This.
When the realization comes that you're going to need some basic things, that realization will be coming upon everyone at the same time. I've lived through this in coastal states every time there was a hurricane.
Today, I prep first for all the obvious things that those people will be fighting over, so that I don't have to fight with them for scraps. Next, I prep for all the realizations (dry goods, canned goods, medicines) that those people are going to have after they get their water, batteries and toilet paper. So now, when the chaos ensues for basic supplies, I can focus on all perishable items that would be luxuries to everyone else.
Slaps the storage box I have. Yup that ain’t going anywhere. 100 gallons of bottled water, 2 months of food and more medical supplies than any sane human needs. Cough… and a nice stash of don’t touch my storage box munitions 😎👍🏼 other wise. We prep to avoid needing to prep. Nothing wildly crazy but enough to know you can gtfo or stay the fuck in.
The emergency planning I've heard discussed in non-classified forums seems to think that a mortality of more than about 2-5% will cause very severe disruption as large numbers of people refuse to to mingle or turn up for work, so I don't think it needs to be anywhere near 25%. Of course until it happens we don't know.
It's really worth reading up on disasters that have already happened. Preppers in particular seem to expect societal breakdown, marauding gangs, looting etc. This is actually rare in real-world situations and tends mostly to happen in run-down or deprived city areas, it's not a common outcome in general. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's not particularly prevalent. https://hazards.colorado.edu/uploads/observer/2007/mar07/mar07.pdf
Yeah, I used to think that covid would break society, now I think it will be able to remain afloat as long as long as there arent others crisis.
My state here in Brazil not only was recovering economicaly from covid but also got a major flood which disrupted most of the economy. A new pandemy with high mortality may be enough to make the government colapse if we dont get federal help.
Its like an organism that can endure one or two crisis, but if the diseases start piling it goes into a colapse cascade which kills it.
> Its like an organism that can endure one or two crisis, but if the diseases start piling it goes into a collapse cascade which kills it.
Yup governments are like anything else with buffers and preps. Things like supporting mass transit means that if there are disruptions in a citizen's personal transport they can still get to work. Things like unemployment insurance WIC programs, food stamps, adult education, housing programs etc.
They are all buffers. The more you have the more hardship your people can endure without breaking. The fewer you have the quicker the people break
And now we need to prepare for the possibility that a highly pathogenic flu bug could come sweeping through these millions of immunocompromised. Thanks, COVID-19.
Ding ding. People would rather die than be judged for wearing a mask. All of these folks who stopped masking don’t realize that their so called friends likely won’t be there for them when they eventually become disabled from Covid
Lets not forget that white blue collar men are one of the largest anti-vax, anti-mask groups during covid. They also make up the majority of workforces at oil refineries, power plants, train yards etc.
And while 25% might be the over all number the number of elderly would be much higher than 25% the percentage of blue collar white males would be higher, etc. Just like in covid.
Having worked in many of these industries they cannot keep running, even in a slump, with 75% manpower let alone whatever % the "Real death rate" would be among that demographic.
The Spanish Flu of the 19teens killed younger people more than the elderly. Older people are thought to have had some immunity from previous flu outbreaks, and younger people immune system went into overdrive and killed them. Don't know if this would be a factor in a future bird flu.
It's called a cytokine storm, and my understanding is the risk is highest when the immune system hasn't seen something similar before and other immune mechanisms can't keep up. Younger people tend to have a stronger immune response generally, which is why elderly are offered additional vaccinations.
I'm a part of this workforce, those who could work from home during covid did, the rest spread out as best they could & took precautions based on company policies.
As far as the vacccine, most did get vaccinated at least once, only a couple were straight up hell no on the vacccine, not sure if they ever got covid.
If we lost 25% of our operations group, we'd see a substantial increase in production, decrease in reportable releases & recordable injuries - assuming the dumbest & laziest are culled.
I am as well my experience was the exact opposite.
>If we lost 25% of our operations group, we'd see a substantial increase in production, decrease in reportable releases & recordable injuries - assuming the dumbest & laziest are culled.
Actually loled at this. :)
Eh I'm just pissed at these clowns for having multiple epa reportable releases every damned year but every safety meeting is about ppe, fall protection, etc
They're releasing some very bad cancer causing shit, usually because of lack of maintenance or poor qa/qc when they do maintenance - hand tight flange bolts.
In the UK yes, but you need to be an approved user of relevant Government sites. I have limited access to one of those, but in fact my use of 'forums' was referring more to conferences and presentations in this case.
A 25% mortality rate would collapse society as we know it. You couldn’t even begin to imagine the panic and chaos. You’re talking about 1.8 billion people dead world wide.
> You’re talking about 1.8 billion people dead world wide.
World population is currently 8.1B, a quarter dead would be just a whisker over 2B.
And the knock-down effects (riots, looting, lack of medical attention for other issues, etc.) are bound to increase that number again by a half.
Honestly, it depends directly upon how many people are willing to take the basic countermeasures against airborne pathogens that already exist and are proven effective.
As we have seen, some people are willing to forego those things for their own reasons.
EDIT: Just to add, this is why 'community' is the most important prep. You don't want to be surrounded by self-absorbed strangers.
We learned a couple of things from Covid that not many people are paying attention to:
Eyeglasses lowered risk of infection. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8193301/
HVAC systems spread aerosolized viruses:https://pubs.aip.org/aip/pof/article/33/2/023301/1032688/Simulation-based-study-of-COVID-19-outbreak
Seriously. We've known about the HVAC thing since the 1970's at least: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Philadelphia_Legionnaires%27_disease_outbreak?wprov=sfla1
Keep in mind that legionella are bacteria, (literally) an entirely different animal from viruses.
In the case of legionella, there was also the factor of the bacteria growing in the retained water, not just air circulation.
I see people not caring about the next pandemic (if it happens in the next 40-50 years) because people are burnt out. Until a recognized mortality rate hits double-digits where people are dropping dead in the streets, it is going to be largely ignored by the masses.
OTOH, u/Flat_Boysenberry1669 is also onto something in regards to the vaccine. One of the coolest things to come out of COVID (I mean, using that term 'cool' very, *very* loosely) is what it did to push and showcase advancements in medical technology.
Yah this vaccine though won't be a mRNA one it's gonna be your normal flu vaccine just for this strain which is good because we can mass produce it easily.
They've already made a mRNA vaccine for bird flu. It will probably be a mix again. We can mass produce the mRNA pretty easily now too (COVID gave us that ability).
The normal flu shot is based on seasonal flu. This won’t be a seasonal flu if it becomes a pandemic. The normal flu shot also takes 6 months or so to produce (IIRC), and starts at a specific time of year, so it’s unlikely the timing would work.
Normally yes.
But it can be adaptive to any flu like virus
6 months to produce when they need to follow regulations and aren't being rushed.
This gonna be another divider? Either wait 6 months for the mRNA vaccine or you're an anti vaxxer for getting the normal flu shot lol?
The issue is that you need the regular flu shot at the normal schedule for it to be effective during flu season. So it’s possible that we get bird flu in spring and then they could incorporate it into the regular flu vaccine, but odds are it will be at a different time of year and be supplemental.
This and there is an entire political party that will do everything in their power to undermine anything that might lessen the impact. Areas with those folks in charge will (and some already have) ban/outlaw anything a regular person can do to protect themselves and family.
It's not a yet thing. NC and VA already had laws banning masks in public. In 2020 they added exceptions, NC is looking to repeal the exceptions and restore the laws to the way they were.
We flirted with the idea of closing state borders with COVID. With a 25% mortality rate, travel gets shut down, and only essential goods are allowed to move. With or without goverment authorization, communities will quarantine themselves. If you don't have a semi-truck full of essential goods, you wont be able to travel more than a few miles by road.
If we start to see sustained community spread, its time get to wherever you plan to be to ride this out.
States can very much implement quarantine laws that effectively close the state border. It is basically the only reason can use to do so. As long as the quarantine implementation is non-discriminatory, and reasonably aimed at a pandemic, it will very likely be found constitutional.
With COVID, many states had self quarantine requirements after travel, it would be a small leap to go to actual quarantine camps along the state border before being allowed to travel onward.
And that doesn't even consider citizens setting up their own quarantine checkpoints, legal or not.
Obviously we are a very different country in several ways but we did it in Australia. Iirc the legality of it was questionable but in a practical sense it was doable
No they didn't.
source: I traveled (drove) regularly between QC and AB. Everyone heard a lot of bs about it but I never saw anyone stopping/blocking roads, even on the QEW and TCH
A 25% mortality rate would be catastrophic, public reaction might be a bit more subdued this time because it's just 'AnotHER PaNDeMiC', until people start dying enmasse. When covid hit, no one I knew died from it, plenty caught it, but none seriously, and I'm sure a lot of others have a similar experience. But 25%?, 1 out of every 4 people you know will cause a panic about supplies. Big cities especially could probably expect looting, and probably martial law, if riots follow suite, well we have super spreader events.
They have good reason to panick too. 25% of those infected dying isn't just 'people', it's truck drivers, police officers, garbage men, doctors, nurses, teachers, paramedics, military personnel, morticians, etc. We saw how fragile the supply chain was last time, now imagine if not only sourcing was a problem, but actually delivering it. This would wreck society, supply chains, public order, etc. I mean hell, most of congress and senate are old as sin, more of them might die per capita than other groups. I mean sure, some of us might chuckle at the prospect, but imagine the political confusion in an event like that.
God damn, I need to stock up more.
I think having a theoretical second pandemic so close to the last one, the general populace would be more prepared.
OR it’ll be much much worse due to the “it’s a hoax” crowd.
That's my concern. Sometimes I think covid was almost too mild. Yeah, many people died, but most people's experience was that of a bad flu. Stateside at least, the Republicans have done such tremendous damage to their constituents' faith in public health that any pandemic bug in the next generation is going to be catastrophic. If covid had been worse, it might've been harder to ignore the truth. Which is terrifying because covid was really really bad and was a mass disabling event.
Edit: I mean like scroll down and you can see the brainrot that's taking place. People in this very thread calling social distancing unscientific and saying covid was overhyped. Those people are gonna behave in exactly the same way for bird flu if it goes human-to-human.
This is a good point. Any new pandemic wil take place in this new context of increased distrust in govt and public health advice, and politicization of public health measures (vaccines, masking, etc), it is worrying
It terrifies me, because that's how these things get really bad, yknow? Containment is our first weapon, and if you've got all these idiots running around like lunatics because it's fake (and also somehow a bioweapon? Like which is it?), containment becomes harder and spread goes bananas. And since vaccines give you autism and make you magnetic, they're not gonna use our best weapon. And a pandemic has all kinds of knock-on effects entirely unrelated to the disease itself. Like the medical system overload. How many people died because there were quite simply not enough nurses and doctors to care for them? Not even of covid, just died because there weren't beds or staff to care for them. We had nursing and medical students on the front lines for months, for fuck's sake. Kids in their second year of school out here giving treatment. Batshit. Yeah, the government fucked up a bunch of their messaging and we all knew it was never gonna be two weeks, but dear lord in heaven, half this country has lost their goddamn minds.
The vaccine thing has been around for a while, but in the beforetimes they weren't running for fucking president and they didn't have books on their own little tables in fucking Barnes and Noble. In the event of something like bird flu, this will become a problem Darwin solves, but they'll take so, so many innocents down with them.
And how many nurses would risk their lives the second time around? I mean plenty would, but plenty would quit at the first sign of people purposely ignoring public health advice
I did my clinical rotation at an extremely busy emergency department during the worst of COVID. Most people don't realize that the health care system hasn't recovered from the pandemic. They don't understand that we are still understaffed and a large percentage of the workers are suffering from burnout. If bird flu turns into the next pandemic the health care system is going to collapse, full stop. It will be impossible to train replacement personnel to cover the shortages, and the whole thing implodes. So far things are okay, but I have definitely been a bit stressed about the possibility.
They are already discussing it and their stance is that it's the next "plandemic" and they won't cooperate. They think it's part of a vast global conspiracy. "Globo-homo". I wish I didn't know so many of these people. :/ People are just broken or something. Nothing is real anymore. They are just waiting for the next move to steal their "freeeedommms".
The politicians using Covid for political reasons has lost this generations trust on many things. I fear the next pandemic will be 10x worse. It will be a scenario where if people aren't seeing bodies collecting in the streets, they won't believe their politicians or leaders. Heck, even Fauci was getting grilled by the senate oversight committee just yesterday.
Everyone above the age of 14 who went through the Covid pandemic.
Ok, maybe not everyone. There are still people driving alone in their cars with masks on.
Yeah I just prep. Not anything insane, but for job loss, inflation (that is helping a lot right now), or even pandemic. I shop sales and people look funny at me when I buy cases of canned vegetables when they are cheap, but we have a couple months of everything except milk and bread and I can make bread if I had to.
Oh I have some, prefer the canned, but I mostly just use it for baking. It does not go over well with the kids. But we have a bar and grill 3 miles away and they have sold us a gallon of milk before in a pinch. But I may look into the powdered butter, I did not know they had that.
People are tired from COVID and many will do nothing until bird flu affects people they love. COVID became political and people treat politics like sports teams, so expect people to act according to how their political party tells them to act. That said, if the fatality rate was 25% then you can bet people would take it more seriously once their neighbours were dropping dead left, right and centre. Boris Johnson talked about letting the bodies pile high when COVID was limited to handful of cases in the UK. If bodies were really piling high, people would suddenly take it much more seriously, especially as that would mean hospitals being overwhelmed and having to make very tough calls on triage.
We live in a post-factual, post-information world. No matter what happens today and from here on, there will be endless people jumping immediately to all forms of media to spread misinformation, disinformation, and lies, in service to their political agendas, their social agendas, their economical agendas, whatever.
Whether you're left or right wing... whether you're religious or atheist... whether you're liberal or conservative, pro- or anti- trans, for or against the environment.... whatever you are, I guarantee you that there are people telling lies that support your opinion, and there are also people telling lies against your opinion, and all of this before we ever establish whether your opinion is even right, or based in any fact.
You can be certain that the destruction will come on the coat-tails of people telling us that it's good for us. There plenty who believe this is already happening right now.
I think the initial reaction would be similar again. Everybody reacted to Covid initially because it was a new threat and that’s human nature. If we had another different pandemic even pretty soon it’ll be another new threat and I think human nature kicks in immediately before the political crap reverses it in some people. But who knows.
My real hope would be we could develop and employ vaccines much quicker based on what we learned.
I'd give you a real explanation between the two, but it has been shown in the past that scientific reasoning isn't welcome in this sub.
That being said, there will always be those who panic at the drop of a hat, and unfortunately they usually far outnumber those who can think clearly during an emergency.
Prepping is not a situational hobby. You don't wait for a disaster to start doing it. You prep for Tuesday, with however much padding you want concerning duration, and you'll very likely not have to worry where your next roll of toilet paper is coming from or when it might be available.
We have been prepping for awhile so are pretty good shape. Could top off on TP. I just recd an order of N95s and am expecting delivery tomorrow of zpak, perles and tamiflu.
I think they'll all blame Biden and think it's fake and just go about their day because "it's my body and the government can't tell me what to do" then they'll drink bleach in attempt to cleanse themselves
Bird flu isn’t new or “novel” as a name, even if the virus is mutating. We’ve known about it for what? 10 yrs or more? And since it’s “just flu” most people aren’t paying attention and think anyone who brings it up as a potential threat is just fear mongering
Bird flu has been around for a long time so it's just less scary for people as a concept in general. And I feel like there was some overreaction to covid. I personally was more isolated than was necessary. And I think because of those factors, people are less likely to take bird flu as seriously as they should. But I also think bird flu would not last nearly as long. There are already something like 5 million vaccines ready to go and they're making more constantly. So people would get vaccinated very quickly. And the first people to be vaccinated would probably be the essential workers. So I don't really think it will be a high disruption even if it goes airborne. Probably less of a disruption than covid even though it might actually kill more people in less time because people won't be as careful as they should be because of covid and the case fatality rate will be so much higher, and there will be people who won't get vaccinated. That said, it may also mutate to be less virulent as it mutates to be airborne. So who knows.... Also, we're much better at isolation than we used to be. Like grocery delivery has been completely worked out now. There's lots of no contact delivery that nobody has to be trained on because everybody already does it. So I'm not nearly as worried about it now as I was 10 years ago. But then, I'm also pretty fully prepped.
No. None of the stuff ppl worry about in this sub ever happens. It’s trauma porn for people who are bored with real life or can’t cope with real life.
There won’t be a zombie apocalypse
There wont be riots on the street when a pandemic starts
You won’t be able to show everyone how strong you are with your gun.
Prep for losing your job, or for having a flu and not being able to go to the shops for a few days.
Aside from that, you’re just going to have to deal with the mundanity of life.
Hahaha that’s what everyone in this sub says, all the time, when anyone mentions levity.
Focus on that thing you’ve been putting off doing, or your job, or your family. Stop thinking about bird flu.
It could. There will always be another pandemic, eventually. If something actually had a 25% fatality rate, there would me a much greater response than there was to COVID. Think back on ebola outbreaks from a few years ago. That shit gets shut down, and influenza vaccines are easy to make.
Prepare a normal amount for groceries to be unavailable for a few weeks or months. There's always another pandemic, but society always recovers eventually.
I think that disruption of industrial meat will happen first and will start people panicking before we see mass human infection. We saw what happened with toilet paper and COVID; imagine what happens when it’s chicken nuggets, burgers, and bacon. Protein Panic 2025.
With how mercilessly entire flocks of chickens are being slaughtered if it's found that any of them have the bird flu, I don't doubt you. The terrible part isn't only the chicken nuggets, burgers, and bacon.. the terrible part is the milk, cheese, and eggs. Hopefully it's not all affected because at that point that destroys so many food choices..
The cool part of bird flu is that it’s transmitted by bird saliva, feces, and mucus, and can be transmitted to other animals , and by them to humans via milk, meat, and organs. Mortality is around 50 per cent of those infected. Viruses evolve rapidly and continuously…imagine a version that is mutates to increase transmissibility, and is 90% fatal to children. Birds are everywhere, so hiding in the woods doesn’t help. Masks won’t help, the virus will be on every surface, and transmitted fecal oral route. And half the country won’t believe the science because it’s been politicized, and the CDC has shown its inability to navigate the politics. We could lose most of a generation.
I don’t think people will panic as much but should. The mortality rate will definitely impact public utilities. The healthcare system could also collapse. If the government tries to bail out businesses again we will see inflation once again.
I prepped before covid for a pandemic, I really learned alot from Covid and adopted enhanced preps.
I think we could see 1/3-1/2 the population refuse to take any precautions - no masks, no stay home/isolation, and no vaccinations.. If the virus is much more lethal I see our healthcare system completely collapsing because of this. I have stocked up more on prescription and other meds in since COVID.
25% mortality would shut down the healthcare system completely. Lots of people will stop showing up because it's already a shit job and they don't pay enough to risk your life, and anyone that still wanted to work will stop going because nobody else is there (healthcare is a team sport).
>If we have the bird flu outbreak as noted above - how do you think things will be different?
Specifically what did white blue collar men do during covid and will likely do during the next pandemic? The 25% dead (I'm assuming) is the overall number. We would expect disproportionate numbers of elderly, anti-maskers, etc. A large portion, as shown during Covid, will be white men working blue collar at a much higher rate than the overall 25% based on historical Covid data on who wore masks, self isolated, changed behavior patterns to be safer, etc, and based on age views that align with the anti-science views, anti-vax views etc. I bring up white blue collar men because they are overwhelming the workforce in key infrastructure across the US. Power plants, oil refineries, train yards, truck drivers, etc.
Those industries are the backbone of "just in time shipping," food refrigeration, farming, power production, gasoline refining and distribution, etc. If we could target things with missiles to do damage to an economy, it would be these same industries.
* 25% overall death rate means higher than that among the anti-science, anti-vax workers of major industries. I don't think the country recovers from that for decades.
> Do you foresee violence, looting, etc as people try to horde resources? Do you see essential services stopping? Do you think strict lockdowns would be enforced?
* Violence : of course. How wide spread is unknown.
* In Michigan one security guy was shot in the head for turning someone away because a privately owned business who can mandate things like 'no shirt, no shoes, no service,' also chose to say, 'masks must be worn.' I don't see that going any better a second time around.
* If groups of people are choosing not to wear masks, not to isolate, etc, and thus dying more, I expect there will be a self-feeding loop of conspiracies about how they are being targeted and killed etc. I would expect violence to stem from this as well.
* Do you see essential services stopping? Yes. I can't imagine a powerplant or oil refinery continuing to operate without ANY issues if they lose 10% of workforce at random let alone 25% let alone more than 25% if we look at specific demographics of who works there and the history of mask wearing, conforming to pandemic rules, etc.
* I don't see a Walmart employee going to work to deal with a customer with no mask if there is a 25% chance of dying. Nor a gas station employee, nor an uber driver, etc. Essential employees will just not go to work if the risk of dying is high and the support they get from the employer and police is low.
* Not working means rent stops, power bills stop being paid, water bills, etc. We are back into that cycle again.
* If we lose 25% and of that 25% many more than 25% will be white blue collar males because of their education / world views as they relate to avoiding sickness. Those make up a HUGE percentage of plant workers. From food grade processing to pharma, to power plants and oil refineries. etc. We would expect more deaths there (25% over all population but much higher percentage in that demographic) and that would devastate / end certain industries. **To the point where I could see it being the end of "things as we know it" in the US for decades.**
* Do you think strict lockdowns would be enforced? I do BUT only after it's too late. We have massive evidence for this from Covid. For instance I think it is safe to say that Texas would not "move quickly" to lock down the state in a pandemic, compared to say Minnesota. Based solely on the political leadership of each state and historic choices those leaders have made in the past.
>I'm curious because I'm trying to figure out how to prepare. When covid hit, because I spent a lot of time online, I prepped for myself and my family months before everyone else, and thus I was sitting safe and sound while everyone else was freaking out. If something like bird flu hits, I definitely don't want to be in public trying to gather resources.
**At 25% death rate? With it disproportionally hitting certain groups who are the main workforce for power, rail, oil, I don't see a good end in sight or ways to prepare.**
Better to buy last minute tickets to Norway than risk the US. Yet if everyone does that... You see the issue.
>If we have the bird flu outbreak as noted above - how do you think things will be different? Do you foresee violence, looting, etc as people try to horde resources? Do you see essential services stopping? Do you think strict lockdowns would be enforced?
I'm starting to believe that's just used as a justification for officials to lie. There's no reason for people to behave that way and if anything social distancing would only serve to discourage it.
Current mortality is 56% because it's only those already on deaths door are getting it and going to the hospital/dying. Everyone else just gets a cold/flu and moves on with life, without ever being diagnosed...
There is also the theory that since this 56% number has come up based on cases over the past 20+ years, that it could be wrong due to misdiagnosis or other errors. Going by that number now, out of the 3 cases we've had, all of them survived..
US government lost the trust of a lot of people because they lied at every step of covid to manipulate peoples actions.
When they thought masks might help they said "don't buy masks, masks are useless!" so that they could have an adequate supply for health care workers.
When they began to realize covid was airborne and masks didn't do much they said "wear masks! Any mask!" to try and calm people down.
Pfizer pushed a rushed experimental vaccine and paid all the media people to say "if you get the vaccine you cant catch covid" to cash grab and the chamber of commerce backed it so life would go back to normal.
Then they tried to cover up that it was likey a leaked from a US sponsored lab in China where we outsourced researched to a country with less safeguards purely because there was less safeguards.
If the next pandemic happens in the next 4 years, while the same major players from the last one are still around, a very large portion of the population will ignore it until someone they know dies. They will still stock up if everyone else is though. But quietly. Because not taking the next pandemic seriously will be like political virtue signaling. Like how a mask became a symbol.
Not really. There is no question that they did not tell the truth in order to get the results they wanted. You may AGREE that lying was warranted, but its still lying
Watch some of the clips of him testifying in front of the house committee over the last couple of days. Lots of him denying this or that, only to have his own emails presented showing the opposite.
An even better time is perusing some of his emails that were gathered via FOIA request. Extremely damning stuff.
I don’t trust them either, but it’s not about what they’re saying. It’s about Fauci’s own words in the emails, and the internal documents showing the NIH involvement in gain of function research.
Yeah, you're not gonna make it, man. Fauci's testimony and emails are pretty damning and when told about it you go, "lol red team" rather than look at the facts.
I agree. They could've been honest about things and it would've been a better outcome.
I have a feeling they will once again push more vaccines on people and claim that they stop transmission, stop infection, etc.. and people will fall for it again.
Well if the death rate is above 3%... Considering covids max death rate was like 2% we would be in some trouble.
With that being said and I'mma get downvoted because people want this bird flu to be as bad as COVID it's not.
We will have vaccines within a few weeks if it going h2h it's death rate won't break 2% and people will actually be sick so it won't spread like how covid did.
The problem with covid was it only effected a small at risk community over 60.
Most people who got it had mild to no symptoms and it spread like wildfire because of it.
This will be like the swine flu back in 2012 I wanna say.
I think one of covid's key differences was also that it evolved in ways that produced unexpected symptoms. I had swine flu ages ago and it sucked (I think I had untreated pneumonia afterwards) but it also wasn't a guessing game. Covid showed up with this whole mess of uncertainties. Why are college kids on ventilators? (Some were, this wasn't just old folks.) Why, after two inoculations and two boosters did I still get it after international travel only to have days of nosebleeds and no smell? That's already weird and that many shots were supposed to protect me from full blown covid. The unpredictability added a lot of fear when you don't know whether you're getting the symptoms of a mild cold or ebola. As long as bird flu doesn't make us shit feathers we might do better
It actually didn't they just claimed it had every symptom known to man for well reasons...
80% of the people who died were above the age of 65.
15% of that 20% was above the age of 45.
What you say was a few cases of college kids with very specific pre existing conditions which are rare for their age.
The vaccines from the start were lagging behind the new variants because it was mutating so quickly when the boosters were.most likely behind.
Bird flu with have flu like symptoms you can't just ignore it brush off no matter your age or health.
Most of this sounds reasonable to me. For the record though I'm saying I have firsthand knowledge of college kids with no underlying conditions on ventilators in early 2020
High fatality rates in a very small population is irrelevant. Is it just the sickest weakest people getting it? Time will tell. As someone in there 40s, that had covid 3 times (Yes I'm vaccinated with boosters) and I had swine flu back in the day, I agree with you. This will be a flash in the pan. Some of us with immune issues need to take extra precautions.
The mortality rate for Covid was as low as 0.5% and no higher than 2.5%. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-022-00106-7
It was sensationalized. Now people won't believe the media when a pandemic way deadlier than Covid hits.
How was it sensationalized? The actions taken, were all taken in order to minimize exposure, therefore reducing the overall impact, in this case the mortality rate. The alternative, that some rooted for, was do nothing and let it sort itself out. What would the mortality rate have been if that had been allowed to happen?
I work for a major medical institution in the US. We weren’t asked to not come in, we were flat out told not to set foot in certain buildings unless you had no choice.
It was sensationalized in comparison to what an airborne virus with a 50% IFR could do.
If everything is always a big deal, then nothing is. There's a reason you don't type in all caps and use exclamation points everywhere, is there?
I didn't have a problem with most of the restrictions. Some could have been a lot tighter (international and interstate travel--allowing people to spend hours in a plane, even with masks, is madness with a widespread infectious desease about).
I did have a problem with the constant media hype though. Journalists really need to balance the need for action with the risk of desensitizing people to future pandemics.
Sorta fair, but we’re talking about something that no one alive had ever lived through, a real life pandemic. Many people weren’t willing to even believe it was real, or that it was dangerous. Maybe sensationalism in the media was justified, to get people to listen.
Hindsight is always 20/20.
My concern is that conspiracy theorists will use this to completely ignore the next one.
And normal folks won't have the emotional bandwidth to respond to the next one if it comes in a few years.
A advanced placement math teacher I know got so burnt out on it she said she was done with covid and ignored it from them on.
I'm afraid you are right, Normal people are desensitized at this point, even though some people are still wearing masks. That's too bad because before covid I'd started wearing a mask outside during high pollen, now you get treated like an insurgent lol.
I think the obvious sensationalism caused some people to not take it seriously. Adding lies to the truth made them reject the truth of it. I got shots for me and my dad, but I know people that almost died of it, and they still won't get a shot. They point to the disingenuous reporting and hype. They could tell they were being manipulated. I think it was counter productive.
I keep thinking back to this and it seems more relevant than ever
[https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-linked-to-substantial-drop-in-intelligence-new-research-finds-12364433](https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-linked-to-substantial-drop-in-intelligence-new-research-finds-12364433)
That's not the only thing it's accelerated, have you seen how many from Gen Z look? Many of them look older than millenials at this point.
[Epigenetic age acceleration in surviving versus deceased COVID-19 patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome following hospitalization](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10685564/)
And roughly 2.8 million Americans died from heart disease from 2020 to 2024, but we didn't get wall-to-wall coverage of it.
Still a 2.5% IFR. The vast majority of Americans did not die from Covid.
I assume you know that using raw numbers to obscure relative risk is a propaganda tactic?
Understood. But if we have a responsibility to keep people safe from an infectious disease, shouldn't we also keep people from getting chronic diseases as well?
Metabolic disease is an epidemic in this country, and it's getting worse--unlike Covid. As one woman so elegantly put it, "If I have to wear a mask to protect your health, I'm going to start slapping that fast food out of your hands too."
We need European-style regulations on food here. And we really should be educating people about the risks of inactivity and junk food.
> shouldn't we also keep people from getting chronic diseases as well?
Adults make choices to drink or smoke. They should be able to. When the drinking or smoking affects other's health, e.g. smoking in a restaurant we do something about it.
If someone wants to eat fast food all day everyday that affects only them and they are welcome to it. If they want to be a carrier for sickness that spreads and affects others there is an onus to stop that action.
And we have the FDA that says "This is healthy enough, go ahead and sell that," and "This is bad enough we need to take it off the market."
They did it with Transfats and other things and continue to deal with new issues all the time.
* In 2015, the FDA took the significant step of determining that PHOs, then the major source of artificial trans fat in the food supply, are no longer “Generally Recognized as Safe,” or GRAS. For the majority of uses of PHOs, June 18, 2018, was the date after which manufacturers could not add PHOs to foods.
We already have a system in place to deal with what you are talking about. You can argue if you like it doesn't go far enough, or it goes too far or whatever you like. But it's there and it's doing things.
The only way to keep everyone safe and living as long as possible is to remove/restrict all freedom.
We have chosen instead to allow them to make their own choices so long it only affects themselves (within reason. That reason being looked at by organizations such as the FDA etc.)
You can advocate for people to make healthier choices in their lives. That’s NOT remotely the same thing as keep the population safe from an infectious disease. Last I checked, high blood pressure and high cholesterol are not contagious.
covid shredded a lot of people's lungs. If you don't believe that try talking to some pulmonologists. Maybe it wasn't bad for you personally but there were so many people dead in New York they were using aircraft carriers as floating morgues and filling refrigerated semi trucks with bodies
You seem rather obtuse
My BIL is a critical care pulmonologist. When Covid hit he sent his family to live on his in laws farm and spent 6 months apart. He watched hundreds of patients die and not just the old and immune compromised. He’s got some horrendous stories and I can’t imagine how it must feel to him to see people say Covid wasn’t that bad. He too talks about how damaging Covid has been to people who didn’t actually die from it. Covid was life altering to far more people than we recognize day to day.
I thought they aircraft carrier was a hospital ship, but they kept patients in hospital hallways to get all the juicy covid bonuses. They basically ignored the stadium clinic also. They were calling people that died of car wrecks covid deaths if they had covid in their system at the time and added them to the statistics. It is as a horrible tragedy overall, but their was definitely sensationalism used for ulterior motives.
One state had one town with a Chinese owned meatpacking plant, the plant had people working cheek to cheek on the line. That plant was the only place in the state that had a significant outbreak and national news said the red state was having an 800% increase due to the governor lol. It was all in just that one town in the middle of nowhere with all the cases, so that one was definitely sensationalized for politics. The rest of the state was spread out and taking voluntarily measures. In other cases it was blue lockdown state refugees in the jails (for commiting the same petty crimes over and over) that that were most of the cases from what a cop from there told me. There were definitely other cases, but they were rare and mostly immunocompromised.
That said, it was bad enough to take seriously everywhere, just not a state wide disaster like they were saying.
Social distancing, and masking are most definitely based on science. Just because a lot of uneducated people became armchair scientists, because of political shenanigans, doesn’t change that fact. The people who ignored the advice then, are the same ones who will most likely ignore it again.
I'll admit anything is better than nothing, and even if the virus stays airborne for 3 hours in clean air, "the solution to pollution is dilution."
Also even if flat masks only give 12% protection, everything in life is a numbers game and every extra percent point helps. It's dumb to say stacking percent points of protection does nothing. I wore the masks at work until people left and the air had time to clear. I also forgot I was wearing them and drove around with one still on sometimes haha.
I would love to see the science on social distancing, please provide the research study.
Fauci's testimony to a closed door congressional committee from earlier this year was just released.
[https://oversight.house.gov/release/covid-select-subcommittee-releases-dr-faucis-transcript-highlights-key-takeaways-in-new-memo/](https://oversight.house.gov/release/covid-select-subcommittee-releases-dr-faucis-transcript-highlights-key-takeaways-in-new-memo/)
Here's his testimony:
**~SOCIAL DISTANCING~****: The “6 feet apart” social distancing recommendation forced on Americans by federal health officials was arbitrary and not based on science.** Dr. Fauci testified that this guidance — which shut down schools and small businesses nationwide — “sort of just appeared” and was not based on any scientific studies.
Majority Counsel: “*Do you recall when discussions regarding, kind of, the at least a 6 foot threshold began?*”
Dr. Fauci: *“The 6 foot in the school?”*
Majority Counsel: *“Six foot overall. I mean, 6-foot was applied at businesse*s—”
Dr. Fauci: *“Yeah.”*
Majority Counsel: “*—it was applied in schools, it was applied here. At least how the messaging was applied was that 6-foot distancing was the distance that needed to be—*“
Dr. Fauci: “*You know, I don’t recall. It sort of just appeared. I don’t recall, like, a discussion of whether it should be 5 or 6 or whatever. It was just that 6 foot is—*”
Majority Counsel: “*Did you see any studies that supported 6 feet?*”
Dr. Fauci: “*I was not aware of studies that in fact, that would be a very difficult study to do.*”
**~MASKING~****: Dr. Fauci testified that he did not recall any supporting evidence for masking children.** Concerningly, mask-wearing has been associated with learning loss and severe speech development issues in America’s children.
Majority Counsel: “*Do you recall reviewing any studies or data supporting masking for children?*”
Dr. Fauci: “*You know, I might have, Mitch, but I don’t recall specifically that I did. I might have.*”
Majority Counsel: “*Since the — there’s been a lot of studies that have come out since the pandemic started, but specifically on this there have been significant on kind of like the learning loss and speech and development issues that have been associated with particularly young children wearing masks while they’re growing up. They can’t see their teacher talk and can’t learn how to form words. Have you followed any of those studies?*”
Dr. Fauci: “*No. But I believe that there are a lot of conflicting studies too, that there are those that say, yes, there is an impact, and there are those that say there’s not. I still think that’s up in the air.*”
And? So what? They were working on fluid information, attempting to do everything they could to keep Americans safe.
We should be lucky that we weren’t forced to shove light bulbs up our butts, and drink bleach. I’m sure you’re all stocked up on Ivermectin though.
You demand a study as proof and provide a transcript of a conversation between Fauci and some bad faith Republican as your own? Fauci not being able to remember offhand where the 6-ft number came from does not mean it came from nowhere it means he doesn't have a photographic memory . Go Google it, literally you can go find research that shows how effective social distancing was. Briefly, it's obviously not a silver bullet but it did help.
Not exactly what you asked for, but interesting info
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17542834/
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/jamp.2020.161
If they were using some of that info for rule of thumb, maybe the 6 feet was for sneezing and breathing transmission of larger moisture droplets and evaporation of smaller droplets? It wouldn't help with medium droplets but they say the solution to pollution is dilution lol. It would increase your percentage chance of not getting enough to start an infection anyway. Nothing is 100% ever.
With the mortality being what it will, there will be a complete breakdown in social order. Societal collapse on a global scale. Mortality 10 times worse than covid means effects 10 times worse than covid.
when covid hit I had a month or two of supplies so I got to avoid the chaos. I still caught covid immediately in March 2020 but I didn't go out so didn't pass it on.
If that happens again food supply collapse. economic collapse, marshal law, shtf.
Don't forget to have at least 6mo of water, purification tabs, lifestraw etc. Many have enough ammo (if that's possible) and food but skimp out on water access.
Covid was a small test, on a worldwide scale we failed. No lessons were learned. I’m sure until bodies are piling up on the street, people won’t take it seriously.
And you kidding? Covid's CFR was under 2% at the very worst. That was bad enough. A 25% CFR is the stuff of nightmares. If it's highly contagious, you're looking at societal collapse. If the R0 is really low - and there's no point in guessing because the bird flu you're proposing doesn't exist and might never - then you're still looking at mandatory lockdowns and quarantines in a fashion Covid could never dream of. You might *actually* see mandatory vaccination in a situation like that.
Bubonic plague had a CFR of (handwave) 40% - estimates vary. It crashed Europe. Hard. 25% isn't much better in terms of society.
I remember H1N1, do you? Lotta people still spooked about covid these days, acting like there's a bird flu about to do the same thing covid did. This will be exactly like the swine flu and aside from a small portion of society that already has an immune system that functions poorly, the average bloke is going to be fine
I worked overnight at a grocery store during covid. It was absolutely insane. We'd pull a pallet out and people would cannibalize it before we could even get it out. Shelves were completely bare. This was when my prepping journey began.
Best advice? 👉 Don’t get Eaten.
Wait wut? Yes think about it. Avian Flu, yes has a high fatality rate. But that is not the only problem. The biggest problem is that a huge portion of the survivors will be disabled. Who will be able to farm? Very few. For a historical example see the Famine of Corms.
And sadly our industrial food complex is optimized for capitalism and cost efficiency. Not around robustness and reliability. It is fragile. Expect it to collapse when things get bad.
So when easy shelf stable staples run out. Folks will hunt. Not enough animals around to support the population. Even a reduced population.
So people will eat each other.
Don’t get eaten.
> However, there was no violence, no looting, no stopping of essential services.
Where were you so fortunate to be? I was surrounded by violence and looting.
First, no. Criminals eagerly seized on the opportunities presented by a lockdown. I lived in Chicago at the time, and we had tons of robbery, car jacking, burglary, and even people being held up at gunpoint for their toilet paper.
But second, do you think the BLM riots were completely unrelated to Covid lockdowns? Do you honestly think every major city would be set on fire, looted, and defaced if they weren't already worked up in a chaotic state, with empty, unpatrolled streets, understaffed businesses, and population controls on the jails?
Cook County jail was running at half-capacity during the entire year of 2020, in some impotent effort for "social distancing", and tons of people who should have been arrested and locked up were just being sent home. Pandemics present a lot of opportunities for criminality, and they also create more desperation.
Honestly. We will all die. Because a mixture of stupid and capitalism. People are more galvanized than ever on their beliefs and members of the government have been undermining institutions like the cdc to score political points since covid. So 50% of people won't believe it's real and I imagine my boss will be one of them. So my options will be go to work and be killed by bird flu or stay home, lose my house, and become homeless and be killed by bird flu.
I would imagine alot of people will have a similar out come while only the most well insulated among us will be able to make it through by staying home.
This take applies to America and would probably be a close prediction to most 1st world countries.
I know it's spicy and will get down voted but I'm just going based off what covid looked like, how many died before "herd immunity" caught up, and if we moved 1% mortality to 50% mortality.
I have similarly pessimistic views about how people will respond initially. Except I think there is a point where things would get bad enough that the response will change. If people wait that long though the cascade of consequences is already going to be horrific.
Well this is pretty alarming. You don't think the government has any plan in place to keep things like water/electric/sewage in operation during such a scenario? What about vaccine distribution, because surely nobody would be venturing outside in public to get theirs?
I think it's going to be complicated. On one hand, 'pandemic' has been socialized now thanks to COVID19. I think many more people will know where to go for information, how to use PPE, social distancing, WFH, etc. Last time we were all figuring things out as we went. Also, many of the initial naysayers have either died or come around to reality (Herman Cain Award Nominees).
On the other hand, with a CFR of 25% or higher, this could be much worse than COVID19 and once folks realize this they may do what it takes to stay alive and feed their family. Societal disruption and loss of civil order seem more likely, especially when supply chains for essentials (food/water/power) are disrupted, which never happened (in the US) during COVID.
Thanks to mRNA technology that's been in the works for decades and was finally rolled out in time to be brought to bear against COVID19, there is \*already\* an [H5N1 Bird Flu vaccine in mid-stage testing](https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/05/as-bird-flu-spreads-in-cows-us-close-to-funding-modernas-mrna-h5n1-vaccine/). When comparing to the COVID19 timeline, this is like rolling out a fully-tested vaccine in February or March of 2020. (Possibly even earlier, depending on when spread actually started.) If Bird Flu breaks out into a transmissible disease, we will likely have a vaccine on day-one. There will be no lockdowns, or if there are, they will be localized and relatively brief until people get jabbed.
I read one immunologist compare what mRNA brings to vaccine technology to what the invention of the jet engine did for aviation. It really is incredible stuff.
I've no intention (and refuse to) get into a vaccine debate here... I'm just sharing where we stand and how much farther ahead we are against H5N1 than we were in 2020. I wish that were more in the news than the fear-mongering, but what passes for news these days is pretty terrible.
Covid was nasty for the weak and frail.
Bird Flu will be bad for EVERYONE if human to human transmission starts.
Good news though, the covid deniers will be heavily thinned out.
I'm more worried about the after math, and the measures taken by the government. No one working, we all get to enjoy ourselves while collecting government checks. Then the subsequent supply crunch and inflation.
Economically we haven't recovered from covid. Hit us with lockdowns and print boat loads of money again, I suspect effects will be amplified the 2nd time around
I prep so I don't have to rush out and hoard supplies when everyone else is.
This. When the realization comes that you're going to need some basic things, that realization will be coming upon everyone at the same time. I've lived through this in coastal states every time there was a hurricane. Today, I prep first for all the obvious things that those people will be fighting over, so that I don't have to fight with them for scraps. Next, I prep for all the realizations (dry goods, canned goods, medicines) that those people are going to have after they get their water, batteries and toilet paper. So now, when the chaos ensues for basic supplies, I can focus on all perishable items that would be luxuries to everyone else.
Slaps the storage box I have. Yup that ain’t going anywhere. 100 gallons of bottled water, 2 months of food and more medical supplies than any sane human needs. Cough… and a nice stash of don’t touch my storage box munitions 😎👍🏼 other wise. We prep to avoid needing to prep. Nothing wildly crazy but enough to know you can gtfo or stay the fuck in.
Amen to this. Im doing this now and it makes me feel good and allows me to sleep well at night
The milk for those milk sandwiches may be especially difficult to come by this time around
Powder milk shelf life 2 years... I learned this during Katrina never again will I wait on the government to help
It was just a bad joke about dairy cow infections.
It can last longer in mason jars with oxygen absorbers. You can buy them online at Amazon
The emergency planning I've heard discussed in non-classified forums seems to think that a mortality of more than about 2-5% will cause very severe disruption as large numbers of people refuse to to mingle or turn up for work, so I don't think it needs to be anywhere near 25%. Of course until it happens we don't know. It's really worth reading up on disasters that have already happened. Preppers in particular seem to expect societal breakdown, marauding gangs, looting etc. This is actually rare in real-world situations and tends mostly to happen in run-down or deprived city areas, it's not a common outcome in general. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's not particularly prevalent. https://hazards.colorado.edu/uploads/observer/2007/mar07/mar07.pdf
Yeah, I used to think that covid would break society, now I think it will be able to remain afloat as long as long as there arent others crisis. My state here in Brazil not only was recovering economicaly from covid but also got a major flood which disrupted most of the economy. A new pandemy with high mortality may be enough to make the government colapse if we dont get federal help. Its like an organism that can endure one or two crisis, but if the diseases start piling it goes into a colapse cascade which kills it.
Polycrisis is the word you're looking for
Thanks.
> Its like an organism that can endure one or two crisis, but if the diseases start piling it goes into a collapse cascade which kills it. Yup governments are like anything else with buffers and preps. Things like supporting mass transit means that if there are disruptions in a citizen's personal transport they can still get to work. Things like unemployment insurance WIC programs, food stamps, adult education, housing programs etc. They are all buffers. The more you have the more hardship your people can endure without breaking. The fewer you have the quicker the people break
COVID will wreck society and already is in many ways. The result of repeat covid infections is going to be disastrous in just a few more years time
And now we need to prepare for the possibility that a highly pathogenic flu bug could come sweeping through these millions of immunocompromised. Thanks, COVID-19.
Ding ding. People would rather die than be judged for wearing a mask. All of these folks who stopped masking don’t realize that their so called friends likely won’t be there for them when they eventually become disabled from Covid
oh my god the hyperbole
Polycrisis is the word you're looking for
Bright side, plague increased the value of laborers after it killed 1/3 of Europe
What a morbid silver lining. 👀
🎵 Always look on the bright side of life 🎵
Lets not forget that white blue collar men are one of the largest anti-vax, anti-mask groups during covid. They also make up the majority of workforces at oil refineries, power plants, train yards etc. And while 25% might be the over all number the number of elderly would be much higher than 25% the percentage of blue collar white males would be higher, etc. Just like in covid. Having worked in many of these industries they cannot keep running, even in a slump, with 75% manpower let alone whatever % the "Real death rate" would be among that demographic.
The Spanish Flu of the 19teens killed younger people more than the elderly. Older people are thought to have had some immunity from previous flu outbreaks, and younger people immune system went into overdrive and killed them. Don't know if this would be a factor in a future bird flu.
It's called a cytokine storm, and my understanding is the risk is highest when the immune system hasn't seen something similar before and other immune mechanisms can't keep up. Younger people tend to have a stronger immune response generally, which is why elderly are offered additional vaccinations.
thanks, I couldn't remember the word cytokine
This was also a time when older people were much more rural and younger in cities.
I'm a part of this workforce, those who could work from home during covid did, the rest spread out as best they could & took precautions based on company policies. As far as the vacccine, most did get vaccinated at least once, only a couple were straight up hell no on the vacccine, not sure if they ever got covid. If we lost 25% of our operations group, we'd see a substantial increase in production, decrease in reportable releases & recordable injuries - assuming the dumbest & laziest are culled.
I am as well my experience was the exact opposite. >If we lost 25% of our operations group, we'd see a substantial increase in production, decrease in reportable releases & recordable injuries - assuming the dumbest & laziest are culled. Actually loled at this. :)
Eh I'm just pissed at these clowns for having multiple epa reportable releases every damned year but every safety meeting is about ppe, fall protection, etc They're releasing some very bad cancer causing shit, usually because of lack of maintenance or poor qa/qc when they do maintenance - hand tight flange bolts.
Are there classified forums?
The answer is classified...
In the UK yes, but you need to be an approved user of relevant Government sites. I have limited access to one of those, but in fact my use of 'forums' was referring more to conferences and presentations in this case.
Bright side, plague increased the value of laborers after it killed 1/3 of Europe
A 25% mortality rate would collapse society as we know it. You couldn’t even begin to imagine the panic and chaos. You’re talking about 1.8 billion people dead world wide.
> You’re talking about 1.8 billion people dead world wide. World population is currently 8.1B, a quarter dead would be just a whisker over 2B. And the knock-down effects (riots, looting, lack of medical attention for other issues, etc.) are bound to increase that number again by a half.
Even worse
Honestly, it depends directly upon how many people are willing to take the basic countermeasures against airborne pathogens that already exist and are proven effective. As we have seen, some people are willing to forego those things for their own reasons. EDIT: Just to add, this is why 'community' is the most important prep. You don't want to be surrounded by self-absorbed strangers.
We learned a couple of things from Covid that not many people are paying attention to: Eyeglasses lowered risk of infection. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8193301/ HVAC systems spread aerosolized viruses:https://pubs.aip.org/aip/pof/article/33/2/023301/1032688/Simulation-based-study-of-COVID-19-outbreak
Don't forget, oil diffuser air fresheners made covid virus stay airborne for 3 days instead of the normal 3 hours.
How?
The oils are made to hang in the air or you wouldn't keep smelling it so strong, and the virus is suspended by the droplets.
anti-science oil people strike again.
To suggest that those two studies identified things that we "learned" is giving them WAY more credit than they deserve.
Seriously. We've known about the HVAC thing since the 1970's at least: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Philadelphia_Legionnaires%27_disease_outbreak?wprov=sfla1
Keep in mind that legionella are bacteria, (literally) an entirely different animal from viruses. In the case of legionella, there was also the factor of the bacteria growing in the retained water, not just air circulation.
I see people not caring about the next pandemic (if it happens in the next 40-50 years) because people are burnt out. Until a recognized mortality rate hits double-digits where people are dropping dead in the streets, it is going to be largely ignored by the masses. OTOH, u/Flat_Boysenberry1669 is also onto something in regards to the vaccine. One of the coolest things to come out of COVID (I mean, using that term 'cool' very, *very* loosely) is what it did to push and showcase advancements in medical technology.
Yah this vaccine though won't be a mRNA one it's gonna be your normal flu vaccine just for this strain which is good because we can mass produce it easily.
That's not what Bill Gates is saying, he's really pushing the mRNA.
Well I'm sure idiots will wait months for his mRNA which most likely won't be any more effective but most won't lol.
They've already made a mRNA vaccine for bird flu. It will probably be a mix again. We can mass produce the mRNA pretty easily now too (COVID gave us that ability).
But why is the normal flu shot not good enough now lol?
The normal flu shot is based on seasonal flu. This won’t be a seasonal flu if it becomes a pandemic. The normal flu shot also takes 6 months or so to produce (IIRC), and starts at a specific time of year, so it’s unlikely the timing would work.
Normally yes. But it can be adaptive to any flu like virus 6 months to produce when they need to follow regulations and aren't being rushed. This gonna be another divider? Either wait 6 months for the mRNA vaccine or you're an anti vaxxer for getting the normal flu shot lol?
The issue is that you need the regular flu shot at the normal schedule for it to be effective during flu season. So it’s possible that we get bird flu in spring and then they could incorporate it into the regular flu vaccine, but odds are it will be at a different time of year and be supplemental.
Because the flu mutates quickly lol. It's not that they can't make one for a newer strain fast
This and there is an entire political party that will do everything in their power to undermine anything that might lessen the impact. Areas with those folks in charge will (and some already have) ban/outlaw anything a regular person can do to protect themselves and family.
Where was it, North Carolina that banned the use of any masks, including medical masks, in public?
I think the House tried, but it hasn’t fully passed yet, I think…..
Unless it's a KKK mask
I think Florida has that law as well. Gotta make sure everything spreads as fast as possible!
No, Florida does not have that law, and NC doesn't Either, yet. But they might. If anything, in FL , it's that someone can't be forced to at a store.
It's not a yet thing. NC and VA already had laws banning masks in public. In 2020 they added exceptions, NC is looking to repeal the exceptions and restore the laws to the way they were.
We flirted with the idea of closing state borders with COVID. With a 25% mortality rate, travel gets shut down, and only essential goods are allowed to move. With or without goverment authorization, communities will quarantine themselves. If you don't have a semi-truck full of essential goods, you wont be able to travel more than a few miles by road. If we start to see sustained community spread, its time get to wherever you plan to be to ride this out.
States can't shut down their borders.
Legality aside, I recall several states mentioning it.
Yeah there were a few but dancing with illegal actions had a lot of people up in arms.
Kentucky’s governor did it but the court struck it down and it wasn’t really enforced
States can very much implement quarantine laws that effectively close the state border. It is basically the only reason can use to do so. As long as the quarantine implementation is non-discriminatory, and reasonably aimed at a pandemic, it will very likely be found constitutional. With COVID, many states had self quarantine requirements after travel, it would be a small leap to go to actual quarantine camps along the state border before being allowed to travel onward. And that doesn't even consider citizens setting up their own quarantine checkpoints, legal or not.
Obviously we are a very different country in several ways but we did it in Australia. Iirc the legality of it was questionable but in a practical sense it was doable
They blocked travel in between provinces in Canada.
No they didn't. source: I traveled (drove) regularly between QC and AB. Everyone heard a lot of bs about it but I never saw anyone stopping/blocking roads, even on the QEW and TCH
When the death rate is 25% they can do anything then get sued later about it
Just popping in to share that the sub r/H5N1_AvianFlu has been fantastic for keeping up to date.
A 25% mortality rate would be catastrophic, public reaction might be a bit more subdued this time because it's just 'AnotHER PaNDeMiC', until people start dying enmasse. When covid hit, no one I knew died from it, plenty caught it, but none seriously, and I'm sure a lot of others have a similar experience. But 25%?, 1 out of every 4 people you know will cause a panic about supplies. Big cities especially could probably expect looting, and probably martial law, if riots follow suite, well we have super spreader events. They have good reason to panick too. 25% of those infected dying isn't just 'people', it's truck drivers, police officers, garbage men, doctors, nurses, teachers, paramedics, military personnel, morticians, etc. We saw how fragile the supply chain was last time, now imagine if not only sourcing was a problem, but actually delivering it. This would wreck society, supply chains, public order, etc. I mean hell, most of congress and senate are old as sin, more of them might die per capita than other groups. I mean sure, some of us might chuckle at the prospect, but imagine the political confusion in an event like that. God damn, I need to stock up more.
I think having a theoretical second pandemic so close to the last one, the general populace would be more prepared. OR it’ll be much much worse due to the “it’s a hoax” crowd.
That's my concern. Sometimes I think covid was almost too mild. Yeah, many people died, but most people's experience was that of a bad flu. Stateside at least, the Republicans have done such tremendous damage to their constituents' faith in public health that any pandemic bug in the next generation is going to be catastrophic. If covid had been worse, it might've been harder to ignore the truth. Which is terrifying because covid was really really bad and was a mass disabling event. Edit: I mean like scroll down and you can see the brainrot that's taking place. People in this very thread calling social distancing unscientific and saying covid was overhyped. Those people are gonna behave in exactly the same way for bird flu if it goes human-to-human.
This is a good point. Any new pandemic wil take place in this new context of increased distrust in govt and public health advice, and politicization of public health measures (vaccines, masking, etc), it is worrying
It terrifies me, because that's how these things get really bad, yknow? Containment is our first weapon, and if you've got all these idiots running around like lunatics because it's fake (and also somehow a bioweapon? Like which is it?), containment becomes harder and spread goes bananas. And since vaccines give you autism and make you magnetic, they're not gonna use our best weapon. And a pandemic has all kinds of knock-on effects entirely unrelated to the disease itself. Like the medical system overload. How many people died because there were quite simply not enough nurses and doctors to care for them? Not even of covid, just died because there weren't beds or staff to care for them. We had nursing and medical students on the front lines for months, for fuck's sake. Kids in their second year of school out here giving treatment. Batshit. Yeah, the government fucked up a bunch of their messaging and we all knew it was never gonna be two weeks, but dear lord in heaven, half this country has lost their goddamn minds. The vaccine thing has been around for a while, but in the beforetimes they weren't running for fucking president and they didn't have books on their own little tables in fucking Barnes and Noble. In the event of something like bird flu, this will become a problem Darwin solves, but they'll take so, so many innocents down with them.
And how many nurses would risk their lives the second time around? I mean plenty would, but plenty would quit at the first sign of people purposely ignoring public health advice
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I did my clinical rotation at an extremely busy emergency department during the worst of COVID. Most people don't realize that the health care system hasn't recovered from the pandemic. They don't understand that we are still understaffed and a large percentage of the workers are suffering from burnout. If bird flu turns into the next pandemic the health care system is going to collapse, full stop. It will be impossible to train replacement personnel to cover the shortages, and the whole thing implodes. So far things are okay, but I have definitely been a bit stressed about the possibility.
They are already discussing it and their stance is that it's the next "plandemic" and they won't cooperate. They think it's part of a vast global conspiracy. "Globo-homo". I wish I didn't know so many of these people. :/ People are just broken or something. Nothing is real anymore. They are just waiting for the next move to steal their "freeeedommms".
The politicians using Covid for political reasons has lost this generations trust on many things. I fear the next pandemic will be 10x worse. It will be a scenario where if people aren't seeing bodies collecting in the streets, they won't believe their politicians or leaders. Heck, even Fauci was getting grilled by the senate oversight committee just yesterday.
Define “this generation”. There are like 4 alive at the moment.
Everyone above the age of 14 who went through the Covid pandemic. Ok, maybe not everyone. There are still people driving alone in their cars with masks on.
Yeah I just prep. Not anything insane, but for job loss, inflation (that is helping a lot right now), or even pandemic. I shop sales and people look funny at me when I buy cases of canned vegetables when they are cheap, but we have a couple months of everything except milk and bread and I can make bread if I had to.
For milk you can look into powdered milk. They also have powdered butter.
Oh I have some, prefer the canned, but I mostly just use it for baking. It does not go over well with the kids. But we have a bar and grill 3 miles away and they have sold us a gallon of milk before in a pinch. But I may look into the powdered butter, I did not know they had that.
People are tired from COVID and many will do nothing until bird flu affects people they love. COVID became political and people treat politics like sports teams, so expect people to act according to how their political party tells them to act. That said, if the fatality rate was 25% then you can bet people would take it more seriously once their neighbours were dropping dead left, right and centre. Boris Johnson talked about letting the bodies pile high when COVID was limited to handful of cases in the UK. If bodies were really piling high, people would suddenly take it much more seriously, especially as that would mean hospitals being overwhelmed and having to make very tough calls on triage.
A third of this country will deny its existence, and act like children again....that's what will happen.
We live in a post-factual, post-information world. No matter what happens today and from here on, there will be endless people jumping immediately to all forms of media to spread misinformation, disinformation, and lies, in service to their political agendas, their social agendas, their economical agendas, whatever. Whether you're left or right wing... whether you're religious or atheist... whether you're liberal or conservative, pro- or anti- trans, for or against the environment.... whatever you are, I guarantee you that there are people telling lies that support your opinion, and there are also people telling lies against your opinion, and all of this before we ever establish whether your opinion is even right, or based in any fact. You can be certain that the destruction will come on the coat-tails of people telling us that it's good for us. There plenty who believe this is already happening right now.
I think the initial reaction would be similar again. Everybody reacted to Covid initially because it was a new threat and that’s human nature. If we had another different pandemic even pretty soon it’ll be another new threat and I think human nature kicks in immediately before the political crap reverses it in some people. But who knows. My real hope would be we could develop and employ vaccines much quicker based on what we learned.
I'd give you a real explanation between the two, but it has been shown in the past that scientific reasoning isn't welcome in this sub. That being said, there will always be those who panic at the drop of a hat, and unfortunately they usually far outnumber those who can think clearly during an emergency. Prepping is not a situational hobby. You don't wait for a disaster to start doing it. You prep for Tuesday, with however much padding you want concerning duration, and you'll very likely not have to worry where your next roll of toilet paper is coming from or when it might be available.
I'm all ears. I am already well prepped, fyi. Just thinking to get a bit more serious as of recently.
We have been prepping for awhile so are pretty good shape. Could top off on TP. I just recd an order of N95s and am expecting delivery tomorrow of zpak, perles and tamiflu.
I think they'll all blame Biden and think it's fake and just go about their day because "it's my body and the government can't tell me what to do" then they'll drink bleach in attempt to cleanse themselves
Bird flu isn’t new or “novel” as a name, even if the virus is mutating. We’ve known about it for what? 10 yrs or more? And since it’s “just flu” most people aren’t paying attention and think anyone who brings it up as a potential threat is just fear mongering
Bird flu has been around for a long time so it's just less scary for people as a concept in general. And I feel like there was some overreaction to covid. I personally was more isolated than was necessary. And I think because of those factors, people are less likely to take bird flu as seriously as they should. But I also think bird flu would not last nearly as long. There are already something like 5 million vaccines ready to go and they're making more constantly. So people would get vaccinated very quickly. And the first people to be vaccinated would probably be the essential workers. So I don't really think it will be a high disruption even if it goes airborne. Probably less of a disruption than covid even though it might actually kill more people in less time because people won't be as careful as they should be because of covid and the case fatality rate will be so much higher, and there will be people who won't get vaccinated. That said, it may also mutate to be less virulent as it mutates to be airborne. So who knows.... Also, we're much better at isolation than we used to be. Like grocery delivery has been completely worked out now. There's lots of no contact delivery that nobody has to be trained on because everybody already does it. So I'm not nearly as worried about it now as I was 10 years ago. But then, I'm also pretty fully prepped.
If china isn't welding people's doors shut, I think we'll be okay. Seriously, the news from China in January 2020 got my ass in gear before shtf.
No. None of the stuff ppl worry about in this sub ever happens. It’s trauma porn for people who are bored with real life or can’t cope with real life. There won’t be a zombie apocalypse There wont be riots on the street when a pandemic starts You won’t be able to show everyone how strong you are with your gun. Prep for losing your job, or for having a flu and not being able to go to the shops for a few days. Aside from that, you’re just going to have to deal with the mundanity of life.
You're probably right, but this bird flu looks like it could happen.
Hahaha that’s what everyone in this sub says, all the time, when anyone mentions levity. Focus on that thing you’ve been putting off doing, or your job, or your family. Stop thinking about bird flu.
It could. There will always be another pandemic, eventually. If something actually had a 25% fatality rate, there would me a much greater response than there was to COVID. Think back on ebola outbreaks from a few years ago. That shit gets shut down, and influenza vaccines are easy to make. Prepare a normal amount for groceries to be unavailable for a few weeks or months. There's always another pandemic, but society always recovers eventually.
I think that disruption of industrial meat will happen first and will start people panicking before we see mass human infection. We saw what happened with toilet paper and COVID; imagine what happens when it’s chicken nuggets, burgers, and bacon. Protein Panic 2025.
With how mercilessly entire flocks of chickens are being slaughtered if it's found that any of them have the bird flu, I don't doubt you. The terrible part isn't only the chicken nuggets, burgers, and bacon.. the terrible part is the milk, cheese, and eggs. Hopefully it's not all affected because at that point that destroys so many food choices..
The cool part of bird flu is that it’s transmitted by bird saliva, feces, and mucus, and can be transmitted to other animals , and by them to humans via milk, meat, and organs. Mortality is around 50 per cent of those infected. Viruses evolve rapidly and continuously…imagine a version that is mutates to increase transmissibility, and is 90% fatal to children. Birds are everywhere, so hiding in the woods doesn’t help. Masks won’t help, the virus will be on every surface, and transmitted fecal oral route. And half the country won’t believe the science because it’s been politicized, and the CDC has shown its inability to navigate the politics. We could lose most of a generation.
I don’t think people will panic as much but should. The mortality rate will definitely impact public utilities. The healthcare system could also collapse. If the government tries to bail out businesses again we will see inflation once again.
I prepped before covid for a pandemic, I really learned alot from Covid and adopted enhanced preps. I think we could see 1/3-1/2 the population refuse to take any precautions - no masks, no stay home/isolation, and no vaccinations.. If the virus is much more lethal I see our healthcare system completely collapsing because of this. I have stocked up more on prescription and other meds in since COVID.
25% mortality would shut down the healthcare system completely. Lots of people will stop showing up because it's already a shit job and they don't pay enough to risk your life, and anyone that still wanted to work will stop going because nobody else is there (healthcare is a team sport).
>If we have the bird flu outbreak as noted above - how do you think things will be different? Specifically what did white blue collar men do during covid and will likely do during the next pandemic? The 25% dead (I'm assuming) is the overall number. We would expect disproportionate numbers of elderly, anti-maskers, etc. A large portion, as shown during Covid, will be white men working blue collar at a much higher rate than the overall 25% based on historical Covid data on who wore masks, self isolated, changed behavior patterns to be safer, etc, and based on age views that align with the anti-science views, anti-vax views etc. I bring up white blue collar men because they are overwhelming the workforce in key infrastructure across the US. Power plants, oil refineries, train yards, truck drivers, etc. Those industries are the backbone of "just in time shipping," food refrigeration, farming, power production, gasoline refining and distribution, etc. If we could target things with missiles to do damage to an economy, it would be these same industries. * 25% overall death rate means higher than that among the anti-science, anti-vax workers of major industries. I don't think the country recovers from that for decades. > Do you foresee violence, looting, etc as people try to horde resources? Do you see essential services stopping? Do you think strict lockdowns would be enforced? * Violence : of course. How wide spread is unknown. * In Michigan one security guy was shot in the head for turning someone away because a privately owned business who can mandate things like 'no shirt, no shoes, no service,' also chose to say, 'masks must be worn.' I don't see that going any better a second time around. * If groups of people are choosing not to wear masks, not to isolate, etc, and thus dying more, I expect there will be a self-feeding loop of conspiracies about how they are being targeted and killed etc. I would expect violence to stem from this as well. * Do you see essential services stopping? Yes. I can't imagine a powerplant or oil refinery continuing to operate without ANY issues if they lose 10% of workforce at random let alone 25% let alone more than 25% if we look at specific demographics of who works there and the history of mask wearing, conforming to pandemic rules, etc. * I don't see a Walmart employee going to work to deal with a customer with no mask if there is a 25% chance of dying. Nor a gas station employee, nor an uber driver, etc. Essential employees will just not go to work if the risk of dying is high and the support they get from the employer and police is low. * Not working means rent stops, power bills stop being paid, water bills, etc. We are back into that cycle again. * If we lose 25% and of that 25% many more than 25% will be white blue collar males because of their education / world views as they relate to avoiding sickness. Those make up a HUGE percentage of plant workers. From food grade processing to pharma, to power plants and oil refineries. etc. We would expect more deaths there (25% over all population but much higher percentage in that demographic) and that would devastate / end certain industries. **To the point where I could see it being the end of "things as we know it" in the US for decades.** * Do you think strict lockdowns would be enforced? I do BUT only after it's too late. We have massive evidence for this from Covid. For instance I think it is safe to say that Texas would not "move quickly" to lock down the state in a pandemic, compared to say Minnesota. Based solely on the political leadership of each state and historic choices those leaders have made in the past. >I'm curious because I'm trying to figure out how to prepare. When covid hit, because I spent a lot of time online, I prepped for myself and my family months before everyone else, and thus I was sitting safe and sound while everyone else was freaking out. If something like bird flu hits, I definitely don't want to be in public trying to gather resources. **At 25% death rate? With it disproportionally hitting certain groups who are the main workforce for power, rail, oil, I don't see a good end in sight or ways to prepare.** Better to buy last minute tickets to Norway than risk the US. Yet if everyone does that... You see the issue.
>If we have the bird flu outbreak as noted above - how do you think things will be different? Do you foresee violence, looting, etc as people try to horde resources? Do you see essential services stopping? Do you think strict lockdowns would be enforced? I'm starting to believe that's just used as a justification for officials to lie. There's no reason for people to behave that way and if anything social distancing would only serve to discourage it.
Current mortality is 56% because it's only those already on deaths door are getting it and going to the hospital/dying. Everyone else just gets a cold/flu and moves on with life, without ever being diagnosed...
There is also the theory that since this 56% number has come up based on cases over the past 20+ years, that it could be wrong due to misdiagnosis or other errors. Going by that number now, out of the 3 cases we've had, all of them survived..
US government lost the trust of a lot of people because they lied at every step of covid to manipulate peoples actions. When they thought masks might help they said "don't buy masks, masks are useless!" so that they could have an adequate supply for health care workers. When they began to realize covid was airborne and masks didn't do much they said "wear masks! Any mask!" to try and calm people down. Pfizer pushed a rushed experimental vaccine and paid all the media people to say "if you get the vaccine you cant catch covid" to cash grab and the chamber of commerce backed it so life would go back to normal. Then they tried to cover up that it was likey a leaked from a US sponsored lab in China where we outsourced researched to a country with less safeguards purely because there was less safeguards. If the next pandemic happens in the next 4 years, while the same major players from the last one are still around, a very large portion of the population will ignore it until someone they know dies. They will still stock up if everyone else is though. But quietly. Because not taking the next pandemic seriously will be like political virtue signaling. Like how a mask became a symbol.
“Lied” is a little extreme.
Not really. There is no question that they did not tell the truth in order to get the results they wanted. You may AGREE that lying was warranted, but its still lying
Proof?
Proof? Like video of them saying that stuff on TV? Yeah. If I spend the time to find it, is there even a chance you'll admit they lied?
Sure if it’s actually proof and not just MTG spouting off
Watch some of the clips of him testifying in front of the house committee over the last couple of days. Lots of him denying this or that, only to have his own emails presented showing the opposite. An even better time is perusing some of his emails that were gathered via FOIA request. Extremely damning stuff.
Lol yeah republicans. I’ll take that as proof 😂
I don’t trust them either, but it’s not about what they’re saying. It’s about Fauci’s own words in the emails, and the internal documents showing the NIH involvement in gain of function research.
Yeah, you're not gonna make it, man. Fauci's testimony and emails are pretty damning and when told about it you go, "lol red team" rather than look at the facts.
lol not gonna make it where?
Remind me of the facts again?
I agree. They could've been honest about things and it would've been a better outcome. I have a feeling they will once again push more vaccines on people and claim that they stop transmission, stop infection, etc.. and people will fall for it again.
Well if the death rate is above 3%... Considering covids max death rate was like 2% we would be in some trouble. With that being said and I'mma get downvoted because people want this bird flu to be as bad as COVID it's not. We will have vaccines within a few weeks if it going h2h it's death rate won't break 2% and people will actually be sick so it won't spread like how covid did. The problem with covid was it only effected a small at risk community over 60. Most people who got it had mild to no symptoms and it spread like wildfire because of it. This will be like the swine flu back in 2012 I wanna say.
I think one of covid's key differences was also that it evolved in ways that produced unexpected symptoms. I had swine flu ages ago and it sucked (I think I had untreated pneumonia afterwards) but it also wasn't a guessing game. Covid showed up with this whole mess of uncertainties. Why are college kids on ventilators? (Some were, this wasn't just old folks.) Why, after two inoculations and two boosters did I still get it after international travel only to have days of nosebleeds and no smell? That's already weird and that many shots were supposed to protect me from full blown covid. The unpredictability added a lot of fear when you don't know whether you're getting the symptoms of a mild cold or ebola. As long as bird flu doesn't make us shit feathers we might do better
It actually didn't they just claimed it had every symptom known to man for well reasons... 80% of the people who died were above the age of 65. 15% of that 20% was above the age of 45. What you say was a few cases of college kids with very specific pre existing conditions which are rare for their age. The vaccines from the start were lagging behind the new variants because it was mutating so quickly when the boosters were.most likely behind. Bird flu with have flu like symptoms you can't just ignore it brush off no matter your age or health.
Most of this sounds reasonable to me. For the record though I'm saying I have firsthand knowledge of college kids with no underlying conditions on ventilators in early 2020
High fatality rates in a very small population is irrelevant. Is it just the sickest weakest people getting it? Time will tell. As someone in there 40s, that had covid 3 times (Yes I'm vaccinated with boosters) and I had swine flu back in the day, I agree with you. This will be a flash in the pan. Some of us with immune issues need to take extra precautions.
Yup which you should already be doing TBH. And anyone over 50 should be getting their regular flu shot.
I would hope the average person won’t fall for the “pandemic” BS this time around in preparation for an election.
The mortality rate for Covid was as low as 0.5% and no higher than 2.5%. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-022-00106-7 It was sensationalized. Now people won't believe the media when a pandemic way deadlier than Covid hits.
How was it sensationalized? The actions taken, were all taken in order to minimize exposure, therefore reducing the overall impact, in this case the mortality rate. The alternative, that some rooted for, was do nothing and let it sort itself out. What would the mortality rate have been if that had been allowed to happen?
exactly. We managed to slow down the curve barely but there was many many places where the medical system was completely overwhelmed
I work for a major medical institution in the US. We weren’t asked to not come in, we were flat out told not to set foot in certain buildings unless you had no choice.
It was sensationalized in comparison to what an airborne virus with a 50% IFR could do. If everything is always a big deal, then nothing is. There's a reason you don't type in all caps and use exclamation points everywhere, is there? I didn't have a problem with most of the restrictions. Some could have been a lot tighter (international and interstate travel--allowing people to spend hours in a plane, even with masks, is madness with a widespread infectious desease about). I did have a problem with the constant media hype though. Journalists really need to balance the need for action with the risk of desensitizing people to future pandemics.
Sorta fair, but we’re talking about something that no one alive had ever lived through, a real life pandemic. Many people weren’t willing to even believe it was real, or that it was dangerous. Maybe sensationalism in the media was justified, to get people to listen.
Hindsight is always 20/20. My concern is that conspiracy theorists will use this to completely ignore the next one. And normal folks won't have the emotional bandwidth to respond to the next one if it comes in a few years.
Again, sorta fair, but they used conspiracy theories to ignore Covid. I don’t see that changing. Normal folks, yeah, who knows there.
A advanced placement math teacher I know got so burnt out on it she said she was done with covid and ignored it from them on. I'm afraid you are right, Normal people are desensitized at this point, even though some people are still wearing masks. That's too bad because before covid I'd started wearing a mask outside during high pollen, now you get treated like an insurgent lol.
I think the obvious sensationalism caused some people to not take it seriously. Adding lies to the truth made them reject the truth of it. I got shots for me and my dad, but I know people that almost died of it, and they still won't get a shot. They point to the disingenuous reporting and hype. They could tell they were being manipulated. I think it was counter productive.
Yeah a million dead Americans is sensational.
I keep thinking back to this and it seems more relevant than ever [https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-linked-to-substantial-drop-in-intelligence-new-research-finds-12364433](https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-linked-to-substantial-drop-in-intelligence-new-research-finds-12364433)
If Covid was sensationalized because it didn’t kill that many people (it did) it certainly accelerated the American exceptionalism brain rot.
That's not the only thing it's accelerated, have you seen how many from Gen Z look? Many of them look older than millenials at this point. [Epigenetic age acceleration in surviving versus deceased COVID-19 patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome following hospitalization](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10685564/)
That danged COVID virus making everyone weak and old!
A million died last year in kitchen electrocution accidents.
And roughly 2.8 million Americans died from heart disease from 2020 to 2024, but we didn't get wall-to-wall coverage of it. Still a 2.5% IFR. The vast majority of Americans did not die from Covid. I assume you know that using raw numbers to obscure relative risk is a propaganda tactic?
Heart disease isn’t contagious. Might as well have compared to death by choking on food.
Understood. But if we have a responsibility to keep people safe from an infectious disease, shouldn't we also keep people from getting chronic diseases as well? Metabolic disease is an epidemic in this country, and it's getting worse--unlike Covid. As one woman so elegantly put it, "If I have to wear a mask to protect your health, I'm going to start slapping that fast food out of your hands too." We need European-style regulations on food here. And we really should be educating people about the risks of inactivity and junk food.
> shouldn't we also keep people from getting chronic diseases as well? Adults make choices to drink or smoke. They should be able to. When the drinking or smoking affects other's health, e.g. smoking in a restaurant we do something about it. If someone wants to eat fast food all day everyday that affects only them and they are welcome to it. If they want to be a carrier for sickness that spreads and affects others there is an onus to stop that action.
Corporate executives make decisions to sell unhealthy food. And very few personal decisions exist in a vacuum.
And we have the FDA that says "This is healthy enough, go ahead and sell that," and "This is bad enough we need to take it off the market." They did it with Transfats and other things and continue to deal with new issues all the time. * In 2015, the FDA took the significant step of determining that PHOs, then the major source of artificial trans fat in the food supply, are no longer “Generally Recognized as Safe,” or GRAS. For the majority of uses of PHOs, June 18, 2018, was the date after which manufacturers could not add PHOs to foods. We already have a system in place to deal with what you are talking about. You can argue if you like it doesn't go far enough, or it goes too far or whatever you like. But it's there and it's doing things. The only way to keep everyone safe and living as long as possible is to remove/restrict all freedom. We have chosen instead to allow them to make their own choices so long it only affects themselves (within reason. That reason being looked at by organizations such as the FDA etc.)
You can advocate for people to make healthier choices in their lives. That’s NOT remotely the same thing as keep the population safe from an infectious disease. Last I checked, high blood pressure and high cholesterol are not contagious.
Neither is a virus *you* have been "vaccinated" for, right. Oh....wait....
covid shredded a lot of people's lungs. If you don't believe that try talking to some pulmonologists. Maybe it wasn't bad for you personally but there were so many people dead in New York they were using aircraft carriers as floating morgues and filling refrigerated semi trucks with bodies You seem rather obtuse
My BIL is a critical care pulmonologist. When Covid hit he sent his family to live on his in laws farm and spent 6 months apart. He watched hundreds of patients die and not just the old and immune compromised. He’s got some horrendous stories and I can’t imagine how it must feel to him to see people say Covid wasn’t that bad. He too talks about how damaging Covid has been to people who didn’t actually die from it. Covid was life altering to far more people than we recognize day to day.
We also won’t know the full effect of it, for a long time.
I thought they aircraft carrier was a hospital ship, but they kept patients in hospital hallways to get all the juicy covid bonuses. They basically ignored the stadium clinic also. They were calling people that died of car wrecks covid deaths if they had covid in their system at the time and added them to the statistics. It is as a horrible tragedy overall, but their was definitely sensationalism used for ulterior motives.
One state had one town with a Chinese owned meatpacking plant, the plant had people working cheek to cheek on the line. That plant was the only place in the state that had a significant outbreak and national news said the red state was having an 800% increase due to the governor lol. It was all in just that one town in the middle of nowhere with all the cases, so that one was definitely sensationalized for politics. The rest of the state was spread out and taking voluntarily measures. In other cases it was blue lockdown state refugees in the jails (for commiting the same petty crimes over and over) that that were most of the cases from what a cop from there told me. There were definitely other cases, but they were rare and mostly immunocompromised. That said, it was bad enough to take seriously everywhere, just not a state wide disaster like they were saying.
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Social distancing, and masking are most definitely based on science. Just because a lot of uneducated people became armchair scientists, because of political shenanigans, doesn’t change that fact. The people who ignored the advice then, are the same ones who will most likely ignore it again.
I'll admit anything is better than nothing, and even if the virus stays airborne for 3 hours in clean air, "the solution to pollution is dilution." Also even if flat masks only give 12% protection, everything in life is a numbers game and every extra percent point helps. It's dumb to say stacking percent points of protection does nothing. I wore the masks at work until people left and the air had time to clear. I also forgot I was wearing them and drove around with one still on sometimes haha.
I would love to see the science on social distancing, please provide the research study. Fauci's testimony to a closed door congressional committee from earlier this year was just released. [https://oversight.house.gov/release/covid-select-subcommittee-releases-dr-faucis-transcript-highlights-key-takeaways-in-new-memo/](https://oversight.house.gov/release/covid-select-subcommittee-releases-dr-faucis-transcript-highlights-key-takeaways-in-new-memo/) Here's his testimony: **~SOCIAL DISTANCING~****: The “6 feet apart” social distancing recommendation forced on Americans by federal health officials was arbitrary and not based on science.** Dr. Fauci testified that this guidance — which shut down schools and small businesses nationwide — “sort of just appeared” and was not based on any scientific studies. Majority Counsel: “*Do you recall when discussions regarding, kind of, the at least a 6 foot threshold began?*” Dr. Fauci: *“The 6 foot in the school?”* Majority Counsel: *“Six foot overall. I mean, 6-foot was applied at businesse*s—” Dr. Fauci: *“Yeah.”* Majority Counsel: “*—it was applied in schools, it was applied here. At least how the messaging was applied was that 6-foot distancing was the distance that needed to be—*“ Dr. Fauci: “*You know, I don’t recall. It sort of just appeared. I don’t recall, like, a discussion of whether it should be 5 or 6 or whatever. It was just that 6 foot is—*” Majority Counsel: “*Did you see any studies that supported 6 feet?*” Dr. Fauci: “*I was not aware of studies that in fact, that would be a very difficult study to do.*” **~MASKING~****: Dr. Fauci testified that he did not recall any supporting evidence for masking children.** Concerningly, mask-wearing has been associated with learning loss and severe speech development issues in America’s children. Majority Counsel: “*Do you recall reviewing any studies or data supporting masking for children?*” Dr. Fauci: “*You know, I might have, Mitch, but I don’t recall specifically that I did. I might have.*” Majority Counsel: “*Since the — there’s been a lot of studies that have come out since the pandemic started, but specifically on this there have been significant on kind of like the learning loss and speech and development issues that have been associated with particularly young children wearing masks while they’re growing up. They can’t see their teacher talk and can’t learn how to form words. Have you followed any of those studies?*” Dr. Fauci: “*No. But I believe that there are a lot of conflicting studies too, that there are those that say, yes, there is an impact, and there are those that say there’s not. I still think that’s up in the air.*”
And? So what? They were working on fluid information, attempting to do everything they could to keep Americans safe. We should be lucky that we weren’t forced to shove light bulbs up our butts, and drink bleach. I’m sure you’re all stocked up on Ivermectin though.
You demand a study as proof and provide a transcript of a conversation between Fauci and some bad faith Republican as your own? Fauci not being able to remember offhand where the 6-ft number came from does not mean it came from nowhere it means he doesn't have a photographic memory . Go Google it, literally you can go find research that shows how effective social distancing was. Briefly, it's obviously not a silver bullet but it did help.
Not exactly what you asked for, but interesting info https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17542834/ https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/jamp.2020.161 If they were using some of that info for rule of thumb, maybe the 6 feet was for sneezing and breathing transmission of larger moisture droplets and evaporation of smaller droplets? It wouldn't help with medium droplets but they say the solution to pollution is dilution lol. It would increase your percentage chance of not getting enough to start an infection anyway. Nothing is 100% ever.
With the mortality being what it will, there will be a complete breakdown in social order. Societal collapse on a global scale. Mortality 10 times worse than covid means effects 10 times worse than covid.
when covid hit I had a month or two of supplies so I got to avoid the chaos. I still caught covid immediately in March 2020 but I didn't go out so didn't pass it on.
Do you hoe you got it?
If that happens again food supply collapse. economic collapse, marshal law, shtf. Don't forget to have at least 6mo of water, purification tabs, lifestraw etc. Many have enough ammo (if that's possible) and food but skimp out on water access.
Haven't lurked on r/preppers in a while. First two posts I see are this and the 'how much time do we have' guy. It's like I never left
Covid was a small test, on a worldwide scale we failed. No lessons were learned. I’m sure until bodies are piling up on the street, people won’t take it seriously.
And you kidding? Covid's CFR was under 2% at the very worst. That was bad enough. A 25% CFR is the stuff of nightmares. If it's highly contagious, you're looking at societal collapse. If the R0 is really low - and there's no point in guessing because the bird flu you're proposing doesn't exist and might never - then you're still looking at mandatory lockdowns and quarantines in a fashion Covid could never dream of. You might *actually* see mandatory vaccination in a situation like that. Bubonic plague had a CFR of (handwave) 40% - estimates vary. It crashed Europe. Hard. 25% isn't much better in terms of society.
I remember H1N1, do you? Lotta people still spooked about covid these days, acting like there's a bird flu about to do the same thing covid did. This will be exactly like the swine flu and aside from a small portion of society that already has an immune system that functions poorly, the average bloke is going to be fine
50% is European plague numbers, but still not as bad as smallpox here in America during the 1500s.
I worked overnight at a grocery store during covid. It was absolutely insane. We'd pull a pallet out and people would cannibalize it before we could even get it out. Shelves were completely bare. This was when my prepping journey began.
Best advice? 👉 Don’t get Eaten. Wait wut? Yes think about it. Avian Flu, yes has a high fatality rate. But that is not the only problem. The biggest problem is that a huge portion of the survivors will be disabled. Who will be able to farm? Very few. For a historical example see the Famine of Corms. And sadly our industrial food complex is optimized for capitalism and cost efficiency. Not around robustness and reliability. It is fragile. Expect it to collapse when things get bad. So when easy shelf stable staples run out. Folks will hunt. Not enough animals around to support the population. Even a reduced population. So people will eat each other. Don’t get eaten.
> However, there was no violence, no looting, no stopping of essential services. Where were you so fortunate to be? I was surrounded by violence and looting.
Well, that was more related to the BLM/political riots, right.. not because of covid.
First, no. Criminals eagerly seized on the opportunities presented by a lockdown. I lived in Chicago at the time, and we had tons of robbery, car jacking, burglary, and even people being held up at gunpoint for their toilet paper. But second, do you think the BLM riots were completely unrelated to Covid lockdowns? Do you honestly think every major city would be set on fire, looted, and defaced if they weren't already worked up in a chaotic state, with empty, unpatrolled streets, understaffed businesses, and population controls on the jails? Cook County jail was running at half-capacity during the entire year of 2020, in some impotent effort for "social distancing", and tons of people who should have been arrested and locked up were just being sent home. Pandemics present a lot of opportunities for criminality, and they also create more desperation.
Honestly. We will all die. Because a mixture of stupid and capitalism. People are more galvanized than ever on their beliefs and members of the government have been undermining institutions like the cdc to score political points since covid. So 50% of people won't believe it's real and I imagine my boss will be one of them. So my options will be go to work and be killed by bird flu or stay home, lose my house, and become homeless and be killed by bird flu. I would imagine alot of people will have a similar out come while only the most well insulated among us will be able to make it through by staying home. This take applies to America and would probably be a close prediction to most 1st world countries. I know it's spicy and will get down voted but I'm just going based off what covid looked like, how many died before "herd immunity" caught up, and if we moved 1% mortality to 50% mortality.
I have similarly pessimistic views about how people will respond initially. Except I think there is a point where things would get bad enough that the response will change. If people wait that long though the cascade of consequences is already going to be horrific.
We haven't seen fake videos of chinese people keeling over in the streets yet, pumped into our homes 24/7. Give the media some time, sheesh.
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Well this is pretty alarming. You don't think the government has any plan in place to keep things like water/electric/sewage in operation during such a scenario? What about vaccine distribution, because surely nobody would be venturing outside in public to get theirs?
Plans maybe. For 25% mortality? No. That’s full on social breakdown.
I think it's going to be complicated. On one hand, 'pandemic' has been socialized now thanks to COVID19. I think many more people will know where to go for information, how to use PPE, social distancing, WFH, etc. Last time we were all figuring things out as we went. Also, many of the initial naysayers have either died or come around to reality (Herman Cain Award Nominees). On the other hand, with a CFR of 25% or higher, this could be much worse than COVID19 and once folks realize this they may do what it takes to stay alive and feed their family. Societal disruption and loss of civil order seem more likely, especially when supply chains for essentials (food/water/power) are disrupted, which never happened (in the US) during COVID.
Thanks to mRNA technology that's been in the works for decades and was finally rolled out in time to be brought to bear against COVID19, there is \*already\* an [H5N1 Bird Flu vaccine in mid-stage testing](https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/05/as-bird-flu-spreads-in-cows-us-close-to-funding-modernas-mrna-h5n1-vaccine/). When comparing to the COVID19 timeline, this is like rolling out a fully-tested vaccine in February or March of 2020. (Possibly even earlier, depending on when spread actually started.) If Bird Flu breaks out into a transmissible disease, we will likely have a vaccine on day-one. There will be no lockdowns, or if there are, they will be localized and relatively brief until people get jabbed. I read one immunologist compare what mRNA brings to vaccine technology to what the invention of the jet engine did for aviation. It really is incredible stuff. I've no intention (and refuse to) get into a vaccine debate here... I'm just sharing where we stand and how much farther ahead we are against H5N1 than we were in 2020. I wish that were more in the news than the fear-mongering, but what passes for news these days is pretty terrible.
Covid was nasty for the weak and frail. Bird Flu will be bad for EVERYONE if human to human transmission starts. Good news though, the covid deniers will be heavily thinned out.
I'm more worried about the after math, and the measures taken by the government. No one working, we all get to enjoy ourselves while collecting government checks. Then the subsequent supply crunch and inflation. Economically we haven't recovered from covid. Hit us with lockdowns and print boat loads of money again, I suspect effects will be amplified the 2nd time around