Is it my imagination, or are the authorities, those in the know, scientists, and fearmongers hoping that a Pandemic stikes hard? Would it make them feel better (providing they survive their own predicitons)? Would they be justified? Could they stand back and say, "See, we told you there would be deaths, panic, and that it would be bad. . .you should have listened. . .you should have paniced sooner."?
This struck me as I was at a County Agricultural Resource meeting this past Saturday. I was trying to make a point about Animal Id and Avian Flu threatening our local farms through the enterprise of Large Corporation Agribusiness pointing fingers at the little guy for the problems of their own creation, when up speaks one of the county’s Elected Officials. The Commissioner–actually one of the more level headed ones–skipped over my comments to say that he knew how many people in the county were going to die, that we would–for certain–be cut off from the world (we’re an island community, I said–we’re already cut off from the world. . .), and that the Pandemic (me panic’d) will strike the county hard. He stated these things, and more, as hard fact. Like it was a foregone conclusion. Like there was nothing we could do to prevent this from happening. Like all we had to do was sit back and wait for the predicitons to come true.
WTF???? It’s like these people want something bad to happen. That their lives and jobs will be justified. But aren’t they missing the point abit. I may have lost the plot, as I often do, but as far as I know the H5N1 is not transferring Human to Human yet. There is the POSSABILITY of a threat, but NO threat at the moment. More people die of Regular Influenza each year than have caught the chicken flu so far. Do we hear about those poor souls? The tell us not to panic about something that isn’t even happening with panic in their voice. Is it panic that something COULD happen, or ISN"T happening already?
And so this morning I was interested to find this Domesday Shopping List and Disaster Scenario in my in-box. It’s not that this is bad advise. It’s advise we should take for ANY disaster–hurricane, flood, torando, earthquake, living on an island. Do we all heed such admonissions? No. So they keep making them. Could we survive two weeks without leaving our homes? I do, regularly. This "disaster" is set to begin in the next few months–Go out an plant a garden, stock up on granola, find someone who knows how to milk a cow, dry some fruit, put up some vegetables. Support the local economy now, in case something does happen. Do not, however, justify the panic by purchasing large quanitites of Corporate Food Stocks. It is sad that the economy needs a boost in this country. It is a crime that it is being piggy-backed onto the threat of a Pandemic.
