Sunday, April 22, 2007

April 21 Flu Update

An agricultural area of Kuwait has apparently had an outbreak of avian flu.

Six more farms in Bangladesh have bird flu as well.

Sanofi is upping production capacity at is French plant. Within five years they expect they could produce 240 million doses in a year.

ProMed on WHO's avian flu clinical guidance.

1 Comments:

At 10:55 AM, Blogger Wulfgang said...

Orange;

Slow news day I see. However, viruses could care less.

When news is slow like this, it makes me a little nervous Orange. People are entitled to their own interpretations (of course) of what may be transpiring across the world regarding the spread of the avian viruses, but as for me, I continue to slowly accumulate important things I may need, in preparation for the deadly pandemic that may well end up changing our conception of normal life. Will the end of the earth occur – probably not. But will our everyday lives be interrupted and changed dramatically – most probably – yes, in my opinion.

For example, I am one of those individuals that gets excited when they find bargains. I’m a “sales-junkie”, not a tight-wad, but “frugal”. I haunt the low-end Dollar Stores, Walmart, pharmacies and newspaper ads, scouting out sales, looking for the little things one might need if they have to stay-in-place for a long duration of time. I like to think I am even clever at it.

I have also made a command decision to increase my food and other supplies, up from three months, to a full six months worth. I believe it is time to do this. But, I am doing this as do other things - very methodically and carefully, so it all fits conveniently within my budget. I have a system.

I buy things only when they are on sale and seldom purchase things at full retail price.

If readers are unaware, some of the best deals are at the local Walmart, where, when the seasons change, they always tend to offer many items on sale, just to clear out their inventory. Their idea is to make a profit, my idea is to save money. In particular, just a few good examples of sales this week alone:

• canned hams (and other products) from Argentina, for $ 1.50 each, shelf life good for 5 years

• multivitamins in 300 count bottle containers, for $ 5.00 each, shelf life is 2 years.

• Collapsible plastic water containers, for $ 5.00 each, shelf life is as long as the plastic maintains flexibility.

As you are aware, I seldom discuss particular personal preparations in my comments, because the topic can soon descend into an endless list of things. Everybody has their “lists”. The point of my comment today though, is that everyone has adequate time to prepare now. Nearly everyone has the means to slowly do it, without spending a fortune or being wasteful, and they can still easily stay within their normal budget.

Nearly everyone has no valid excuse not to prepare for any emergency, regardless whether you believe a pandemic is eminent or not. There will still be endless snow storms, bad weather which interrupts utilities, earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, terrorist threats, and on and on.

As the old saying goes, “there are no prizes for predicting rain. There are prizes only for building arks”.

Wulfgang

 

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