The difference between a regular flu outbreak and a pandemic outbreak is that for the regular flu (which is miserable) the CDC (Center for Disease Control) knows what strain of flu is most likely to break out and it is a known entity; with a pandemic they don’t.  When a known flu comes around, people will get sick, but most people will already have built up an immunity to the “flu of the month” and the vaccine will already be manufactured in anticipation of an outbreak.

A pandemic flu however is a new flu that has never circulated in the general public before, nobody has antibodies which can protect them and there is no backup vaccine. When a pandemic breaks out, the government’s Health and Human Services department anticipates 30% or more of the public will be affected – that is one out of every three people!

After the pandemic starts, and after they figure out an appropriate vaccine, it will take approximately six months to be able to produce enough vaccine to inoculate everyone.  The people who will have access to the first vaccine are those who need it most: health care workers, public safety workers, first responders (CERT members included), the very young and the elderly or infirmed.  So what do the rest of us do in the meantime?  Lots.

First, you do exactly what I have been telling you to do all along – store your water and get your food supply built up.  No kidding!  That instruction comes straight from the government.  They want you to have a two-week water supply for every person in your family.  They say one gallon of water, but I still stick with my two, especially if you are sick.  You need to make sure that you have enough to keep hydrated and to maintain good hygiene if something happens to the water supply.  (Two gallons, per person, per day for a two week period.) After all, hurricanes will happen, storms will cut electricity and earthquakes will still continue to shake the earth – no matter how sick we are.

Next, you need to store food - for two reasons actually.  The first is that when the pandemic hits, as I said before, the government anticipates that more than 30% of the U.S. population will potentially become ill.  That breaks down to approximately 90 million Americans that will get sick and a possible two million Americans that may die.  So with that many people getting sick and the rest trying to take care of them, and not get sick, who will deliver all of those perishable, canned or frozen foods to your local store?  Truckers and sailors get sick too and many supply lines may be tenuous at best and non-existent at worst.  And what about all of the people that are sick and are no longer able to unload a truck even IF it were to come in?

The second reason you want a large and varied food supply is because who wants to go out shopping when you feel miserable?  Also, you need to make sure that you have good nutrition so that your body has every chance to heal itself.  Even if we were able to get out, there may be nothing to buy and essential items, like medications, cough syrup and FOOD, may be in short supply.  You need to prepare your family with a well rounded food and sundry supplies because you may have to/want to stay home for an extended period of time.

My mother remembers the time, before antibiotics – which has only been around for a relatively short amount of time, when individual homes were quarantined if they had the measles, whooping cough, or any other communicable disease.  Nobody was allowed in or out of the house, except for a few select health officials, and the quarantine was strictly enforced.  That could happen again.  My mom said that if a house was quarantined that a sign or notice was posted on the door and the house and the inhabitants were off-limits.  If you wanted to leave a pot of get well chicken soup, you had to leave it on the doorstep and you were not allowed to get your dishes back when the inhabitants of the house were finished with the soup.
If that happened to your house or neighborhood, would you have enough to eat and keep your family from being malnourished or hungry?  You wouldn’t be able to rely on the charity of neighbors to bring you food because they might be in a worse situation than you.  Get prepared.

These are some of the questions that the Health and Human Services department and the Red Cross want you to ask yourself and then make a plan as to how to address the situation.
•    What if my children’s schools were closed?
•    What if a family member becomes seriously ill?
•    What if I could not go to work (either because you were sick or because you were taking care of family members who were sick)
•    What if I had to stay home for an extended period of time?  Do I have the food stores, water and supplies to sustain my family, even if they were ill?
•    Do I have enough money saved to carry my financial obligations for at least six months?
•    Do I have a supply of OTC medications and prescriptions?
•    Do I have medical histories on everyone in my family?
•    Do I have emergency contact numbers?
•    Do I have enough cleaning supplies to disinfect my house on a regular basis with or without sick people?

When the pandemic does start, the officials figure that the first round of sickness will last at least six to eight weeks.  Put another way – THAT IS TWO MONTHS.  They also said that the pandemic flu will go several rounds and could possibly last for several years.  Remember the Bubonic plague the first time around?  It lasted 150 years!  The second time around it lasted six years.  Mutations will happen with the new virus and the government suspects that it will rear its ugly head a couple of times.

I don’t want you to start running around crying that the sky is falling, but you can no longer just ask how you will react and how well prepared you and your family will be for a disaster; you also need to know how well prepared your family will be when a pandemic happens and nobody can step in to help you.  What is your plan and how will you take care of each other?

The government has made it known that they can’t help us individually or even community wide when a pandemic strikes.  They are depending on us to get prepared ahead of time… and so for goodness sakes, get your water stored and build up your food storage!