by Vermont Trotter

Knowledge is a funny thing.  You approach it like a rock or a stump when you are out for a walk on the beach or out in the woods.  You kick it over and it reveals the truth of its secret underside to you.  Knowledge once attained  demands action.  You can probe it or you can walk away from it trying to pretend you didn’t see it or anything in between.  One way or another,  you have to deal with it.

One way of dealing with it is to take that knowledge,  plug it into your paradigm and play the “What If”  game.  What if this happens or what if that happens?  What if’s can drive you crazy and as I tell my kids, What If’s don’t happen.  Is’s happen.  And if one of your envisioned What If’s should happen,  it is no longer a What If,  it is the Is.  I don’t like dealing with fears and What I’f’s.  I like dealing with Is ’s.  The problem is,  before you can deal with an Is,  you have to know what the Is,  is;  which is one of the reasons you play the ‘What If’ game.

One of the advantages to a website like this is that it allows you to research categorized archives.  My pops taught me that if you save news stories about a certain subject,  over a period of time,  they reveal truths no one story carries unto itself.  It is only with the assistance of hindsight and archives that the solutions to the mysteries manifest. The ‘Pandemic’ is a month old – well,  a bit over three if you consider incubation times and the earliest reports.  As the last four weeks of the “Pandemic” has unfolded,  some of the truths my dad referred to are starting to show themselves.

Here are some of the nuggets I have kicked over as the story of the swine flue pandemic has unfolded:

Nobody knows where it came from.  First reports called it a mix between two human strains,  two swine strains and one avian strain leading people to surmise it was created in a lab and released on the public. Then came the report that there were no bird flu viruses at all,  that it was really a hybrid of two more common pig flu viruses.  Then there was that four or five days there,  when it was suggested by someone who has the knowledge to know that the virus was indeed  man made and released which was promptly discredited by WHO,  who also has the knowledge to know.  Finally,  we got a computer model of the virus and the darn thing looks like something my kid brought home from Chucky Cheese’s and sure enough,  the bird is back in it.  It really is Swine Flew.  The original vector for this outbreak seems to be a factory hog farm in Mexico half owned by Smithfield Foods,  the multinational from VA,  but it also seems to date back into the ’90s from a factory hog farm in NC.

So what do I do with this knowledge?  I can hem and haw and make things up,  cry foul,  sniff conspiricy;  but the bottom line answer is: I’m not going to do anything with this knowledge.  A pandemic virus is here;  how it got here is irrelevant.  Have you seen the latest map showing just where this flu virus has shown up?  This sucker is here and it is here to stay.  Get over it.  Does it really matter how it got here?   There is human to human transmission (it isn’t airborne … yet) as well as human to swine transmission.  It’s not too big a jump of logic to realize it can go from swine to human albeit no one of competent authority will state that.  As a matter of fact,  they go a long way to deny that possibilitiy.  Look at how the ‘more enlightened’ reacted to the hog culls in Egypt.

So,  the new Swine Flu is here.  In a panic of Political Correctness they called it A H1N1.  They didn’t want to call it the Mexican Flu because that would insult Mexicans and Hispanics.   It’s a level 5 pandemic and there are strong calls and arguments for WHO to announce the threat level to 6.   It is all over the world and it is mutating.  The Northern Hemisphere is coming out of its flu season which means the Southern Hemisphere is entering theirs.  There are all kinds of fears as to what it might do ranging from mutating in the Southern flu season and making its way up here for a massive outbreak come the 09/10 winter flu season in the North to fears it will find its way to an H5N1 bird flu virus mutate once again and become a vicious killer with the 61% mortality rate of H5N1. That’s a lot of fears.  That’s a lot of ‘what ifs’.

So how do you evaluate all of this information so you can react?  The best one can do is look at an historical example and try to learn from that.  The last time there was a super duper really bad pandemic was 1918 and there have been lots of comparisons between then and now.  In 1918,  the flu popped its head up late in the season in a mild form then sort of went dormant for the summer.  Then when the 1918/19 winter flu season kicked in,  the virus had mutated to become quite virulent.  Like 1918,  this flu appeared late in the season and the fear is that history will repeat itself.  What if  it blossoms with a virulent kick come November?   And if not this year,  what about next?  Once again,  what if’s.

One interesting tidbit in the archives was this blog which proposes that aspirin was the main culprit for most of the deaths in the Pandemic of 1918.  His theory goes something like this.  Troops were falling ill to the flu and one of the symptoms was a high fever.  The doctors in the field prescribed aspirin because it lowered fevers.  The nature of a virus is that it is destroyed by high temperatures.  Surpressing the fever allowed the virus to grow and take over the body.  A few days later,  the troop was coming down with influenza morphing into pneumonia and then dying.  Indeed,  the 20 to 40 million deaths worldwide from the great 1918 Influenza (”Flu”) Pandemic were NOT due to “flu” or a virus, but to pneumonia caused by massive bacterial infection.

Make no mistake about it,  this threat is very real be its origin a natural mutation or a release with malice of forethought.  The good news is that for now,  for the most part,  it seems to be mild in form.  There have been more deaths in Mexico than there have been anywhere else but the deaths have been mostly youngish to middle aged people,  not the old and very young as you would normally suspect to be susceptible to flu.  The parallels between 1918 and 2009 are eerie.  In April of 1918 it was a mild flu popping up late in the flu season and even faded to background noise over the summer.  A H1N1 has started out life as virulent but rather benign.  It can kill,  but odds are it won’t – at least not yet.  But make no mistake,  it is still mutating and we can only guess at what it might do.

What If?  What If?  What If?  What If’s will drive you crazy.  What If’s aren’t actionable.  Is’s are.  So let’s talk about some Is’s.  Let’s talk about something you can act on.

The first Is you need to be aware of  is that vaccines don’t work.   Should one be offered,  decline.  There are none currently available and because the virus is mutating,  anything you make can be invalidated by a random mutation.  How do you test it before you deploy it?   The leading contender to get that juicy vaccine contract is Baxter—the same company that almost unleashed a deadly pandemic on the world less than six months ago.  Tamiflu is worthless to everyone except Roche who stands to make a tidy profit off of manufacturing and licensing.  Since the major cause of death in 1918 was pneumonia which could have been precipitated by use of aspirin,  should you get a fever,  let it burn.  Instead of over the counter medications,  drink lots of water, chicken broth and take MMS.  There are also some simple precautions you can take.  You can wash your hands,  wear surgical masks,  bump fists or elbows instead of shaking hands,  cough or sneeze into the crook of your elbow instead of into your hand.  Irrigating your nose with unrefined sea salts diluted with water helps wash away irritants and disinfect the sinuses.  Vitamin D is most effective in combating many things,  the flu just being one.  Colds & Flus seem to always hit during cold weather.  One of the reasons for that is people go inside and tend to avoid exposure to outside,  the primary source of Vitamin D.  The sunshine can help you keep the flu at bay.  And let’s not forget MMS.  MMS will oxidize the virus and get you back on your feet faster than you can imagine.

And probably the most important Is that is out there which you can take action upon is the indominatable human spirit.  It just keeps going.   When this virus first broke loose and people started wearing surgical masks,  the picture to your left brought rays of hope to my heart.  What is it about the human condition that allows man to laugh in the face of adversity?  What If this virus burns through humanity leaving a path of destruction in its wake or What If it remains mild and becomes a minor annoyance?  I don’t know.  One thing I know for sure is it doesn’t matter which What If becomes the Is,  the fact of the matter is we will survive with humour and grace.

Take precautions and stay aware.

Remember,  knowledge is power,  knowledge protects,  knowledge organizes and knowledge does this all by itself.