you the ball now run with it.
Here are some things we can do in our community and some things we can also do at home or with our own families if we fine tune it to a particular situation. For instance, take the second topic on the list below, “Massive Public Education”. The next time you have a “family get- together”, spend some time educating each other on what to do and who can help who and set up a family call list so you can keep tabs on the ones who may live alone. You should stay in contact with each other two times a day because some people may die very fast once they get sick. Once the incubation period ends, things can simmer down a little if there is no chance of infection. This means the person stayed at home to avoid getting sick (social distancing) and has been free and clear for a certain number of days. There is no true amount of time that I have found that will tell me how many days it will take for infection to set in, once exposed. Please remember a person may be very sick without showing one sign they have contracted the Bird Flu. Just because your friend down the street may seem to be healthy does not mean they are free and clear, they may have been infected but just don’t know it yet and they can pass it on to others before they start to get sick. You will have to listen to what the public health officials say about the incubation period at the time of a pandemic. Here is the most important thing you can remember. If you are going to stay at home and lock yourself in to avoid getting sick, then the first few days or what ever the incubation time period is going to be , make sure that family members stay away from each other. If you must have contact with each other use gloves, masks and plenty of hand washing during the so called incubation period. This will limit the chance of catching something from a person you think is healthy. This is why it is so important to stay at home and to have every item you need in your disaster kit so you do not have to run to the grocery store and buy food. If you are one that has to go to work because you are important to the infrastructure or you are out helping others who may need help, use gloves, masks and good old fashioned hand washing while out in the field. If you have to go to the store use the same procedure. I made my brother’s plan at home. He works in a hospital up north and he will be required to work inside taking care of patients. I told him he did not need to bring any germs home to his kids. His plans are simple. When he comes home at night he will be staying inside the garage and if he has to use the bathroom he will disinfect it before leaving to make extra sure that his children and wife do not accidentally getting the Bird Flu. You have to think about your children and how they are gong to feel and the young ones may not understand what is going on and why they can’t see dad or mom. So it is important that they be able to see at a distance their parent or use precautions when giving love to their children at home. For my brother he will have a phone where he can call inside the house to his kids giving his family strength. Another reason to leave home may be to take your sick family member to the hospital where they can receive Tamiflu, if there is any because the government is short on this medicine. The government’s plan is to have only 25 percent of Tamiflu available for the entire United States. They feel that it will be the proper amount but anytime you have a limited supply, some areas of the country may be very short in a pinch and a pinch is very important when dealing with the bird flu. Hopefully your local hospital will have the proper amount of this medicine. This again is why you need to have a stocked disaster kit. This way if you do have to go to the emergency room so your loved one can get the one medicine that will help against the Bird Flu you can do so and do it as safely as you can. You take them there with a mask on them and on you and use gloves. When you get back home to be with your other family members it is once again time to distance yourself from your other remaining family members at home so you do not bring back a germ from the hospital. A lot of people do not realize it but if you put a mask on the sick person and the care taker it limits the chance of spreading germs. So if the hospitals are filled and you need to take care of your sick family member then put a mask on them as well. Also when it comes to Tamiflu please understand that it only helps a person once they get the flu and experts are unsure how much it will actually help at the actual time of a pandemic. This means that Tamiflu is not the magic bullet. Also during a pandemic pay attention to the time limits that the public health officials say that a person should take their course of Tamiflu for it to work the best. Some experts have stated that it should be taken within 12 hours of showing the first sign or symptom. Also do not be afraid to ask the Emergency Room doctor for extra Tamiflu. There is a lot of talk out there that if one family member gets sick and you start the others in the family on Tamiflu to use as a prophylactic (a preventative method) it may lesson the odds of the others getting sick or lesson the impact of the actual Bird Flu if they got exposed. Again this is why it is important for you to listen to the health experts because during a pandemic the germ may mutate and the protocol may be changed a little for the best performance of any vaccine or other meds that help slow or lesson the chance of dying. Another good piece of advice…if you have to go out and buy supplies or get free supplies from a disaster agency make sure that any time you bring the product back home it will be germ free. It will need to be sprayed with Lysol or wiped down with bleach. I am talking about the outside packaging. Just because the worker who gave you the items is wearing gloves does not mean it is free of germs. Those gloves are used to protect him; he will be using the same pair of gloves while working therefore his gloves will carry the same germs as dirty hands. A person wearing gloves should change gloves frequently or if there is a shortage and those gloves can take a simple spray of Lysol then you may be able to spray them to help stop the spread of germs. Some gloves can’t handle a washing so use common sense and read the directions on the boxes. Also remember this procedure can be used on the mail you receive at home and the work place. You may want to have your normal bills come to you on the internet. Many companies have this in their Bird Flu plan.