Emergency Food/Medicine Supplies

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Polly
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Emergency Food/Medicine Supplies

Post by Polly »

Well, I'm finally gonna tackle this project over the weekend. We had discussed here earlier how the gov't. agencies are now recommending that every citizen have a 2-4 week supply of food and water, in case there is a major bird flu pandemic and the supply systems are interrupted. And did you read this past week that the experts fear that some of the cases (was it Indonesia or Malaysia) actually may have spread person to person? I am usually not one who goes around fearing the worse, but in this case, I think a little "preventive medicine" might be wise.

Also, I live in the path for the major east coast hurricanes and winter ice storms, and that should be reason enough to have emergency stores on hand. We have had power failures that lasted days to weeks in my area. I was impressed recently when Joanna said that she has always made these preparations. And she got me thinking about meds, too. I think I am going to get a month's supply of Entocort to have on hand, as Joanna does. Mainly to use if I am ever in a situation where I have to eat foods that make me sick. It would obviously be difficult in emergency situations to obtain fresh meats/veggies/fruits. I have never needed Entocort, but I would take it in a heartbeat to prevent dehydration, etc.

So, Scott and I are heading to Sam's Club tomorrow to get some cases of water, canned goods, etc., for us and the pets. It will be tricky to figure out supplies for me. I think I will mail-order some of that Vital Choice (low mercury) canned tuna and salmon to have on hand for protein. I don't think there is any safe canned meat/chicken/seafood in the grocery store that I can eat. And I will have to check the canned fruit. I wonder if there are any that do not have any additives? I have eaten only fresh or dried fruit for the past 3 years. Oh yes, DRIED fruit would be good And nuts. And I'll need to have plenty of toilet paper as well as ways to restore electrolyte imbalance.

Has anyone else thought this through? Any suggestions for me?

Love,

Polly
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Post by starfire »

Well, the only thing I thought of that MIGHT be OK is Delmonte 100% Juice Pear Halves. However, you may need to investigate "pear juice concentrate" which is one of the ingredients.

The total list of ingredients is:
Pears, Water, Pear Juice Concentrate

I'd like to see you (permanently) list your items when you get it put together. It might be a good guide for others.

I need to be doing that also in case we get another bad storm here. Last year wasn't really that bad (right here) but we still lost electricity for 4 1/2
days.

Love, Shirley
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber"
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Post by tex »

Hi Polly,

I definitely agree that it's a good idea to keep emergency supplies on hand. Personally, I wonder if a two to three week supply would be anywhere near adequate, if a bird flu pandemic did strike.

For one thing, a few hours after the news got out, virtually all the store shelves would be empty. This would/will create such a huge drain on supply sources that I really doubt that the supplies would catch up with demand for months, because as soon as the shelves would be restocked, they would be emptied again. This is assuming that vendors would have the manpower to continue working at full capacity, which is highly unlikely. Most suppliers don't have much reserve capacity to handle much more than their usual rate. It would take weeks or months to tool up to handle more, and where would they get the extra manpower to do this?

Water would be a major problem. I'm guessing that public water supplies might become contaminated, (dead birds would be everywhere). People today use huge amounts of water. We would have to learn to live the way the pioneers did, on just a gallon or two a day, per person, but even that amount adds up to a lot of water to store, in the long term.

If a pandemic really gets underway, who would report for work? Wouldn't most people tend to stay at home, to minimize the risk of exposure to infection?

If people don't report for work, a lot of food will be lost forever, due to spoilage, because it has to be processed promptly, to preserve it. This applies especially to the kinds of food that most of us eat, particularly meat, veggies, and fruits. The grains are really the only food items that are produced at sufficient volumes to feed the masses, and that can be easily stored for a year or two. Almost everything else is either a niche product, (very low volume), or perishible.

If most of the perishible items were to be removed from the market for a few weeks or months, then the remaining items, (primarily grains), would be depleted at a much faster rate. That would result in a scenario where we would suddenly discover that the entire world is woefully short on food of any kind. I'm discounting the supply of canned goods here, because there is only a finite amount of canned goods, and once depleted, they may not be resupplied at a dependable rate, due to disruptions in the labor supply.

After a few weeks, I suspect that there would be a lot of predators out looking for food, wherever they could find it. Therefore, every family might well be required to be able to defend their food supply, since it might eventually come to be a matter of life or death.

Farms and ranches would be especially vulnerable to raiding parties searching for food, since they are the first link in the food supply chain. Obviously, I'm hoping that all this never happens, but it's certainly possible.

Concerned,
Tex
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It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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Post by artteacher »

Canned pears in their own juice are one of my safest foods.

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Post by celia »

Polly, Thanks for raising this issue. I lived in Santa Cruz when it was cut off for two weeks from the rest of California due to the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. By coincidence, I left for San Diego the day before the earthquake, and was not able to return for those two weeks due to the blocked roads. However, had I actually been at home, having the emergency rations would have been super intelligent.

My husband did get us a supply of emergency food after that. Fortunately, we never had to use it!

Hope none of us every have to use the emergency stuff!

Celia
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Post by starfire »

I agree with you Tex, IF it happens...........It's going to be a HORRIBLE MESS!!!

Love, Shirley
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber"
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Post by tex »

Hi Shirley,

Well, the doomsday scenario that I painted is certainly not inevitable, but I don't think that many people have come to grips with the fact that if this disease develops to anywhere near it's potential, each and every one of us, and everyone around us, will be forced to deal with very high rates of mortality, and severe morbidity, on a daily basis, probably for quite some time.

I'm not sure that we can adequately prepare for it, especially mentally, but we certainly have to try. I just feel that we're going to need a lot more than a two or three week supply of essentials.

Love,
Wayne
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It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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Post by Lucy »

Polly, what protective gear do you think we should have on hand? Which face masks would filter out contaminants, and could we get adequate ones at places like Home Depot or Lowes? I think a number of boxes of disposable non-sterile gloves could come in handy as well as various sizes of heavy duty plastic bags.

I should think that disposable wipes and waterless disinfectants would come in handy, particularly if one had to leave home for some reason, and didn't want to have contact with the water supply for washing hands, etc. Clean water will be needed for drinking.

Matches, batteries for flash lights, radios, including your weather band radios, and walkie talkies, and any battery operated tv's (Lithium are expensive, but last lots longer, so probably worth it, in this case).

If you don't happen to own walkie talkies, they are great for traveling by car in tandem. Check out all the features before you decide which ones you want. Some of the features come in very handy when driving, etc.

Have a plan worked out for various scenarios with your family ahead of time.

What about those huge water bottles that companies will deliver to your home? Are those "carbonized," and if so, does that mean that there is less contamination from plasticizers than in the case of the little drinking water bottles of soft plastic or those that contain soft drinks?

I should think a number of those would last a long time, but some smaller ones might come in very handy in case one had to leave an area for some reason. They'd certainly be easier to pick up, that's for sure!

Polly, it might be nice to have listed here several methods of purifying water for various purposes, just in case.

I have an idea! We have a crime warning system here in which we are notified of any suspicious person or crime in our area with the M.O., so that we can look out for it.

My idea is that I should e-mail the person who runs this, and make the suggestion that everyone on the list encourage their neighbors to stock up on more supplies than they ordinarily would for hurricane season, plus the extras that might be needed in the sad event of the bird flu hitting home.
Another idea would be for home owners association publications and similar widely read publications to encourage stocking up on emergency things for bird flu.

Down here, loss of power means no a/c, and with the frail elderly, evacuation would be necessary sooner than later. I would have to take Mother somewhere if it hit while the weather is still so hot, for instance, and early enough that there would still be gasoline along the highways.

As we learned during Rita, it pays to know ahead of time alternate routes to get to possible destinations. Maps are important as well as phone numbers of places you might need to go in an emergency.

As long as fowl are, so far, apparently uncontaminated here, why not stock up the freezer a little in case you later don't trust
the supply. I figure if it's left in the freezer for a while, any outbreak in the supply will eventually be traced back to the stores where they were sold, so if this is left in the freezer long enough, we won't have eaten any by then, hopefully, but I should think the time is running out for stocking up on fowl, wouldn't you?

Oh, and don't forget the comfort foods. These can be very reassuring during an emergency, particularly one that is so confining as quarantine would be.

Polly, do you think that we should have something set up to tend those that do fall ill? I'm not sure how a neighbor could handle that. I suppose the military could dispose of the bodies eventually, but I'm not sure how the living ill could be taken care of in a home with this particular disease.
We might as well be realistic if we're going to discuss this. Strange how we're all going about our business as if nothing was going to happen, isn't it?

How will the folks working at your clinic protect themselves from contamination? When will they/you start to consider every respiratory infection a potential bird flu?

Do you think the outbreak is most likely to occur during what we normally consider the flu season in our areas? Is the start of that season when the safety measures in clinics will be activated? I think that if medical providers don't protect themselves early on, that they'll end up being in short supply just about the time they are so badly needed.

Guess one thing that will possibly offset the demand for medical personnel will be, hopefully, that there will be fewer accidents due to any people staying home and indoors for extended periods of time.

There's not supposed to be ready vaccine by this flu season, I don't think, but do you think it's possible for this pathogen to be included in the following year's flu vaccination or do you think that it will just keep evolving such that the vaccines won't be able to catch up?

Wow, way too sleepy all of a sudden.
Would love to hear any ideas that any of you have regarding this or any other disaster plans or suggestions.

Yours, Luce
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Post by Polly »

Good responses! Thanks for the canned pears idea.

Luce, great suggestions. The recommended mask is an N-95 particulate respirator mask, which you can check out and order at this website:

http://www.smart-san.com/masks.html

Yes, the wipes and waterless disinfectants are a good idea. Gloves and disposable glasses too.

BTW, the recommendations are for 1 gallon of water per person per day for stores. That's a lot of water. Luce, the idea of purifying water is a good one to explore.

In the clinic setting we would have to assume that everyone is infected and take all precautions......just as we do with body fluids in light of AIDS. As we all know, people can be the MOST infectious just before they get any symptoms of a viral infection.

Tex, I agree with you that a worst case scenario would be devastating. Let's keep our fingers crossed that, if the bird flu begins infecting humans, it will be less than that. Perhaps the virus will mutate to a less severe form that humans can handle without too much trouble. Remember the old swine flu epidemic that never materialized? However, if it is a virus like the one in the pandemic of 1918, look out! We could face the same problems today......there is no major new technology to help us since then.......and still not enough hospital beds, etc. And we saw how inept the gov't was at helping the Katrina victims. We can't expect much help there......in fact, the gov't has essentially already told us that we will be on our own with the bird flu, for the most part. Inspires confidence - NOT.

It is interesting how precarious and fragile the global balance is for so many things.....foods, medications, energy. Kinda scary. Just like the popular saying that "most of us are a paycheck away from poverty". It doesn't take much to upset the balance, so to speak.

Love,

Polly
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Post by tex »

Luce,

I doubt that eating a properly cooked bird infected with bird flu would be risky, (though I'm certainly not recommending that anyone do that). It's processing and handling them before cooking, that would be risky.

The poultry in the stores is currently safe, (to my knowledge, the U S is a major exporter of processed chickens and turkeys--I don't believe that we import any, as we do with beef, lamb, etc.) The day the first domestic flock is infected, you will know about it--it will be at the top of the headlines.

I doubt that people staying at home will diminish the rate of occurence of accidents--most accidents happen at home, or close to home.

Also, as difficult as it is to develop a decent vaccine for a virus in general, it is highly unlikely that anyone will be able to develop an effectuve vaccine for a human strain of bird flu before the virus even exists--the virus will have to exist first.

The likely vector for the current forms of bird flu will be wild bird migrations, so the window of opportunity for infection of the local flocks is open whenever birds are migrating into this country, which is, of course, primarily in the spring and early summer.

Tex
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It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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Post by harvest_table »

The Red Cross site is pretty through and has information on home and community emergency preparedness. It's easy to sign up to recieve their monthly newsletter as well as current disaster info- I would imagine this would include bird flu updates.

This link shows a list of supplies for the ultimate home kit and how to put it together.

http://www.redcross.org/services/prepar ... 1_,00.html

As far as foods go, we have 3 freezers stocked with meats, fish, chicken, vegies, fruits which are safe foods for most of us. If you have a freezer stock it up, or buy one if you have the space and $. In case of an earthquake or hurricane and the powers out for an extended period of time it could be a waste of lot's of money though. It's very challenging stocking up on foods that are safe for us. Really tough.

I've been using our dehydrator and also have jerky, dried fruits and vegies. You can dry lot's of things and dehydrators are not expensive. Then you can make safe soups.

I've been thinking about asking our GP about Tamiflu- I'm not sure how easy it is for the public to get or whether it's even available at all.

Be prepared and safe everyone!

Love,
Joanna
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Post by Lucy »

Hi,

Thanks for the helpful information.
One question though -- isn't jerky a bit hard on the teeth? If so, I guess I need to learn to make soup out of it, huh? Haha!
Actually, I'd never thought of doing that.
It would simply be reconstituting the meat, right, or am I missing something here?

You are so knowledgible in how to survive -- ever think about starting a wilderness school up there? Ha!

Yours, Luce
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Post by harvest_table »

Hey Luce,

Yes, most jerky is hard on the teeth. The store bought stuff is full of bad things but what I make just gets marinated in water with a little salt and pepper. It's not real tasty but it's safe. Yes, you can make soups with dried meat and vegies adding water only. Sounds yummy huh?

I have had to learn a few new survival skills since moving to Alaska but nothing that would qualify me to running a wilderness school! There is a Walmart and Fred Meyers 15 minutes from our home. HA

Honestly, I'd plunk down money in a heartbeat to take a life/survival course you would teach! I have learned so much from you- thank you.

Love,
Joanna
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Post by Lucy »

Joanna,

How sweet of you!

Lemme see, will silk pillows fit in this duffle bag -- naw!

Yours, Luce
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Post by harvest_table »

You betcha. Silk pillows fit in duffles. Are you entertaining the thought of visting Alaska? I can offer you all, every comfort of home.

Love,
Joanna
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