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The New Swine Flu Review
Sharon Astyk, Casaubon’s Book
I was all psyched to tell you what I learned about water pumping in the North Country, but when I got back, my in box was filled with swine flu news and requests for what to do. So I thought it was a good time to post a short review of what to do if swine flu does become a pandemic – you’ll find that a surprising amount of it is precisely the stuff we all have been doing anyway.
As I understand it, swine flu is nothing to get complacent about, but generally less virulent than avian varieties, because we’re better adapted to it. So far, all the US cases have been very mild – the outbreak in Queens involved everyone being sent home.
My own personal response is to watch and wait. Both Eli and Eric are going to school today. I’m still planning on travelling by public transportation to Maine next weekend for a talk, although this could change if events do. A few years ago I wrote a piece about the potential intersections of pandemic flu planning (and actual outbreaks) with peak oil and other potential crises. I think most of what I wrote is potentially true, particularly the fact that a not-terribly severe flu epidemic could be used easily for political purposes – we tend only to be able to deal with one crisis at a time, and so one concern is simply that while the news is focusing on flu, they won’t be reporting on what is happening in the economy. This may not happen – it is merely speculation, but while we should be concerned about a major flu outbreak, we should also continue to look at the world critically, rather than simply getting scared.
So the first thing to say is DONT PANIC – so far, the swine flu, while potentially very widespread, doesn’t necessarily seem to be that serious. Yes, 160-odd people in Mexico have died. But lots of people die here of the flu every year – it is actually a very common cause of death among the elderly. So there’s no reason immediately to assume that this is a particularly virulent or unusually serious version.
The second thing you should do is WASH YOUR HANDS and stay a step back from people.
(27 April 2009)
The Joker
James Howard Kusntler, blog
… Even if the Mexican swine flu turns out to be something of a false alarm, it will require billions of dollars in unexpected new outlays for prevention operations here in the USA — reinforcing the false idea that the nation has bottomless resources (the same idea that has been driving the bail-out fiesta). My guess is that the fear emanating from the story will be a potent generator of paranoia in the meantime, leading to widespread closures of things, canceling of events, restrictions on travel (official or otherwise), and a sell off in the financial markets. And that’s if the flu turns out not to amount to anything.
If the flu is the real deal, it will surely drive a stake through the faintly-beating heart of that invalid global economy, and possibly even continental-scaled economies like the US, the Euro-zone, and China — any place where things and people have to move long distances to keep life going. The US, obviously, suffers in this instance from its proximity to Mexico, and the fact that so much of our food comes from places that employ casual Mexican labor. A serious flu outbreak would be a short path to food shortages in the US, with our three-day supermarket inventories and just-in-time shipping methods. It would not be such a bad idea now to lay in supplies of beans, brown rice, cooking oil, onions, and toilet paper.
… Of high interest to those confused and perplexed over President Obama’s actions so far in the banking fiasco, I commend a great piece by fellow blogger-on-the-margins Charles Hugh Smith: Obama’s Secret Plan. This analysis is low on the paranoia and high on the Machiavellian maneuvering insight. The basic idea is that Mr. Obama has gone along with all the TARPing and PPIPing because it was tactically the only way that he could give the Wall Street plutocrats enough rope to hang themselves — and that this was the only reality-based strategy that could get public opinion in the mood for real change. It explains a lot, if it’s true. Alternately, it would be very sad to learn that Mr. Obama really believes he can rev back up a securitized-debt-and-consumption fiesta by turning the Federal Reserve into an ATM.
(27 April 2009)
Emergency Room parable of global warming
Ray Songtree, Transition Towns New Zealand
You are a Doctor in a hospital and into the emergency room comes a patient with fever. The family says it isn’t swine flu. They say it is more global than even that.
The family is scared. You examine patient and find the fever is high and ponder cause. You find the patient has high concentration of toxins in body. Why? You examine kidneys and intestines and find the patient is excreting correctly but the volume is so great the body is getting poisoned, causing warming. Why is the patient eating so much food? You find out that the patient is eating so much because he was living on borrowed money in a fantastic ponzi scheme where credit was created from interest bearing debt, and that overpopulated countries with cheap labor supplied the patient with endless stuff based on make believe values, upheld by the control of oil, commodities, and currencies via military force. As a doctor you are incredulous. You make a quick review of all the evidence and you are still incredulous.
But then you notice that the patient is limping. You examine his foot and find out that all the bones are broken. In fact, the patient cannot walk and his foot is gangrenous and about to create systemic metabolic failure.
Amazed by all this you ask, on a hunch, where the patient works. He answers that he, in fact, just lost his job in the tourist industry because of his broken foot. You order some blood tests and sit down to think. You realize that the global warming fever is not important as it was caused by the toxins from eating too much, and that the patient will not be eating much without a job.
The family wants to talk. “What about the fever!!!! It will kill him within 50 years!” You explain that the fever will go away soon because toxins won’t be in system once over-consumption ends, and without a job, over-consumption will end. You tell them that the causes of global warming are not sustainable.
(27 April 2009)
I’m not sure I agree with the point of the parable, but it is a clever way to describe the problems. -BA
Stockpiling for perilous times
Rick Montgomery, Kansas City Star
Ammo. Canned goods. Vegetable seeds. Fortified water by the case.
They are reportedly flying off the shelves, these staples of the stockpile crowd.
“Survivalist” isn’t the right term, not in a downturn that has got everyone nervous. “Preparedness” or “self-sufficiency” — that is what they are saying.
Adhesive bandages. Gardens in the works — be they victory gardens or, as some prefer, “crisis gardens.”
… Are times that perilous?
Frankly, not to Joe Levy, a clerk at Mickey’s Surplus in Kansas City, Kan., where mannequin heads sport gas masks.
“Compared to the Depression, this is nothing!” said Levy, 78, whose family of German Jews fled the Nazi regime and came to America in 1937. “I have faith in this country. Things will come around.”
Many agree. For the first time in five years, more Americans than not say the country is headed in the right direction, according to an Associated Press poll released last week.
But among the 44 percent who say “wrong direction” and countless others who just wonder if they are prepared for the next blow, natural or man-made, it makes sense to grab 10 cans of corn on sale instead of two.
(25 April 2009)
