My covid post from last year is going around again, as I sit here debating how and what to write about HPAI H5N1.
I'm tired.
Things to know:
HPAI H5N1, Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1, is so far wildly lethal when humans get it. Somewhere between 53% and 56% of the humans who have been found to have it have died.
Those people mainly got it from interacting with sick birds. A couple have gotten it from interacting with sick mammals. The one of those that's most important to US news right now is a worker at a milk cow farm who got sick very recently. That worker's only symptom before getting on antiviral medication was pinkeye.
(Keep your cats indoors; cats are getting it from sick birds. Don't have bird feeders this year. Do NOT interact with wild birds that are acting strangely; do not poke at dead wild birds.)
Humans are not yet giving it to humans. There are one or two cases where they might have done, in the last few years; those cases guttered out quickly, to the great good luck of our species, and did not spread.
Human-to-human transmission is the big concern.
We are not in any immediate danger of H2H transmission. When we're in immediate danger, you'll know.
When the flip happens, we will go from not being in immediate danger to being in immediate danger, very rapidly. This could happen this month, or in five months, or in five years, and we don't know when.
By the time we are in immediate danger, it is too late to do the greater bulk of your preparation.
So it's time to prepare now. This time we have is a blessing. We should not squander it. What would you have done differently in September, 2019, if you knew what was coming? Do that.
With some differences; a) flu can pass by fomite--that is, a sick person touches a doorknob, you touch a doorknob, you rub your face, you get sick--so you actually do need cleaning chemicals for this one. b) This one gets in through the eyeballs pretty easily in its current shape, so eye protection should be prepped for adding to masking in public spaces. c) this one is gonna call for fever reducers and we know how hard they were to get when covid hit; stock up. And stock up on pet food if you can keep it from going bad, because pet food gets its protein from cow and bird meat; there will be shortages.
With a lot of similarities; the flu is airborne so don't stop masking, if we have a proper lockdown this time you're going to wish you had flour and rice and canned fruit so keep stock of all your staples. If you have a nice big freezer, now is the time to get beef and chicken before the prices shoot to the ceiling. I'm also stocking up on powdered milk and powdered eggs for baking with.
We have made a lot, a LOT of mistakes with how we've handled covid. But one thing we didn't do wrong was all of the community-building in the early days. Think about what worked then, and what didn't really work. Now is the time to make sure community bonds are strong. As always, as in ANY potential disaster, there are two most-important questions?
Who can protect and support you?
Who can you support and protect?
Plan accordingly.
