What really matters

  You are right about nice neighbors changing in a hurry.  I went to the dentist on Tues.  We often talk about the bird flu.  He doesn't believe anything will happen.  I left him a copy of Dr. Grattan Woodson book.  Today to my surprise his wife called me, I was shocked she thanked me for the book and we decided to keep in touch and exchange ideas.  She told me that she had been telling friends in her neighbor hood that they should prepare for the bird flu.  She said one looked at her and said  we have guns and will just take what we want, she said she could tell that the lady was talking about taking from them.  These are people that live in million dollar homes.  The dentist wife said she is not telling anyone else about prepping.  She fears them now,remember these are her good friend that live in a super great area. 

I agree with you, Ruth. There seems to be a real "all or nothing" mood surrounding BF.  I, too, think it will fall somewhere in the middle, taking down a lot of people, but not quite as deadly as it is now, once it mutates. Make no mistake...I am well prepped by my standards, but my instincts tell me it will not be the "worst case scenario" that many believe. Bad, yes...crazy and uncertain, for sure...but not armageddon. It's just what my instincts tell me.

Today, my beatifully planted raised beds, so full of hope and promise, overflowing with seedlings,  in the prime of their lives, were ravaged by an unwelcome, thieving, brutal mob of feral chickens, (and I ain't kidding) they have terrorized the neighborhood for months,  and today killed a large number of seedlings, yes I will oppose them, and given a chance will kill them with extreme prejudice...I hate being robbed!

Violated and angry because a bird ate your flowers?  

Scotty wrote: Always wanted to know how to spell that. And the other one as well. C'est la what's its name. Thanks Edrn. Just popped back to see if this thread is still festering. Purses at ten paces. It's perfectly acceptable to agree to differ you know?

[QUOTE=Acesh]Edrn

 

[QUOTE=Valgard]Today, my beatifully planted raised beds, so full of hope and promise, overflowing with seedlings,  in the prime of their lives, were ravaged by an unwelcome, thieving, brutal mob of feral chickens, (and I ain't kidding) they have terrorized the neighborhood for months,  and today killed a large number of seedlings, yes I will oppose them, and given a chance will kill them with extreme prejudice  ________________________________________________________________

This thread takes me back to my mispent youth-sigh- sitting on the front porch feet on the railing drinking jack daniels with beer backs -Schimt we had no taste- smoking, and taking pot shots at chickens with a 30-30 as the poor things ran thru the sagebrush.

 

Kind of regret the chicken part cause no bird flu then and all they were doing was profiding us eggs...

 

Hope we didn't live by the 30-30 and will die by same.

Hej Edrn, boy I wish I had a front porch...actually my son wacked one of the disgusting fowl with a hand axe, and I got one with a broom handle, another one was doa on the road around the corner, probubly a chevy 350 or the likes...When yard hunting,  I prefer a good single malt Scotch, chased with a Heinie...

Edrn wrote: [QUOTE=Edrn][QUOTE=Acesh]Edrn Are you so sure that H5N1 is it's not here yet?  I'm not!!  So it just hoped over to the Wild Bird population?  When, 2005? What was it doing in 2004 & 2003?  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Acesh- actually that wasn't what I was saying at all.  _______________________________________________________________   So, anyway...The "natural history"  of a disease or a parisite or a butterfly etc is how it goes thru it's life cycle. The life cycle of  other influence outbreaks (swine flu, Hong Kong flu, H1,2,3; N1,2,3  etc ad infinitim) that  cause the flu mutate every year which is what makes vaccines only available just before flu season.    Anyway, flu season traditionally starts around November and quits around March. The question among various groups of scientists had always been- so where does it go when it isn't around?  So after looking and looking, they found it hops from host to host- in otherwords,  Yes, Virginia,  flus do "hop"  (or, in literate terms) are transmitted thru an unnatural host where it picks up differnt proteins and lipids so yr immune system doesn't recognize it next time around.   So, in simple terms, yes  (sigh)  it did  "hop" fromspecies to speices wild birds, guinea oigs, great apes or lions or tigers or bears oh my, where it mutated into a form that causes lg amount morbity and mortality in humans.  And for crying out loud I DID NOT SAY I DON"T  BELIELIVE IT ISN'T HERE OR WILL BE SOON!   And at some point it was undoubedly "hopping" around from species to species .  I don't know which hosts, I don't know which years, and neither do you.   So, is this an explanation you can grok, or do you need written in alower grade level? ___________________________________________________________    My purse is studded ahd full of lead weights.     "The mills of the Lord grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small"

 
____________________________________________________________

BTW No reason to believe that now it is staying in human hosts  only...

I am very new to this forum but I did want to comment on this whole idea of self-preservation verses helping others. I’m a licensed social worker & have worked in a level I trauma center and was working for the Department of Health and Human Services in WV at the time of the Katrina disaster. I can guarantee you that if my clients were told to go to the supper dome they would have ended up there in their own good time with no though of even bringing a bottle of water…that would be the government’s job according to their way of thinking. I tried to instill some modicum of personal responsibility in my clients for the entire year I worked there and discovered this to be a bit more of challenge than one might imagine.

Our state took in almost 1,000 Katrina victims and after a child was rapped discovered that a small number of that group were actually escaped prison inmates. I don’t think the majority of Katrina victims were people who chose not to provide for themselves but rather were those who due to lack of age, vigor, intelligence, insight, education or mental stability were not able to care for themselves. The problem was that a very small minority were predators and I can attest to the fact that was difficult if not impossible to tell the difference between the two groups. The group of people who cannot or will not care for themselves depend upon others to do that. Our Katrina victims were so grateful for our state’s assistance that they used the VISA cards FEMA gave them for beer and luxury items, complained of the fee accommodations and demanded only minority workers to serve them. And I don’t mean a few did these things and gave everyone a bad name…most did these things. It was a totally ridiculous situation. I cam guarantee our state never anticipated the problems that offering to help Katrina victims would bring.

The real problem I see is that there will be no one to provide for these types of people when a pandemic hits and they are all over the country. We all know state and federal governments are not going to. Local municipalities are not going to be prepared to care for them. You and I cannot possibly provide the level of care that these people need in addition to caring for our own families. The really sad part of this situation is that not only can we not provide for these people some of the needy will become desperate enough to become predators themselves. My worst-case scenario is that we will be forced to stand by while the predators prey on the young, old and mentally incapacitated.

The more I offer to help/protect others the more I open myself /my family up to being targeted by predators. If you were a desperate person with limited ethics what would you be on the lookout for when you went out searching for food and supplies? I would be looking for the dumb bunny trying to “inconspicuously help others”. I guarantee you that you will be noticed and you will not be able to tell who is safe to share with and who will go back and tell there families and neighbors who in turn will “convince” you to share willing or not. To think this will not happen is just naive and to think that you can be ever vigilant against others who do discover you have provisions is not realistic (and not how I want to live my life even for a short period of time in the event of a disaster). How many times have you thought someone was trustworthy, told them your thoughts or opinions and found out later they told other people? I have had that happen a couple of times. Now imagine that the safety of your whole family depends upon you being able to KEEP YOUR BIG MOUTH SHUT, keep your personal business personal just take care of your family and their ability to survive depends upon them involving other people they think they can trust. I am not going to play a guessing game about whom I can trust and whom I can’t. That would be playing games with my family’s life just to gratify my own ego (or appease my own conscious). You don’t make it through major catastrophes and times of great upheaval with a lot of warm fuzzy feelings left inside. I’m afraid that we will all have very tough decisions to make. I for one am fine with risking my own life to help others but I absolutely refuse to risk the lives of the people who depend on me. I don’t feel I have to right to do that no matter how it makes me feel.

And I still don't know how to spell "It is the life" in French.