how seriously do we take influenza Chris ?
what do we do about it ?
In a past life, I was involved in a large multi-national company’s preparations for a potential bird flu pandemic which involved acquiring, stockpiling and distributing vaccines. This was not done for altruistic reasons, it was simply an attempt to provide investor confidence by demonstrating that the company’s global operations could function normally in the event of a pandemic.
As you can imagine, lots of p!ss taking and chicken jokes but when people realised that lists of “key” staff who would get the vaccine were being drawn up, the mood changed a bit, especially when some senior staff realised that they were not as “key” as they had thought!
When it became known that if the excrement meets the aircon, those on the list would asked to nominate a maximum of three immediate family members who would receive the vaccine the mood changed from Schindler’s List to Sophie’s Choice.
It all came to nothing as whichever version of flu we were worried about at the time failed to get the traction it needed to become a pandemic but was an interesting insight into the kind of hard nosed strategic planning that will be going on right now and also human nature.
Those who think that flu viruses are all the same, that is just a bad cold and only old and frail people are at risk, should bear in mind next time the buy a poppy, that way more people (including a high percentage of fit, young ones) died from the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918-19 than died during the Great War and some of the upper estimates of flu deaths suggest that it matches the combined 100 million deaths in both World Wars.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...tenary-first-world-war?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Discussions on forums like this are unlikely to generate more light than heat but are probably representative of how the UK is thinking at the moment - apart from the sneaky forumites who are staying quiet and visiting their local Boots a dozen times a day wearing a variety of disguises to stockpile hand gel.
Anyway, I’ll finish my coffee and grab a pitchfork to make sure there are no preppers clutching their precious bug out bags trying to self-isolate in my woodpile, hay stores or in the poly tunnel. I’ll then spend the rest of the day checking the prices on the Bay of E to decide when to start bagging up the 2 litres of handgel that Mrs Nomad found in the barn into 1ml sachets.
FWIW I visited my mother last week. She is at very high risk, there is a rookery less than 50 yards from her house and there are definitely at least 19 Corvids nesting there.
Stay safe and sane!