Chandler, AZ - Well, irdbay uflay, I have my hands full
January 7th, 2009
Aug. 10, 2006 12:00 AM
For no apparent reason, Chandler has suddenly become ground zero for bird flu hysteria.
Bird flu, or for those who prefer the Latin, avian flu, or for those who prefer the pig Latin, irdbay uflay, is that pesky virus transmitted from birds to humans that so-called experts have been squawking about for several years.
Their doomsday predictions about how this virus might mutate and wipe out civilization have so far not come to fruition (or if they have, nobody sent me the memo), yet playing on people's fears of this theoretical Armageddon seems to have become quite popular in our hometown.
Last week, The Chandler Republic featured two articles related to this topic. One dealt with a Chandler consultant who is advising local businesses on what to do in the event of a bird flu pandemic. (My advice is to allow the worker coughing up blood on the fax machine to take the rest of the day off). The other dealt with the production of a BBC film about what would happen to a small town if the bird flu virus ran rampant through its population. Lucky us - we were chosen to play the small town.
So, why Chandler? Are we more prone to this feathery infection than, say, Avondale or Fountain Hills? I read a bunch of articles about bird flu on the Wikipedia Web site and not once was our city mentioned. And since I believe everything that Wikipedia tells me (including the things it whispers inside my head while I'm asleep), I have to conclude this is much ado about nothing.
Or is it? Our city is home to the annual Ostrich Festival, and ostriches are birds. Yes, they are freakishly large, extremely bizarre looking birds, but they are birds nonetheless.
Maybe our city is subconsciously fearful that during next year's festival these enormous birds will suddenly turn on us and begin breathing horrid germs in our faces. I'm more fearful that one would simply come over and beat the snot out of me.
Maybe the BBC film, innovatively titled Pandemic, will shed some light on all of this when it is shown on the Discovery Channel next year.
In the film, Chandler (with some help from little brother Gilbert) plays the fictional town of Fleetwood. Not much is known about the plot of the film, but one aspect seems to be that the National Guard is quarantining the town and not letting anyone in or out. I'm hoping that in a nod to local Valley resident Stevie Nicks, one of the guardsmen stops someone trying to cross the barrier by saying, "Stay out of Fleetwood, Mac!"
In the meantime I'm not going to spend too much time worrying about bird flu. With real local threats like succumbing to scorpion venom, dying of thirst during a drought, and being killed by boredom while watching the Chandler Planning and Zoning Commission on Channel 11, I already have my hands full.
Andrew J. Schwartzberg, a former assistant editor at Mad magazine, lives in Chandler with his wife and two cats. Reach him at ajschwartzberg@yahoo.com.
http://www.azcentral.com/community/chandler/articles/0810cr-schwartzberg0910Z6.html
Fact is, even here in earthquake-prone California, the vast percentage of people make no earthquake preparations whatsover (from interviews after quakes, for example). And the preparations needed to "shelter in place" are _substantially_ greater than what quake preps need to be.
(I was 15 miles from the epicenter, or whatever the surface projection is, of the 1989 Loma Prieta quake. And I felt the 1971 San Fernando quake 100 miles north of it, in Santa Barbara. And my brother's Santa Monica apartment was rendered uninhabitable in the 1994 Northridge quake. So I know about some big quakes. I also lived 50 miles from Mt. St. Helens in 1980. And my sister was in Charleston when the '89 hurricane hit and in New Orlean for Katrina. My family knows disasters.)
"We" can do little about the complete unpreparedness of most people, in terms of helping them to prepare. (They won't listen, they'll just laugh and shrug. But they'll remember who was talking about preparing.)
What we can do is realize their complete unpreparedness, the inability of the modern JIT infrastructure to supply unemployed, no-money, at-home shelter-in-place folks and then plan accordingly.
I don't dismiss these people as Joe Sixpacks...I respect them as potential adversaries. But best not to get into the touchy subject here.
--Boccaccio
We should all attempt to work together to find a solution and prepare for a pandemic by educating people (if possible). The real adversary will be H5N1, not our friends and neighbors who fail to prepare.
Had I spent my scientific career as a virologist or even as a health care bureaucrat, the answer might have been different.
But in the world I find myself in, H5N1 either goes H2H with high mortality or it does not. If it does, I have to focus on maintaining my supplies, on adding to them, and on keeping my thousands of utterly unprepared neighbors from deciding to ask me if they can "borrow" some water or some food.
Saying H5N1 is our adversary, is, bluntly, "magical thinking."
(cf. Google.)
--Boccaccio
My sister lost two houses in New Orleans. I called her on the Saturday and the Sunday prior to the Monday at dawn arrival of Katrina and told her the eye was heading close to NO at a Cat 5 level. She pooh-poohed my urgency and said she wasn't going to be a nut case and be driven out of her home. She got out 5 days later.
The guy quoted in the article who jokes about sending the guy coughing blood over the fax machine home for the day will probably be screaming that FEMA didn't provide enough help when BF goes H2H and spreads.
This is why the "preparedness mindset" is so useful: it immunizes us against the scoffers, the jokesters, the grasshoppers who don't bother to prepare while the ants are storing food for the winter. Sure, it marks us as "survivalists," or "Mormons" (I'm not), but it's one community that won't make a joke out of our stored food or water filter kits.
I've always thought that the only reason 90% of the population has any kind of auto or homeowner's insurance is because it's required. Car insurance by government (or a large bond posted), homeowner's insurance by the mortgage holder (in most cases). Most people think catastrophes happen to other people.
All of the jokes and cheap shots about planning for something that never happened (war with Russia, Y2K, etc.) can be made about the guy who bought fire insurance but then was unlikely enough to not actually have a fire. No doubt the newspaper jokester could turn this into a nice satire of the "Chicken Little" suckers who waste their money on "insurance."
Most people will make no plans whatsoever for bird flu...none. Well, maybe a half-assed purchase of a flashlight, a 4-pack of batteries, a six-pack of bottled water, and three cans of Dinty Moore.
--Boccaccio
more like a six-pack of beer :D
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