#251
If you are of a certain age, you will remember the Groucho Marx Show, very popular in the 1950’s, where that master of the one-liner would interview contestants, slyly poke fun at them, and if they uttered the `secret word’ during the course of the conversation, a (hopefully uninfected) duck would descend from the rafters and the lucky guest would win $100. Before each contestant came out, Groucho would let the audience in on the `secret word’. It sounds lame, I know, but it passed for high entertainment 50 years ago.
I guess you had to be there.
Well, today the secret word is YOYO.
In a world filled with acronyms, YOYO stands for You’re On Your Own.
Better commit it to memory, as you will be hearing it often over the coming weeks and months. It is essentially our Federal Government’s pandemic plan, and YOYO is the message that they have given to the States. The States have in turn given the YOYO message to local communities. And well, now the message is slowly filtering out to individual citizens.
Over the past 48 hours, newspapers around the country have been filled with reportage on our state of readiness for an influenza pandemic. This comes on the heels of a national report card issued by a non-partisan group in Washington D.C. called the Trust for America's Health, which rated each state on a 10 point scale. For the most part, the grades were abysmal.
Included in many of these reports is the message, sometimes clearly stated, and sometimes left for the reader to discern between the lines, that individual citizens need to prepare to be on their own if the H5N1 bird flu virus goes pandemic.
A good example comes from New Mexico.
New Mexicans should be prepared to be self-sufficient
By MARK EVANS Associated Press December 16, 2006
ALBUQUERQUE — Unlike damage from a flood, earthquake or other natural disaster, the tentacles of an influenza pandemic probably would stretch across the nation, profoundly taxing resources in scores of cities and communities at once.
In New Mexico, preparations and practice drills for such a crisis, whether from the Asian bird flu or another dangerous strain, have been under way for several months. Yet the effort, including solutions to ethical quandaries involved in responding to a health crisis with limited resources, remains a work in progress, said C. Mack Sewell, the state’s epidemiologist.
Sewell, a key planner in getting the state ready, stresses that New Mexicans should be prepared, if need be, to be self-sufficient — without the expectation of immediate federal help.
States across the country “are all going to be pinched at the same time” in the event of a flu pandemic, he said. “We’re not going to be able of rely on someone else. We’re going to have rely on ourselves.”
That would mean families and neighbors, along with local organizations, school personnel and other volunteers, might need to help out to maintain basic infrastructure in a community, he added.
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/53818.html
Readers of this blog have heard me rant for months about the need for ordinary citizens to step up and help keep things running during a pandemic.
Apparently, New Mexico’s State Epidemiologist agrees.
In order to be `self-sufficient’, citizens need to be prepared to handle their own needs for food, water, and medicine for weeks, and perhaps months. Even if emergency food supplies are made available, there are better uses for ones’ time than standing in line waiting for a bag of rice. There are safer activities, too.
So the word for today, and the foreseeable future, is YOYO.
Knowing that might not be worth $100 on some game show.
But being able to practice it could be priceless.
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