As I sit here going over last minute preps I need to take care of this week, I open up our Sunday paper to find the Parade magazine and their article “How Worried Should You Be?”. The article by Dr. Ranit Mishori looks at rabies, mumps, whooping cough, west nile, mad cow and of course bird flu.
And once again a huge opportunity on the part of the MSM to get the word out is lost.
The article goes through downplaying the effect upon humans. To quote … “To date there has not been a single human case of avain flu in the western hemispere. Nor has a bird infected with the H5N1 strain been found on this side of the world.”
Each disease discussion concludes with a “How to stay safe” section. For Bird Flu they write … “At this point the average American doesn’t need to take any specific precautions says Dr. Aaron Glatt, an infectious disease specialist with New Island Hospital in Bethpage NY. Health authorities are tracking the disease in birds and humans, while researchers continue to test the effectiveness of a newly developed vaccine.”
These kind of article are so infuriating and irresponsible! Once again the message is “don’t worry … be happy … smarter people than you will solve this problem. Someone will take care of you!”
I certainly know who the “nutjobs” are!
This is infuriating! They use their credibility, earned over decades of coming into your home every Sunday, so they are familar and comforting and then kill you. Isn’t that malfeasance or misfeasance? I’m not a lawyer, and don’t play on one TV…but how is this different that a cigarette company telling me that there’s no proof that smoking is detrimental to my health as I lay dying of emphasema? Not that we have time to “sue”, but millions of people will read that and many, many will die because of it. Isn’t there some sort of liability here? I myself believed one of my media favorites in January, only to wake up in May. When irresponsibility results in death there has got to be something that can be done. Why can’t it be done before the deaths occur?
Oh but wait…they’ve carefully crafted their words. Take for instance, “Research suggests that most of these individuals lived and worked closely with sick birds.” Note “suggests” and “most”. Then there is this: “The virus will pose a far more serious threat should it find a way to travel easily between humans…” I suppose the dear reader is to gloss over that caveat as there is no stated definition of what constitutes “serious”, nor is the writer interested in providing one. But my favorite quote from this charming piece of literature is: “To date, however, there has not been a single human case of avian flu in the Western Hemisphere.” Apparently, our dear writer must not be adequately acquainted with air travel, or more specifically, how fast you can get from the Eastern Hemisphere to the Western one. This is the kind of attitude which makes me very reluctant to bring up any aspect of bird flu with my church or local community. I’m afraid folks who are unaware of the threat will simply look to poorly researched, amateur articles such as this one to reinforce their notion that there is no threat. Then when TSHTF they will remember you, come to your door and say, “We’re sor-r-r-r-ry we didn’t listen to you. Can you please help us?” By then it will be too late.
Everything Parade Magazine printed was true. They are talking about Bird Flu and that keeps it on the radar screen.
People on the wiki need to face a very difficult fact - only a small minority are prepping. No matter how loud you yell or scream, no matter how hard you wave your arms, the majority of people will not see H5N1 or any other strain of Avian Influenza as a threat until it is actually sustainably trasmitting Human-to-Human. That is just the way the world work.
So many of you are banging your heads against a brick wall. God love you for wanting to save your fellow man, but look at the big picture - H5N1 may not be the strain that goes pandemic and a pandemic may not happen for several years.
For all intents and purposes, the masses see pandemic influenza as something not yet worth worrying about. We know prepping is a valuable defense, we are in the minority and always will be.
You very well may change a few minds and that is admirable, but the reason we have fables like the Ant & the Grasshopper and stories like Noah and the flood are because mankind is wired a certain way. Most people will not pay attention to a threat until they can actually see that it is real.
Let’s no longer feign exasperation with the masses and the powers that be.
Lead by example and stop complaining. Accept the fact that the majority of people will not prepare. This is just the way the human mind works.
If no you take nothing away from my post above, remember this and I am speaking to EVERYONE on the wiki here, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Enough moaning already.
I gave up on MSM to provide useful AF information ages ago. Raising awarness will require stealth tactics and grassroots campaigning.
Anonymous at 17:31: I too have thought about the ant and grasshopper analogy. Unfortunately, my religion teaches me to try to take care of the grasshopper as well as the ant. It is not an easy task, but we shouldn’t give up on our neighbors so quickly. Besides, I don’t really want to be completely surrounded by hungry grasshoppers WTSHTF, would you?
By the way, the movie, “A Bug’s Life” comes to mind when I think about the hungry grasshoppers. ;-)
anonymous – at 17:31 Having been for years in the fire service and the last 8 years in the Fire Marshals Office, I taught classes on prep for disasters and of course fire prevention. The reason that the fire service constantly drum beats this,,,,,,,is that very few actually listen. If everyone listened and paid heed,,,,,,,,,,,there would be no need for further classes,,,,,so the fire service continues to teach fire prevention. The reason I wanted to say something, is that I agree with you,,,,the SWHTF on this bird flu thing,,,,and I agree most will not pay attention until it is too late. That is human nature, just look at the hurricane season that happens every year in the gulf and the fighting over the last bits of water and foor, and plywood at the stores as the hurricane comes to the land. I still try to get others (at least in friends and family circles) to put aside some preps for this,,,,,but I know that government in general from national, state, down to local, will not put out the word to prep as they should. Again that is how the system operates,,,not I agree with it but it is how it is done thereby I wont beat my head against the wall to get the local government to prep. Tried that in Y2K and this time it wont work either, which is why I prep and take care of my own. No one else will.
Gary Near Death Valley - glad to know I’m not alone here.
Now I’m hiding in Honduras I’m a desperate man Send preps, guns and money The sh*t has hit the fan
p.s. anon @ 20:22 is NOT anon @ 18:13
I refuse to let the Parade article slide. It was horribly shameful… and Warren Zevon would agree if he was around.
(Time to cork the BB-RWFK)
anonymous – at 18:13 nope, you’re not alone. I agree totally.
anonymous, I am not feigning exasperation. I am expressing it honestly. I have been asked frequently by some friends and family “why haven’t I heard about it on the news?”, and then some “news” that they recognize as trustworthy blows off the threat thereby undoing my sincere efforts to help some of “my own”. If these people were the anonymous masses that I don’t worry about it would be one issue, mankind could use a good housecleaning. When it’s my husbands elderly grandmother in CT, living within 30 miles of five mooching cousins, it’s a different story.
If the MSM has lost interest, that just means we will have to stay strong. It’s natural that the MSM loses interest in thing’s…people starve every day…which is a pity….and it’s just not nice to report after a while… BF may be boring to the media at the moment, not for the same reason’s, but because it has not …….actually I don’t know why….maybe it is for the same reason’s in that they(the MSM) think that the problem is too overwhelming. The chaos is too overwhelming and people might stop buying the paper or something….I dunno. But it’s just another hurdle!
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