Dear Friends, a lot of time we write stories just on homeless issues and sometimes we write about other issues such as problems that affect individuals and families. It is sort of like educating people about Global Warming. It does not matter how many homeless people we save if the world would eventually be destroyed by global warming therefore it is everyone’s job to prevent and try to fix what we have damaged, and that means it is this homeless agency’s’ responsibility as well to educate as many as we can on how to stop global warming. So what else can this newspaper and multitude of social service agencies do to help mankind? Well, let’s go back a few years when we at the Homeless Voice started to talk about how we needed to be prepared for pandemics such as the Bird Flu that can turn into a pandemic or any other type of flu like the current Swine Flu. I have been actively involved in educating shelters on their pandemic policy across the USA as well as being on the Pandemic Planning task force for our own community.

This past month gave many of us a scare especially when we all saw and heard the World Health Organizations leading health expert Dr. Chan. She called for global solidarity, saying, “After all, it really is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic.” Yes we got a scare but most importantly it became a test run for all of us who serve the public as well as families wanting to make sure their families were going to be safe. This was the time that every health official told us the bad news, and that bad news was critical to all of mankind. When you hear the leading doctor in the world from the World Health Organization state that all of mankind was at risk it made many of us feel so desperate and too many of us, well, many were scared that millions would eventually die. However, good news came to follow in the form of basically a miracle, for this Swine Flu was a weak virus and the death ratio was very, very small.

Without patting myself on my own back, let’s look at some things that are fact that have been happening with this agency and with me. For about the last five years I have been lobbying government officials on pandemics and the current non pandemic Bird Flu. My thoughts and my heart did not ever want to see thousands of little coffins of children who were taken away from mom and dad. I was only partially involved with the understanding of pandemics for a few years but then after Hurricane Katrina and seeing families on roof tops waiting to be rescued, I began to examine the topic much deeper. The deeper I went the deeper my heart sunk where at times I actually had tears in my eyes.

I know a lot of people did not take this Swine Flu as serious as they should have and this is why there is such a need to be educated to the maximum. Why should we do all this education and is there truly a reason to be concerned? Without a doubt, I feel so strong about this, I would say that the most important issue we at the Voice would want you all to remember from all our issues we ever printed is the fact that pandemics are real and there is a great amount of death that can occur. So if I want you all to remember this topic there is another topic I can give you that is just as important and that is, really there is little need to panic if you are prepared. This is so important and you must be prepared no matter what and if you are prepared you will be better off than not being prepared. In fact if you are not prepared you can set yourself and your family up for tragedy if a pandemic comes our way.

How do we stay prepared and what things can we do to make sure we are safe? You must also be able to treat yourself if medical services are over stressed by the large surge of sick people and the hospitals are filled. If it is a bad pandemic the hospitals will be a mess. During a pandemic you must understand some facts. During the normal flu season each and every year we lose about 35,000 people because mostly they have some other type of underlying medical issue such as HIV or other immune issues or other breathing issues, such as COPD or even old age. What we all forget is that during flu season many also die because they think they will be fine over time and do not get treatment. Let’s take the elderly for example, they may get sick and then they feel they will be OK over time but then they get weaker and weaker and then their temperature gets higher due to do losing fluids and they become confused and do not hydrate themselves and by that time they either just die alone or if they do seek help it may be too late.

I know some of you may now be saying, “Sean, why the hype? Why are you writing about this, this was just a little flu in fact it was less than the normal flu we get each year?”

Let me answer that, yes it was just a little flu but all the potentials were there for a global disaster with the loss of life getting into the millions. The only thing that went well was the fact that this was a very weak flu strain and the death ratio was very, very minimal. So to that I can say with great thanks, “Thank You Lord” and I hope many of you are saying the same praise when you do your daily prayers. Let’s get into why we should be prepared and can we expect the government to save us at the time of a full and bad pandemic with a high death rate? Uncle Sam will not be able to do much at the time of a bad pandemic for several reasons but one major reason is that there is going to be a time when a bad pandemic hits us all and Uncle Sam will say, “Tag them and make them comfortable until they die.” Well let’s hope there are enough drugs to make the ones who are tagged or marked for death comfortable with pain meds. During a bad pandemic the government will eventually have the attitude there is really nothing they can do but to let it run its’ course and try to limit death and impact as much as possible. Why would the government say such a thing? In the president’s own report, it stressed this next statement (that any local community that thinks the Federal Calvary is going to rescue them at the time of a pandemic that, that same community would be set for pure tragedy.) It went on further to say that the state and local government had to be prepared and then it went even further and said there needed to be individual and family plans all saying that the federal government would not be able to do it all. So if the federal government can’t do it all, how can we expect the state and the local cities to do it all? We can’t and this is why you must be prepared. All Individuals, families, business sectors and not for profits such as churches have to have their own plans. This is not Sean Cononie saying this; this is the President of the United States of America who made it clear in his pandemic reports and policy.

So let’s get into the real reason why I am writing this story. The first fact that scared me was the number of deaths that took place in the Flu Pandemic of 1918, in case you do not know; let me explain it like this. Somewhere between 50 to 100 million deaths world wide in just about eight months. Rumor has it, they never could get accurate counts because they were trying to get rid of the bodies fast and counts were not that accurate. Then I looked at the normal flu season and how many deaths occur each and every year in the USA. Then I saw that we only had 90,000 ventilators in the whole USA which are used to assist people breathing when they are about to die from the flu or when they are in a coma or other health issues. During normal flu season about 85 percent of those ventilators are used on the people who are sick. I had one used when I had Bacterial Meningitis a few years back and was in a coma. Even with the bad numbers I still got a little relaxed and said to myself, well medicine is better now, more doctors, more science and more hospitals and of course there is always TamiFlu, so what’s that reason to panic? I then started to look deeper to either dismiss the theory we were not prepared or to do more. As I once again opened up the president’s pandemic plan for the flu or other pandemics I saw this statement again, in black and white in his own report I saw these words, (that any local community that thinks the Federal Calvary is going to rescue them at the time of a pandemic that, that same community would be set for pure tragedy,) and that my friends scared me to no end. (By the way you will see this mentioned again because it is important.)

Some professionals and just the normal person thinks that TamiFlu is the one thing that is going to save us at the time of a real bad pandemic where the death ratio is high. When I say a real bad pandemic I am talking about like the Spanish Flu where 50 to 100 million people died in less than a year due to the flu.

Well let me say it like this, there is a reason we have all this TamiFlu stockpiled in the USA, it is because of the possibilities of the current Bird Flu becoming a horrible pandemic not just the Swine Flu that came our way last month but also any other pandemic that may come out in the future. The Bird Flu that has a very high kill ratio is a major reason why TamiFlu is stockpiled here in the USA and in other parts of the world. Can we expect to be safe? The current Bird Flu is not one that is at this time easily transferred from one person to the next but if that does happen we can expect a very bad pandemic. Can this current Swine Flu mutate and can it come back during normal flu season, the answer is yes. Do we need to take great concern now before the flu season comes our way? I say, yes we do, but even if we have to be concerned that does not mean you have to panic. Remember our main goal is to limit the loss of life. So can we expect TamiFlu to work? Sure we can, but on the other hand it may not work at all.

We know that with this current Swine Flu TamiFlu worked but let’s look at our normal flu this flu season and just how well TamiFlu did not work. According to Loyola University Medical Center, “It makes me nervous,” said Michael Koller, a doctor of internal medicine at Loyola University Medical Center. “We know that it keeps mutating and that is why it is still around. It manages to figure out ways to outsmart us and our medications.”

In a March 2009 article written by Trine Tsouderos of the Chicago Times, an important antiviral drug no longer works against this season’s most prevalent type of flu, which has mutated into a resistant strain, researchers reported today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. So TamiFlu worked in the beginning of the regular flu season but then as the season got older TamiFlu did not work as well. TamiFlu has given us high hopes and it does work well but there is no guarantee it will work on every single flu outbreak.

Has our government done everything possible to help limit the amount of death from a possible pandemic and the answer is no, I will say it again the answer is no for several reasons. Does money play an important part of why we are not doing more, the answer is Yes,

We do know that preparing for a pandemic is very expensive after all medicine has an expiration date on it and TamiFlu is only good for about two years so this means the government has to spend hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions every few years. How can I say all this, well let’s look at two experts. First we have Doctor Irwin Redlener from Columbia University School of Public Health and their newest division the New Policy Center on Disaster Preparedness he feels that the hospitals will not be able to handle a bad pandemic and he reminded us that there are shortages now and this is not severe at all. Then we have Rear Adm. Craig Vanderwagen who stated “it is not cost effective to keep all these empty buildings around for a possible pandemic.”

Yes it is not cost effective to keep empty hospitals around for a possible pandemic but frankly who cares, I don’t care if it saves lives and how do we ever put a price tag on human life? We have many empty buildings in the USA for our elected officials to run and hide for them and their families at the time of civil unrest, war, or yes even a pandemic. So why don’t the people who put them in office have any level of protection like our trusty elected officials? I’m not going to blame the politicians because I have been to too many pandemic meetings and some of the doctors and officials say there is just nothing you can do when it comes to a pandemic.

During a bad pandemic we can expect about 30 percent of the work force to be out from work due to being sick, or taking care of their loved ones at home, or some will die. During a pandemic the people who treat us and protect us also will be in that 30 percent category. Now lets look just how long you sit in an Emergency room during non pandemic times and now tell me with 30 percent of the medical staff out sick, just how will the hospitals handle a bad pandemic and will the increase surge with so many sick people be able to be met by our current hospitals system? No way will it handle all that is needed. Sure the government will set up mini service centers where vaccines ( If we have one at that time) and medicine can be handed out but if we are that sick and many people need to be admitted there is just no way we can expect the hospitals to do their job correctly. Let me throw in the picture civil unrest, people panicking, and shortage of food and over the counter medicine that you would normally treat yourself with during the flu season and picture the long lines. What about police protecting us and handling the civil unrest in the emergency rooms or the unrest in the community when there are hardly any normal services taking place because of the shortage of manpower due to absenteeism in the work place? What about the need for your grandmother to be picked up by an ambulance? Oh wait how many EMS crews will be sick and how long will it take to get an ambulance? Every service will be affected and getting treated or having the items needed to treat yourself may not be available at the time in your community.

When dealing with a pandemic we must mind set ourselves into a “two prong approach” into first being prepared and secondly not get sick. If we are prepared it limits the chances of getting sick or if we do get sick we will have the items needed to treat ourselves if you can’t find medical services. The best thing about the two prong approach is that it will limit the amount of exposure, therefore limiting the amount of sickness, therefore limiting the amount of death and most of all limiting the amount of panic that causes confusion and disturbances that sometimes increases the chance for exposure, therefore increasing the amount of sickness, therefore increasing the amount of death. In short, the more panic we have the more we get confused and the more confused we get the chances of making mistakes and bad judgment comes in to play which means we just won’t think well.

Here is what we have to understand, if hospitals are filled and they only want you if you are severely sick how will you treat yourself or your loved ones at home? Well we treat the flu all the time by ourselves and most of us are experts at doing so especially mom and dad. So it will now become the time we play doctor. We have already had our former training on how to treat the flu so we are one step ahead of the game and of course there will be all kinds of education and public service announcements on TV on how to treat this type of flu. First thing that we must learn is when to go get our TamiFlu and when to take it. That will be established by the Public Health Official in charge of this incident. In fact they may even tell us not to take TamiFlu or they may not even pass it out if it is not working. It is very important to do exactly what they say when dealing with TamiFlu.

You will have to have supplies to treat yourselves as well as having supplies to treat sick members of your family and to treat them safely. If you are sick and the hospitals are filled what does one do, they will have to treat themselves as well as treating their family members. You must also understand supplies may not be on the shelves of CVS and other drug stores because everyone will want to buy them whether they are sick or not. So stocking up now in your pandemic kit gives you all that is needed to treat the flu.

We also have to understand that if the death ratio is high this means that some will die no matter what and some that are not slated to die will end up dying if we do not have the supplies to treat them. So in a nut shell ones who were going to be ok and not die just may end up dead because they won’t be able to get the things needed to treat the flu. However on the other hand not everyone gets sick at the same time and we may have lots of supplies but getting access to the supplies may be difficult and this is where sharing comes into play. It takes a factory worker to make the product, then it takes one to put it in the trucks, then there is a driver to drive the product to the local store or clinics, and then it takes a person to either sell it to you or hand it to you at one of these mini treating facilities that may be set up by the government. Now let’s put that 30 percent absenteeism figure in to the pot and we then have to ask ourselves will we be able to get access to it? Let me break it down like this, Examples are as follows:

(Patient A) gets sick and nothing is working therefore he or she will eventually die no matter what the medical people can do. Maybe they would live if they had a ventilator but we are so severely short on those I doubt one will be available when one is needed for each and every patient. Getting access to one will be like winning the lottery. This is the time that some will be tagged to die.
(Patient B) gets sick and recovers well without any major treatment and no need for a hospital stay. Some people may be able to handle the new strain quite well where as others won’t be able to.
(Patient C) get sick and there is no room in the hospitals for them but if they are treated like a normal flu patient at home they may survive. This is when having your supplies comes in to play. This is where if you do nothing they will die but if you keep their fever down, replace their fluids, use breathing treatment’s and any other home treatment may make a difference. Another aspect that can make a difference is that maybe your current hospital is full on Wednesday but there may be a break where there is space on Saturday therefore keeping your loved one alive by home treating them for a few days may make a difference. What happens if TamiFlu can help but it won’t be a few days until it arrives in your community? These are the kinds of situations that the government does not take in to account because it can only save a few lives but to me and you it matters a great deal because it may be the life of our child we keep alive for a few days until help arrives.

The best way of surviving a pandemic is not to get sick in the first place. We also have to remember that since you may be treating a loved one at home who gets sick that you must also be able to do this but to do it safely. So you have to have in your home a “sick room” for the sick to go if they are sick and you must keep your children away from the sick adults or keep your other children away from each other if one is sick. You must have the supplies needed to stay safe. Items such as bleach, Lysol, hand cleaner, N-95 mask, gloves and other types of supplies. You should also make contact with your neighbors, friends and relatives and make plans to care for each other’s children if both parents die. Keeping in contact with them daily for status reports this way if both parents die the other party will know it is time to pick up your children and care for them and also in case they get sick an adult can care for them. Prearrange this with your friends and family to stay in contact with each other in case both parents die and also to share supplies so those who need certain things can get access to them if needed. So staying safe and washing your hands all day long and coughing correctly at home and the work place is the best way to stop the spread and to stay safe from germs.

How else do we stay safe at the time of a pandemic? Let’s look at the way the school officials and the government responded during this Swine Flu with the closing of the schools. I am hoping that they knew in the very beginning that this was a weak virus and the death ratio was not going to be bad because I feel no matter what that the way they responded was not correct. Yes it did work well with this current situation but if they did not know it was weak and the kill ratio was going to be low then they responded completely wrong. They said over and over it was too late to contain it and the need for closing off the borders or closing all schools was not essential at this time. They said if there was a student or a few sick students in a school then it was time to close the school. Well that worked ok during this possible almost pandemic but it makes no sense not to close school at the first sign of a pandemic. Why? Because a person is sick before they know they are sick and they can spread the virus to others. What this means is simple. Let’s say little Bobby Jones in the fifth grade is exposed to the flu on Monday, his mom and dad don’t know this because he is still not sick. He goes to school Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then on Thursday he is sick and they pull him out of school. The fact they pulled him out of school was good but he still could have exposed other kids on Monday to Wednesday.
This is why pandemics spread so fast because we do not do what we should do at the first sign of a possible pandemic and I don’t care if there is over kill when it comes to kids staying safe. The fact that we wait too long to set up social distancing or cancel school or other events like going to church is the reason why pandemics spread so fast. No matter how I looked at it and using mathematics and the government statements on saying it was too late to contain it I disagree that we can’t do anything about limiting the number of people who get infected. It is quite simple if one less person gets it and that one less person can’t spread it then we have improved the numbers. Now let’s look at it another way. If one person goes to church and spreads it to 30 other people and then that 30 people spread it to another 300 people and then that 300 people spread it to another 3000 people then we have increased the numbers, correct? I dare one government leader or medical doctor to prove to me that I am wrong because I am not. I m not saying I am smarter than any of them but one thing I can say for sure is that the people the government have paid to teach me and others over the years have all taught us that math does not lie and math cannot lie. So you figure it out. So we have got to do what we have to do if a pandemic comes our way. We have to help stop the spread all on our own and make sure you pull your kids out of school at the time you feel comfortable doing so.

Let’s talk about washing our hands again, this is one of the best things we can do to help stop the spread of any flu. Now the key to washing your hands is to wash them with soap and water all day long and to wash them with soap and water for about 30 seconds. If soap and water are not available use hand sanitizers. Covering your cough and teaching your kids now how to cough and that is to cough in their armpit or sleeve, not in their hands! Wait a minute… take a look at your kids now… just look at the way they cough, most of them cough in their arms already but it is us adults who cough in our hands. Most schools teach their students how to cough. But it is us adults that are the spreaders of most germs because we get lax with our own germs.

The pillar of our community, the church, is the one place that will keep faith in our hearts and give us strength in trying times. However in most cases if we are at a full pandemic with a high kill ratio the churches will be closed. Let’s look at why the churches need to respond to all. Suicides rates will be high at the time of a full pandemic and we need to prevent that from happening and this is where the churches should come in to play. Why is suicide so high in these trying times? Let me explain it like this example. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson have five kids and Mrs. Johnson dies at the home. By the way, if it is a bad pandemic Mrs. Johnson may be sitting dead in the house for days until she can be picked up because the morgues and the funeral homes will be over loaded and the government will be setting up warehouse’s as temporary morgues but because of the amount of victims it may take several days for a dead person to be picked up. Next three of the Johnson’s kids also die and the fourth child is sick. Will Mr. Johnson be able to hold on or will he look to commit suicide for him and the other two children? He may be thinking that he does not want anymore suffering or the depression may be so bad that he feels that they all need to die to be with the other family members who have passed. There will be cases like this in a bad pandemic and complete families will die.

This is why it is very important for the churches to be up and running but not to have service where people come to service. Will Mr. Johnson be able to pick up the phone and call his church? If he did reach his church would his minister be able to talk to him or would there be 50 calls on hold? Has your church set up chat rooms for a pandemic where the minister can do the service over the internet or offer taped service and email them out to the church members? There is a high possibility that Mr. Johnson may take his life and the life of his two remaining children therefore it is vitally important to have the churches be ready for pandemics. In today’s times for about $50.00 a minister can get an internet web cam and do his or her services daily over the camera and send them out to all who have preregistered for a time like this. Should your church set up a social networking site where it can be used all year round offering a taped service but in a matter of minutes be set up to handle a pandemic? The answer is yes because it is the churches who will hold this world together if we ever get a bad pandemic. Not only will your church have to offer internet services they will also be helping church members who may need supplies such as food or medicine. Some members of your church may have to babysit the children of healthcare workers, paramedics and police officers. I have had this same discussion with my own brother who works for the Mayo clinic. I told him if we have a pandemic I would recommend he stay in the garage each night when he comes home from his hospital shift just in case he accidently got exposed to the flu and then brought it home to the kids. The churches will have to pay attention to those who live alone or the elderly who need to be checked on daily. Then if someone is sick can someone from the church go and check on them daily and make sure they are taking their medication and receiving fluids. Remember as fevers increase so does confusion and this is one of the reasons some may die simply because they were too confused to treat themselves. Retired nurses who are members of the church can go and treat sick members of their church. We hear the word CERT a lot in our community and a church can also set up their own CERT team from their church members and make the training they receive cover pandemics as well as other disasters.

Has your church contacted CERT in their own state and set up a CERT program for your own members? “CERT” means Community Emergency Response Team. Can your church CERT member get to someone on time and give them fluids or if they run out of fever reducers can your church bring the supplies needed to get better? Can your church member drive someone to the hospital if they are too sick to drive themselves and to have the tools needed to stay safe while acting like a makeshift ambulance?

This social networking site can be used not only for prayer but for things needed. Maybe the Brown family had lots of supplies and no one from their family got sick now they can read any requests on the social networking site for people who may need items to treat their sick family members. Maybe there may be 70 people who are treating themselves at home now they can check in daily and give an update of their health on the social network site. Then if all of a sudden some of the sick people are not posting for a day or two then the next plan of action can take place. If this happens a phone call can be made and if there is no answer then maybe someone from the churches CERT team can go by and check on them.

This same theory can be used in the inner communities where residents can help each other out by one person sharing food with another or one checking on Mrs. Blacksone who is 80 years old and lives by herself. But in order for it to work it has to be preplanned. I guess the point I am trying to make is this: I know some of you may be saying that this is over board and over kill and you are correct if we look at the current swine flu. But if we have a true pandemic like we had in the past then there are many more things we could be doing to keep us safe or to maybe keep another 100,000 people from getting sick or to save another 300,000 from dying. It is not the government who is going to rescue you, it is yourself and your friends at the time of a real hard core pandemic.
We have to remember the reasons why we have pandemics is that, it is a new strain that we have not seen before and people are not immune to it like most past flu seasons and because we have no real immunity to it, it can hit us hard and spread person to person very fast and because we have no real immunity to it, it then may increase the kill ratio.

All this can make you panic but I tell you the truth if you are prepared now then you will have less panic. Being prepared now is the key to being able to survive and stay healthy. Yes the government is going to look for vaccines and pass out meds and do what they can but I have to still remember what the presidents report said and I will say it again in case you forget to fully understand what he meant (that any local community that thinks the Federal Calvary is going to rescue them at the time of a pandemic that, that same community would be set for pure tragedy.)

The above paragraph was the end to this long story, however after I was done a thought came into my head. I contacted Mark Targett our Editor and Chief. Mark is also the genius behind all the computer systems we have in place. I asked Mark if he could develop a social network where a church can do a church service on video weekly and make it available to all the churches in the USA for free and having it so user friendly. He said yes. I then said Mark can you make that same social network be converted in a matter of minutes at the time of a disaster or global pandemic? He replied, “yes.” A few minutes went by and Mark handed me a piece of paper and on that paper was the start of the world wide social network for churches and its members titled www.churchbook.us. I asked him if it was going to be as easy as “facebook” and he replied yes, and then said, “Sean give me a month and it will be up and running.” So on July 4th your church will be able to sign up for free to this social network for churches.