Continued from here
Surfer – at 09:29
Goju It may be too late in the game for your 9/22 presentation, but perhaps you can glean some helpful info from my informal research and observations I posted in late June. You can find this in the Opinion section of the main fluwiki under Surfer’s Indroduction and Opinion. Best to you in your efforts to help.
anonymous – at 09:37
let me add this to anon_22 ‘s list above Reducing the Impact of the Next Influenza Pandemic Using Household-Based Public Health Interventions
Your presentation looks wonderful. How long are they giving you to speak? Have you timed your presentation?
I’m at about 10 minutes but that is without expanding on each piece of info. I can talk for hours about this stuff and i’ll have to look at my notes so i dont stray off course. we have a definite place for them to end up in their minds… i was thinking of putting my kids pictures on the desk infront of them when we introduce ourselves. I think actually looking into the faces of my kids as i talk about our children dying may be impactful….. comments?
There is another more important part that Marina is doing after me. She will be proposing the “event” as a kickoff to a prep campaign. We are well aware that one moment in time is no where near enough. The newspaper will have to start running stories, mailers will need to be sent, posters hung, etc.
My desire is for them to turn to us as the go to people for the resident prep portion of their jobs. Give us a small budget and away we go. Since we own our company, we can devote time to it.
media coverage will be a big effort on our part. There’s a big country out there that needs to get prepping.
As nabarro said: we are on “God Given Time”
To clarify - any money they devote to teaching residents SIP will not cover the costs of how WE do things. Its more of a concept thing - if they get it for free they wont value it.
salary? hahahahaha
I’m not in this for the money. It’s my friggin life i want to save here and the only way to do it is to save the life of everyone else. United we stand… divided we fall.
I think it is important to point out that Goju is undertaking this effort on a purely volunteer basis for his town. He will be requesting no stipend or salary and has no desire to profit in any way himself personally. The small budget he speaks of would be devoted to direct costs such as flyers, copying, tent rental perhaps for a public event, items of that nature. Goju is donating his considerable time to this effort at no cost whatsoever. He does not expect the town to reimburse him for his efforts in any way. (I don’t think they could afford him anyway!).
To roughly quote that MasterCard commercial: being a true humanitarian( for $00.00) - priceless.
I know there are many others of you here that also expect nothing at all in return. Kudos.
Thank you pixie. Costs - stage, ads, handouts, flyers, posters, support people Of course if this concept is to be rolled out successfully to other towns, a company like walmart needs to step up and sponsor it.
any takers out there?
This actually is believe talking sponsorship is putting the cart before the horse. i gotta get through this meeting first.
nerves rising…..
anon_22@12:05 (previous thread)
I am really sorry to insert this here but it seems too important not to. About the press release for Flu Awareness…
It seems reallly important to grab people, future readers, in the first paragraph about the danger of this disease. I like the rest of it and the content is there later on, but the first paragraph talks mostly about people thinking it can be only caught from birds but NO now it is rarely human to human.
The first paragraph is the lasts my friend read, skeptic that she is. Many people read first paragraph to get a jist of the contents overall. She concluded, and I saw her point, that your intent was to convince people that in fact, tho Rarely, H5N1 can be caught from humans in addition to birds.
I think your intent is actually to describe the high risk of a pandemic, which you do in the rest of the article. I implore you to consider having your first paragraph REFLECT the entirety of what you will discuss. It may mean adding another line to that it rarely effects people. Perhaps like. “experts say that there is a high risk of Human to human transmission becoming more common, the virus changing and becoming a pandemic” (not that exactlly, but that point).
Thanks for considering this
Goju - good luck with your presentation. Information about the vaccine situation is in the Congressional Budget Office Report to Congress (A Potential Influenza Pandemic). It is really grim. May revision says the administration’s policy is to have enough vaccine for all by 2011. The July 2006 revision is really wishy washy and says something about HHS plan with 20 million doses in 2009, but it is really vague.
A vaccine for ‘all’ within a 6-month start of a pandemic is simply propaganda when considered in the near-term. What the government leaves out is the years away part and how many doses available in the near term and later. The testimony by political appointies who address the vaccine issue before Congress, listed on the government website, say the 6-month thing while leaving off the time frame and number of doses. This testimony is for public consumption and is picked up by the media. What they say behind closed doors is another matter, and you have to dig to find it.
I cannot pull up the pdf file to provide links for some weird reason and cannot connect to the CBO website, but perhaps someone can help here. I can read the html file but cannot copy it for you. If you search Congressional Budget Office Pandemic, you can read the original December version, then May and July revisions and see the political changes.
Osterholm’s testimony to Congress is on the wiki side, and may be useful as well. The government website did not include this testimony although he testified on the same day as some of the administration appointies.
The vaccine issue could come up in your talk where someone says they heard there would be a vaccine in 6 months from the start of a pandemic. I would be prepared to say that is the hope, but be able to refute the statement when considering the near term and how many doses would be available. But you will need references as the propaganda is pervasive. Especially eerie reading the political appointee testimony because the obvious question of ‘when’ and for ‘how many’ is so glaringly missing in the testimony as to be deliberate.
An example of what your audience may have heard is provided Here
concerned longtime lurker – at 02:25
Thank you for your thoughts. The Pandemic Flu Awareness Week is a corroborative effort and not mine alone. This week, I am more than fully (almost typed fluly) occupied with 1 conference I am attending, 2 presentations I am making (of totally different nature and I haven’t done the slides yeet), 3 meetings all pandemic related. So I’ve not had time to follow the latest changes or inputs from everyone else.
The disadvantage (of this being a corroborative event) is of course one cannot always have things the way one wants. But the advantage is that things still can get done when any one of us is not available, and, more importantly, lots of people, including yourself, can add their ideas. So please raise the points that you just made on the PFAW thread, and either suggest the changes or put up an edited version for others to consider. Thanks!
concerned longtime lurker - adding an unfinished paragraph to the wikipage does help! someone else will see it and improve on it etc - thanks!
I agree, Nightowl, and I too expressed my concerns about the vax timeframe to Goju. One reason they may want him to speak with him is that town officials may be getting mixed messages about topics like vax and antivirals. They may want some inside scoop.
Leavitt was, however, very upfront about the vax topic duing the pandemic summit(some of that information may be online under the reports from the state conferences). They did state that a good and effective vax would not be created and ready until 6 months after the pandemic strain appears. The first doses will be given to first responders, critical worker, and military. Leavitt was honest about the problems of mass production, noting that there will be great global competition for this vaccine and we will not be able to rely on the manufacturing capabilities of our usual partners in this kind of endeavor such as the Brits or the French. The vaccine may not be available for public vax clinics until 2 yeas after the pandemic outbreak. Forums such as this weeks summit in D.C. on the legal and ethical aspects of a pandemic will have to address questions of who will get any not-yet-existing vax, and when.
One of the first objections Goju’s town leader brought up to him when he broached the idea of pandemic planning was that there would be a vax. Goju disuaded him of this idea, and now they can move forward. I’d guess that many municipal leaders are still holding onto the same hope, and they have to be told no, in no uncertain terms.
Goju’s town is very near mine and I have my fingers crossed that they will listen to him, and provide leadership for our area and many other towns as well.
Thanks, Pixie. I’m late on this thread. I agree with you so much about the municipal leaders being “told no, in no uncertain terms.” A pandemic hasn’t even started, and there are already ‘rumors’ of a ‘vax for all’ six months after the pandemic starts. Maybe we will get lucky, and we will have five years lead time, and then the rumor will be true. What Goju is doing is so fantastic.
i need to tell u all how this meeting came to be.
It started last year - i had called the school board asking what event would shut the schools. They sent me to town health guy. That was my first contact with a town official. he sent me to state school board who sent me to State health board who refered the mental health board to me! LOL
since then, i have stopped into the town hall to chat with the first selectman… he was never there so i chatted with his secretary. I sent emails of important news to health guy and police chief… never a response. I believe they knew there was some guy in town who was concerned about BF… but they knew not my name.
It was the fact that i went to the conference that broke the ice and my cammand of the info about Vax. Maybe they figured just put this guy on the hotseat and shut him up. maybe they want to ID me. Whatever.
They have probably ID’d all of us by now.
You will gently help them to understand that the message is much more important than the messenger.
Little does your town know now, Goju, that your soft spoken concerns will be saving many of them. Just keep talking, very clearly, easy does it, aware of breathing in and breathing out, looking them directly in the eyes, and telling them all of the facts that you can back up. Many will hear and understand the message.
I look forward to reading about this meeting and all future meetings.
Invite questions immediately after you finish your presentation (while you still hold the platform and their attention). One person’s question(s) is usually harbored by another in the audience also. Listen intently in order to speak to the question that was asked. The follow-up questions may continue to flow to you after the meeting ends - especially from those audience members who wish to have their questions be more privately heard. Try to position yourself in a location of the building where you can be seen and approached for further questions/discussion following the close of the meeting.
Try to calm down before and after your talk by focusing on your deep breathing pattern. Being calm will help you to gain a sense of the players and dynamics in the room for future reference work. Feel free to carry a notepad and pen to jot down any notes.
Of course, you already knew/know all of this. I am sure that many of us will be with you in spirit, wishing we were actually there. The force is with you, Goju.
“the force is with you”
so is the valium!!!!
LOL
nerves are jumping….. newspaper today….. hope he has clean underwear. LOL
Goju,
ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
:-D
I am breathing in.
I am breathing out.
I thank you for all the information and inspiration you have given to us already. You have helped me to get more verbal and active.