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L. Bailey
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About SwineFluPreparation.com

SwineFluPreparation.com (formerly BirdFluPreparation.com) was created by one caring grandmother to enable citizens worldwide to access preparedness information from valid news sources from one web site.

Update April 2009: The information below was written in 2005. We may be on the verge of a pandemic. Too bad few listened!

Undoubtedly, companies, legitimate and illegitimate, will spring up to meet the information and product needs of the world population as it waits for what scientists say is the inevitable mutation of the avian flu virus.

Today, nearly every web site has advertisements. It's important to know, especially for those who may not be web-savvy, which information can be fully trusted.

There is nothing wrong with advertisements (and there may be some on this site as well), but when you are looking for information on such a vital issue, it should be easier to find valid information.

Opinion

Up until now, advice about bird flu preparation from major organizations has been geared toward governments worldwide. The issues are terrifying: plans for a military-organized quarantine if required, a lack of medicine, no vaccine, and not enough services to care for the dying and dead.

What can we do on a personal level? Have you noticed? No one is "officially" saying.

We can only:

• Learn from history: What did people do during the flu pandemic of 1918 when tens of millions of people died? Who survived? Isolation was the only weapon to avoid contamination.
  
  What do you need to do to be isolated for an extended period? How long would you need to be isolated? Who knows? (No one.) So one must do the best one can do.
  
  
• Listen to what legitimate experts are saying: Some experts have predicted food and power shortages. People would seek isolation; they wouldn't show up to work, businesses would fail, people woudln't be able to pay their bills, the economy would collapse. What else? (Who knows?)
  
  If the worst happened, how would you cope?

We know from watching the chaos during Hurricane Katrina that the U.S. government was not prepared and did not know how to handle a crisis. They have known about the potential bird flu crisis for years, yet it has become widely known only this year, and it exploded this month (October, 2005).

The worst thing for anyone to do is to not prepare. You have been told by experts worldwide that the risk of a pandemic is very high. Just think about what would happen if the bird flu did turn into a pandemic -- what would you have wished you'd done for yourself and your family?

Unfortunately, the boy has cried wolf too many times. SARS, mad cow disease, even Y2K -- they did not turn into the world-devastating events as predicted.

But like the parable, it seems the moment you let your guard down is when the danger will present itself.

We must all prepare. The pandemic may never happen or it may not happen for years. But experts worldwide have warned us that it is a possibility.