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The sky is falling . . .

. . . Or is it? Many of us remain unruffled by the specter of bird flu at our door, but tell that to the stockpilers on the FluWiki blog.

By SUSAN ASCHOFF
Published January 27, 2006

	[Times photo illustration: Patty Yablonski]

I just now got home from the store. . . . The clerk and I got to chatting and I mentioned emergency preparedness. The clerk said to me "prepared for what?" And other people in line looked at me like, "yeah, prepared for what?" "Have you been watching the news (on avian flu) lately?" She said, "Nothing like that could ever happen here and if something did happen, all the canned food in the world wouldn't help you anyway."

- Amy VVV in posting on progressive megablog dailykos.com

Melanie Mattson never carried cash. She let her gas gauge dip below a quarter-tank. Her day job is helping governments and businesses devise plans for dealing with disasters. She says she was one waiting to happen.

No more.

Today she has six weeks' worth of food and water stockpiled at home. And in May, the seasoned blogger started a new Web site, www.fluwikie.com where visitors swap tips on Indian food sealed in foil pouches and surgical masks sold in bulk. They are preparing for a worldwide flu epidemic.

"We're doing the Wiki (a collaborative Web site) for people to get the information so they're not freaking out. If you're prepared, what's there to be paranoid about?" asks Mattson, a resident of the D.C. suburb of Falls Church, Va., who also hosts the blog Just a Bump in the Beltway.

Mattson says she and FluWiki's regular contributors were talking about avian influenza, or bird flu, a disease incubating in chickens in rural Asia, long before the news media pounced on the threat. Now the U.S. government is pledging billions of dollars to fight it while its citizens endlessly blog on a militiaesque feathering of their nests, from camp stoves to portable toilets.

"The assumption we're working under is if this bug shows up and it's easy to spread, we're all going to do social distancing," says Mattson, 52. She means we will be hiding in our houses, perhaps for six to eight weeks, to avoid exposure. "You have options if you (get) this stuff in advance. If you don't, you've already made choices. When the grocery store shelves are empty, you're not going to get food."

The specter of a deadly flu carried by birds has sent some flying to prepare and others flying in circles.

In Greece, workers disinfected cars at the border with Turkey, where avian flu has been confirmed in humans, though not shown to infect truck chassis. A Russian lawmaker urged constituents to shoot birds from the sky. In the United States, greeting card companies stopped using real feathers for decoration.

Bird-brained? Yes. But avian flu's fatality rate is estimated at more than 50 percent. More than 100 people in East Asia and Turkey have died. In November, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services projected that as many as one in three Americans could be infected if a pandemic occurs. First, the flu strain must mutate so it can readily pass from person to person. This has not happened.

Are you a sitting duck for bird flu?

- Dec. 6 headline in USA Today

Experts said that weeks before the avian flu reaches the United States, counterfeit knockoffs of the avian flu would be available across China.

- satirist Andy Borowitz

Those sounding the alarm on the Internet to average Joes are not necessarily Randy Weavers with Volvos. Consider recommended preparations for hurricane season: Water, batteries and canned tuna on the shelf are only sensible. What gives the talk of avian flu its survivalist shadings are the expressed fears that, although hurricane recovery encourages neighborly cooperation, a flu outbreak forces isolation.

What's in your pantry?

In South Florida, a minister asks his congregants to wash their hands. A New York doctor cautions against hoarding Tamiflu, a flu medication. On endless Web sites, overpriced disaster kits make their vendors more secure. Some find a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun as comforting as chicken soup.

survivalist: A person who anticipates a potential disruption in the continuity of local, regional or worldwide society and takes steps to survive in the resulting unpredictable situation.

quasi: seemingly but not actually.

- online encyclopedia Wikipedia and Random House College Dictionary

The Army Navy Store in St. Petersburg quit stocking gas masks when panicked buyers emptied shelves after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and prices spiked from $19 to $75 apiece.

The store on 66th Street N is now sold out of MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat, military-issue, dense-calorie packets of entrees and snacks that the store purchases from a private manufacturer.

"I would say it's more campers and hurricanes than avian flu" motivating buyers, says general manager Russ Beam.

Are many of his customers survivalists? "Those who are don't say so," he says.

Each day, about 3,000 to 4,000 people visit FluWiki, Mattson says. "The concern here is what's going to happen to our infrastructure if we have a 30 to 40 percent absentee rate at work (from the flu). It's like Katrina. We knew something was coming, but nobody was ready for it."

When I first started saving food, two weeks worth seemed impossible. As time passed I reached a month and now voila I have 6 months. My husband yells at me, stop buying stuff! ... I can see myself: "Hi my name is Worried and I am a prepaholic."

- Worried in the City in Jan. 9 posting on fluwikie.com

The Rev. Kenneth Hurto in Fort Myers has been talking avian flu with Mattson for months. They're blog buddies. The topic found national "traction," he says, only after Katrina.

Most of his congregation at Unitarian Universalist Church is not paying attention.

"What I've tried to do with our community is basic things: Cough into your elbow, get your vitamin C."

If the world catches the flu, he asks, "who's going to come to church?"

Accumulate vacation time. Get a clothesline and clothespins or folding drying rack. Consider getting a good bicycle.

- Eyeswideopen on fluwikie.com

President Bush signed a bill in December authorizing $3.8-billion for pandemic preparedness, including incentives for flu vaccine and drug manufacturers. On Jan. 18, more than 90 countries pledged $1.9-billion for the global fight against bird flu. A report from the Congressional Budget Office estimates the chances of a pandemic at less than one-third of 1 percent annually.

"We have to differentiate between personal preparation and societal preparation in order to know what message to send the public. It makes sense for governments to prepare. It doesn't make sense for individuals," says Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor at New York University School of Medicine.

His book, Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic, publishes this month. He cautions the public to differentiate between a remote problem and a looming one.

"Fear is a virus, and this is a virulent strain of fear," Siegel says.

"We're going to be petrified of poultry."

In the comic strip Boondocks, Grandpa was afraid to eat turkey for holiday dinner.

Siegel says it is not rational to be afraid if a person dies of flu in Turkey. Instead, he says, there are reasonable actions an individual can take: Learn to filter fear. Lobby government for new vaccines. Pay attention to whether hospitals and health care workers are prepared.

Do not stockpile, says Siegel, 49. He does not believe gatherers are misguided so much as lacking perspective.

What options other than bottled water do I have if, at 78, I live on the 19th floor of a high-rise? ...

- Morris1030 at dailykos.com

You have some advantages. The 19th floor of a high-rise is an excellent tactical position.

- discussion moderator AlphaGeek

FluWiki's Mattson no longer drives on fumes. On every trip to the grocery store, she picks up something extra. She is on a quest for canned Hormel Beef Stroganoff. She watches for sales on freeze-dried foods.

She talks about the "judgment reaction," which occurs when an individual is confronted with "radical discontinuity."

"Most people will react either with denial or with panic," she says. "The whole purpose of risk communication is to show people, here are the possibilities, here are the options. Then you say, what are the things we should start to do to be ready?"

Each car is supplied with a survival kit for three people, including for each person, a pair of sneakers, jeans, tee-shirt, a flashlight, knife, blanket, half-gallon of water, some power bars, toilet paper. Each car also has a shovel, siphon hose, flares, crowbar, can opener and $300 in cash.

- Meteor Blades in Los Angeles on dailykos.com

I'm heading over to your house in an emergency. Can I bring something, like maybe a bottle of nice Chardonnay?

- Elmo

We're also armed. - Meteor Blades

Yikes! Maybe I'll just bring some decaf, then.

- Elmo

[Last modified January 26, 2006, 09:43:02]