To Stockpile Or Not To Stockpile

By Darryl Mason

A "run on the shops" to stock up on enough food and water to last your household for two weeks of voluntary home isolation is exactly what's needed to pump those $900 bonuses straight back into the economy :

The Federal Government's pandemic plan, a 132-page manual issued to medics, media and the public, insists that once the world reaches phase five, Australians should stock their pantries with food and bottled water to last 14 days, check on elderly neighbours and put emergency numbers by the phone.

But yesterday a spokesman for the Department of Health and Ageing called for calm, saying the Government did not want to spark panic buying - ignoring its own plan, already issued to hospitals across the nation.

"I agree that is it confusing," the spokesman said, admitting he had not read the pandemic plan despite being employed to answer questions about it from national media. "The manual may say people should be preparing but we don't want a run at the shops," he said.

It doesn't matter what the government wants. The people will do whatever they think they have to do to ensure their loved ones are going to get through whatever is coming next.

Woolworth's getting emptied in a weekend of fevered stockpile shopping is the least of their problems if an influenza pandemic is on the verge of being declared (if it hasn't already inside the government).

The pandemic response plans made back in 2005 and 2006 were deadly serious, very detailed. Most didn't read them. It's not too late to get some of the highlights of how prepared you are expected to be for something most didn't even know was coming this time last Friday morning :

Residents are advised to stock their pantries with drinks, including three litres of water for each person each day, dried and long-life food such as canned meals, toilet paper, batteries, candles, matches, manual can openers and water sterilising tablets. Analgesics, masks, gloves, a thermometer, disinfectant and prescription medications should also be stockpiled and people should have enough supplies to stay in their homes for 14 days.

Householders should also have plenty of tissues, alcohol-based hand-wash dispensers in kitchens and bathrooms, and soap and disposable towels near all sinks, the manual says.

14 days.

And three litres a water a day is the minimum you need per day, it doesn't include water for washing clothes, or bathing.

If you had to take the family off to a central coast holiday house for two weeks, and the house had nothing but the kitchen basics, what would you take with you if you thought you wouldn't be able to get to the shops? And the place might run out of running water? And electricity?

Here's a story from 2006 detailing just how extensively Australian businesses were preparing back then for an influenza pandemic. The public fear then was of a bird flu pandemic, but Australian and American government response plans were always for the "inevitable" influenza pandemic, not a pandemic of just one type of influenza :

Mounting fears of an avian flu outbreak amongst humans has caused Australian businesses to stockpile anti-viral drugs and face masks and make definitive plans for how they will continue to operate when almost half of their workers may be off work, either ill or looking after someone who is.

Pandemic risk committees already exist within major companies such as Bluescope Steel and Telstra while the Commonwealth Bank has appointed a pandemic planning project manager.

Expanded computer networks to enable staff to work from home in the event of an outbreak have been included in the preparations against bird flu.

Through its relationship with medical support agency International SOS, BHP Billiton, has stockpiles of anti-viral drugs in regional offices considered at high risk.

The Bank of Queensland has proposed to implement basic hygiene education for staff. According to immunologists this measure would help to reduce the spread of disease if a pandemic develops.

Businesses have been advised to plan for up to half their staff being absent due to illness, or caring for sick family members or children because of school being closed.

As immunologist Ron Penny said," There's no strong recommendation that people who have a seriously infectious disease should stay at home. I think we need to educate people".

Federal Government advisers have warn that economically, Queensland would be the hardest hit of any Australian state with even a modest level pandemic causing a loss of about $11 billion, off the Gross State Product (GSP) in the first year alone.

According to Telstra's network services managing director Michael Lawrey preparations for the likelihood of a pandemic were slightly higher in intensity than planning for other business risks such as fires, cyclones and floods.

Don't worry, Australia's biggest businesses are well prepared if the World Health Organisation raises its pandemic threat level to 6 (its highest) over the weekend, or if the Rudd government officially announces we may all have to think about taking a 10 day long 'home-cation" sometime soon.

But how prepared are you?

Just in case.


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You'll Know It's Serious When They Cancel The State Of Origin

By Darryl Mason

There is talk getting around about the proposed cancellation of State Of Origin matches, as governments in New South Wales and Queensland fire up their pandemic response plans. The pandemic response plans also include, eventually, closing most places where people gather in crowds - cinemas, schools, child care centres, public transport, shopping malls, restaurants, theatres, cafes and pubs, and some of these closures may happen even if we don't have a slab of new flu deaths once the World Health Organisation moves its pandemic alert from 5 to 6, its highest alert status.

But major sporting events are still going on elsewhere in the world, they're just closed to the public, so big crowds don't gather in the stands and potentially share the Frankenstein Flu amongst themselves. The Qld government, however, is apparently considering not having the State of Origin held at all. Not letting crowds come to the games, but still holding the sports event so fans can at least watch it at home, seems almost normal if we are actually in pre-pandemic days. But cancelling these events completely?

If most of the city populations have to, eventually, stay in their homes for a week or two, to lessen the spread and the potential for the H1N1 virus to continue swapping genes and growing stronger, maybe more deadly, people will need those familiar events on the box to go ahead as normal. If a pandemic unfolds.

Life without footy on the TV might please some, but there are millions who will need the big games to still be played, live, if only to distact them for a while from the rest of the chaos.

With or without a pandemic, I'm with the PM on this, Wash Your Hands.

This is a chunk of what I wrote up on Your New Reality last night :

It's fine to laugh and mock and be rationally paranoid and snortingly, skeptically question what is unfolding, and how the mainstream media and blogs are covering the possible pre-pandemic, and hyping it, and this questioning and personal judging of the information you're getting should be done, always, your brain demands you question reality, particularly a new reality that seems to be coming on with the momentum of monumental historical events, question it all.

But refusing to develop a handwashing routine as whatever is going to happen unfolds, refusing to increase the frequency of a basic routine of personal hygiene, might in the end turn out to be a pretty fucking big risk to take just to say You Weren't Fooled By Fearmongering Media when the pandemic doesn't become reality.

I've never asked any readers here to donate money to keep the site going, and I won't (though I might try and flog you a few books sometime soon), but you can take this message as a kind of call for a Your New Reality Donation Drive. Your donation to this site is this : You will spend an extra five to ten minutes a day keeping your hands clean, and the hands of your family members, and particularly your children, just for the next few weeks, at the very least. That's it.

Do whatever else you think you should do to prepare for what may happen, or do nothing and soak up the reality-cracking Fearorama of the evening news. Regardless, get your hands in water and soap, five or six times a day and that will be the only donation I will ever ask you for.

But if you do start to notice on the news that Richard Branson, The Royal Family, Al Gore, Stephen Spielberg, Tom Cruise, the entire US Cabinet, Henry Kissinger and Oprah Winfrey have been climbing into personal space ships and blasting off from Planet Earth with no plans to return for a little while, then maybe, maybe, you should check to see if you've got enough food, and water.

Read The Rest Of The Story Here