#h5n1 prep

[fox-bright]

Watching the H5N1 stuff get worse and worse--I'm hoping we have until late next year before it goes reliably human-human, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was this winter--and not being able to do much makes me anxious, so I've been composing lists of stuff to do. I keep thinking, if this were August, 2019, and I knew covid was coming, what would I prepare? If this one goes off like the scientists think it might, it'll be much worse than covid.

Right now, I'm concentrating on food. My plan is to have enough hunker down supplies by mid-September that if things go bad in the normally-scheduled October-February flu season, we'll be okay simply not leaving the house at all. There are only two of us here now, and if things go bad there may be as many as four (as I have two separate friends I'd push hard to come stay here with us), so I need to make sure we have 4 meals x howevermany days I choose. I'm building up to six months, but I'm beginning the plan at three. While a lot of Serious Prepper lists have pretty generous caloric allowances, the MFH and I eat pretty light, and we're both smaller than the average adult human, which does give us even more squeak room here.

We started out with dry staples--bread flour, AP flour, semolina, rice, beans, pasta, lentils, powdered milk--though I have still to get powdered eggs (I'll dehydrate those myself), more dry beans (I'm going to use up a lot of what we have when I do my canning run for the winter, and so far I haven't been able to get my hands on kidney beans in any decent amounts), quinoa, and one more kind of pasta. Right now we have about 2/3 of what I'd want; we'll be holding things at this level, replacing staples as we use them, and if things look more serious we'll do another big shop and give ourselves additional stock of the AP flour, the bread flour, the rice (which we already buy in 40-50 lb bags anyway, we're Asian), the dry milk.

Then there's the perishable stuff; yesterday, the MFH and I took advantage of some very nice sales and got seventy pounds of meat for two hundred and twelve dollars. Beef brisket for stew, pork butt for sweet molasses chili, ground beef for hotter chili, pork loin for white bean soup. Still have to get chicken (which was pretty much sold out at our bulk place) for chicken soup (to be pressure canned), chicken and mushroom cream soup (to be vacuum-packed and frozen).

Very very soon it'll be time to harvest my leeks and my butternut squashes, for leek and potato soup (either finished with cream, blended to a smooth-ish consistency and frozen, or *not* blended down, and just socked away in pressure-canned Ball jars without the cream added; will it take me longer to thaw it, or to take my immersion blender to the hot individual meals later on?) and canned butternut for baking with or making soup or chili or making pasta sauce.

I might can a bunch of just potatoes, too, to keep 'em shelf stable (plus that front-loads a lot of the work of producing a meal later).

So I need to buy onions and carrots and potatoes and celery and garlic and mushrooms and corn, cream, red wine, tomato paste (because my vines got blight this year, sigh--I've managed to can one single run of tomato sauce and that's IT), ten dozen fresh eggs to dehydrate and powder and store in the fridge in case of egg shortages, several pounds of beans to be thrown into the chilis and...hm...fifteen pounds more, twenty pounds more, to have on hand? And then for non-canning purposes we'll need butter, oil, white vinegar (I've used a lot of it for pickles this year), various Asian food staples like black and rice vinegars, oyster sauce, black mushrooms and so on. As for pre-made, mass-produced foods, I'll probably make another post about them later.

While this is more than I'd generally stock in a single season, I do generally put about 100 quarts of home-canned food by a year, and I never keep less than 75-100lb of flour on hand anyway because of how frequently I make bread. So though it sounds like a lot up front, it's not hoarder level; everything I stock will be eaten, some of it pretty much immediately (the beef stew is so good). And putting it all by now means that we'll be less of a burden on our community safety net, if push comes to shove. When the covid pandemic hit I had dozens of jars of food on the shelf already, which gave me a little peace when things were looking scary. We were able to share some of our stores with people who hadn't had the great privilege of long afternoons spent seeing to the personal stores. That's a better option, to my mind, than needing to panic-shop right as things start getting a little wild.

Basically, if things go bad, we'll have food for a while. And if things don't go bad, we'll have food for a while. It's win-win. And it keeps the floor under my feet when I'm feeling unsteady, to be able to sneak down into the cool, still basement and look at row on row of gently gleaming jars of food security.

[flango87]

Maybe it’s just my feed but the only place I’m seeing anything about h5n1 is twitter. PAY ATTENTION TO IT!!! Prepare NOW! not when everyone starts to hear about it, not when everyone starts to care, not when the CDC finally admits it’s an issue (if they ever do). Prepare right now. While you have the chance. I am talking to everyone in my life about masks and precautions. I was hesitant about it before bc fear of confrontation but I’m cracking down now. I am going to stock up on essentials. My list right now is non-perishable foods, masks, bottled water, first aid kits, basic medications, and other essentials I can think of. I am going to be incredibly diligent about hygiene and selective about where I go in public. This is not me trying to fear monger. I would rather be paranoid and alive than dismissive and dead. This has high potential to be so so so serious. Please treat it as such.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

Won't someone think of the egg prices!

By John Lindt

KERN COUNTY – The price of eggs is often used as a barometer for the economy, but this fall’s high prices are not the work of market factors, but rather migratory flights.

Avian flu is spreading along the path of birds’ southern migration for winter across California. As of Nov. 12, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that a large egg ranch in Kern County has been impacted by bird flu resulting in the destruction of 2.15 million egg layers. This is the first case of HPAI in Kern County during the 2022-24 bird flu outbreak as it spread south heading into winter. Kern County is home to some of the state’s largest egg ranch operations.

The same day USDA also announced that avian flu hit two Fresno County poultry ranches, one a broiler ranch resulting in the killing of 237,700 chickens being prepped for meat and a turkey ranch requiring the destruction of 34,800 toms, or male turkeys. The news follows recent reports about avian flu spreading to Kings County poultry ranches resulting in the loss of over half a million birds and at another Fresno ranch. On Nov. 14, USDA added three more poultry ranches to the list of affected including one in Merced County, a turkey ranch with the loss of 53,200 birds and another one in Fresno County.

The locations of the poultry ranches are not far from the Pacific flyway, a major migratory route in the Western United States. In the case of Kern County, the egg ranch was close to the Kern Wildlife Refuge as well as nearby dairies. This is worrying observers that there appears to be a connection between all three vectors for the rapidly mutating virus.

Northern California poultry operations have been hard hit as well. Nationwide, outbreaks have claimed more than 21 million hens, so far in 2024.

Egg Prices In California the impact on egg prices has been significant.

On Nov. 13, the USDA reported that a dozen large, white cage-free eggs cost about $5.26 per dozen in California. This is according to USDA market data for the week of Nov. 8. USDA says this is a “benchmark” price. The price is up from $2.81 a month earlier. That is almost double the benchmark, but may not reflect retail.

The last time California eggs were this high was in February when California egg prices – cage-free egg prices – peaked at $5.59 per dozen.

The cases of infected birds correspond with fall bird migrations that are spreading the virus throughout the state. Detections are higher in fall and spring as wild birds spread the virus when they migrate. This year the bird flu has taken its toll with the outbreak of H5N1, a highly transmissible and fatal strain of avian influenza, or bird flu. The outbreak started in early 2022 and rapidly grew into the largest bird flu outbreak in U.S. history.

Most recently, outbreaks affecting more than 2.84 million egg layers were reported in October at commercial facilities in Oregon, Washington and Utah, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

As of Nov. 8, the virus has affected over 105.2 million birds in the U.S. since January 2022, according to the CDC. The California egg shortage will likely have a pocketbook impact on holiday baking activity as the nation prepares for Thanksgiving; however, a recent USDA analysis suggests consumers may not see a huge jump.

“Large volume grocery retailers across the nation have launched their shell egg feature campaigns targeting holiday demand at relatively attractive price levels. Much of this is attributable to changes in the way shell eggs are being marketed with an increasing share (estimated at over half of all shell egg volume sold at retail) tied to production cost agreements not prone to fluctuation common in formula trading.”

There are about 378.5 million egg-laying chickens in the US. As of last year, there were 9.4 billion broiler chickens and 218 million turkeys processed, according to the USDA. Advocates note the high cost of the influenza just in the egg market. “With domestic sales of shell eggs and products amounting to seven billion dozen, consumers paid an incremental $15 billion as a result of the prolonged and uncontrolled infection.”

While bird flu is impacting poultry farms, another strain of the virus has impacted Central Valley dairies as well, spreading quickly since September to 291 dairy farms as of press time. Unlike poultry, dairy cows typically survive the virus, although milk production is expected to be impacted.

Avian flu is a worldwide phenomenon. In the past two weeks, the first cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) of the fall season have been reported in Albania, Great Britain, Romania, and now regions of Germany and Ukraine.

Despite the increase in US egg prices this holiday season, turkey prices are down from last year when supply was also affected by bird flu. Across the country, a 15-pound turkey costs an average of $31.16 ($2.08 per pound) in 2024, compared with $35.40 ($2.36 per pound) in 2023. That price reduction represents a price decrease of 12% from last year to now,” a report said. The lower price comes even as a U.S. Department of Agriculture report showed turkey production dipped more than 6% compared to this time last year.

Hen and Hoof The spread of this strain of the virus appears to be affecting both the Central Valley poultry and dairy industries at the same time.

Just before Sept. 1 there were no reports of the virus in the Valley’s dairy industry. But as of Nov. 15, there are almost 300 diaries, mostly in Tulare and Kings Counties, impacted with new ones being added every day.

The Valley poultry industry has been on a similar viral timeline which coincides with the annual bird migration along the Pacific flyway that happens each fall. H5N1 largely infects wild birds, with waterfowl such as ducks and geese being the natural reservoirs for H5N1 viruses. Most H5N1 viruses are highly pathogenic avian influenza, meaning spillovers into other bird populations can lead to high mortality rates, including domesticated poultry.

A compounding factor for the spread of the virus is that both livestock are often on land located right next door or just down the road. The Central Valley is home for both industries with animals, transported in and out, and service vehicles going in and out of these large facilities every day.

The industry website Egg-News this week pointed out that research shows that the infections can be transmitted over a distance of up to a mile while attached to dust particles. Fall is harvest for a number of crops, including the nut industry, sending up plumes of dust in the Valley sky, at times associated with winds.

Egg-News points out that dairy cow-associated H5N1 viruses have jumped back into wild birds, and recent outbreaks in domestic poultry resembled H5N1 in dairy cows.

In an editorial Egg-News said “APHIS Needs a New Approach to Control HPAIr.” They recommend that USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) adopt vaccination as a disease control strategy for bird flu, with promising results from clinical trials. In May 2023, the U.S. authorized the vaccination of California condors against a type of avian flu.

Also, the USDA has approved field trials to test vaccines that could prevent dairy cows from getting the H5N1 strain of bird flu. The USDA approved the first field trials for the vaccine in September 2024. The USDA’s Center of Veterinary Biologics (CVB) is overseeing the trials. At least 24 companies are working on the vaccine, including Zoetis and Merck Animal Health.

If vaccines can save the U.S. poultry and dairy industry over the next year, the industry may have to worry about who heads up the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency which authorizes vaccines for animals and humans. Nominee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has made it clear he is anti-vaccine but has yet to comment on the use of vaccines in agriculture if he is confirmed for the role.

[impishtubist]

It's just so phenomenally stupid to be sitting here trying to do everyday shit and planning for the work week ahead when it doesn't even matter anymore. Laundry groceries meal prep cleaning who the fuck cares. The lucky ones with the means to do so will get to escape the country and the rest get to deal with everything becoming too exorbitantly expensive to be able to live and also having no healthcare. Plus vaccines being outlawed (it just happened in Idaho!) and a brewing H5N1 pandemic everyone is going to ignore oh yeah and also Trump executing everyone who doesn't agree with him. Why the fuck am I having to do emails and spreadsheets at a time like this??

[miss-mania]

In the early days of COVID, before any infections reached the US or Australia, I was telling everyone I could that based on the available data at the time that the situation was going to be absolutely disastrous. That unless something were done and severe measures taken quickly it would be too late to prevent an unfathomable amount of death and illness, but that I did not believe that the western capitalist paradigm would allow for such a response.

One of the things I would tell the people I know is that within a few years many people's lives would be divided into two periods; before the pandemic began and after. I even UNDERESTIMATED the number of deaths there have been thus far. I also would tell people the preventative measures that could be taken place, absorbed every new piece of information I could about COVID, and the most effective measures recommended by researchers to disinfect surfaces and prevent infection and spread of the disease.

A lot of people thought I was being a doomer. I was just being realistic, and the people who I told tend then to take these warnings more seriously now but plenty of people seem to be in denial regarding the severity of the damage COVID did and the threat it continues to pose because they were in the privileged position of not being personally too affected by it, and frankly some are so utterly fixed in the mindset capitalism has burned into the the very core of their being from birth that they actually cannot imagine how the global response could have been better and how the worst of it could have been avoided.

What I'm getting at is this: while we continue to be impacted by COVID both in terms of new infections and long-term health effects, we are staring down the barrel of another global pandemic. H5N1 has been around for a long time but in the last several months it has displayed a marked increase in pathogenicity and lethality in multiple mammalian species ranging from cows to penguins to seals and more in unprecedented levels. It is not a matter of if this virus will evolve and recombine in a way that will trigger a pandemic that makes COVID seem like a picnic, under the death cult of capital it is a matter of when. It is a matter of time.

Our governments will continue to do exactly what they have done under COVID; take the minimal precautions and delayed measures necessary only to keep the gears turning, while the sacrifice of the underpaid "essential worker" and the culling of the vulnerable continues, normalized and unabated.

I have no solutions to this particular parts of the problem and frankly I'm probably not knowledgeable or articulate enough that I should even be making this post. I do however believe that we should personally do whatever we can to prepare and protect the people around us. Get PPE and prep in advance, over time so as to not strain the supply when things escalate. Be mindful of washing your hands and being hygienic. Don't be around other people if you know you're sick or have been exposed. Mask up in public spaces. This is the bare minimum in terms of personal responsibility.

But I also believe that under a system so utterly corrupt and reprehensible that it considers millions of deaths to be merely the price to pay to continue with business as usual, which deems inconsequential the lives of those who for various reasons can't or won't devote themselves to it and extol its virtues, and which facilitates the growth of ideologies that venerate cruelty and exalt puerile displays of individualism above the safety of the whole, that it is an absolute moral imperative to rebel and live as much of your life divorced from that system as you possibly can.

Hang on to each other <3

[darkmaga-returns]

Saturday March 8, 2025

Karen Bracken

Such a shame that people ignored this man. The propaganda spread about him was a disgrace. Exactly what they have done to Trump. This country would be a much different place today if Ron Paul was President for 8 years instead of Obama. The deep state could never let a man like Ron Paul be President BUT over the years they have dug our hole so deep that Americans could no longer contend with what was taking place; so we got Trump in 2024 but I can honestly say that even as good as Trump may be he cannot even come close to Ron “Dr. No” Paul.

SUPPORT LEGISLATION TO WITHDRAW US PERMANENTLY FROM THE WHO - I am a member of the Sovereignty Coalition team and we are trying to communicate with President Trump to support legislation to make withdrawing from the WHO permanent by supporting current legislation in Congress to make the withdrawal permanent. If the withdrawal remains only an EO the next President can just dismiss his Executive Order and rejoin the WHO (World Health Organization) - PLEASE SHARE - ALIGN ACT

REAL ID - learn about why you need to stand up and REFUSE REAL ID. This website also has a take action link asking Congress to repeal REAL ID. The site also shows the 5 marks (all include a star) that will appear on a REAL ID drivers license. This is a slippery slope that will lead to a way to track EVERYTHING we do digitally. REFUSE REAL ID

Honors Student Sues After Graduating Without Being Able to Read by Alex Newman - believe me this is NOT an isolated incidence ARTICLE

Three Chinese-American Soldiers Indicted for Selling U.S. Army Secrets to Beijing, Including War Readiness Against China - gee, did you hear about this on FOX or any other news program? ARTICLE

Iowa Bill Seeks to End Vaccine Manufacturer Immunity for Injury Claims: HF 712 - Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare, Inc. also offered to assist the CDC/FDA in creating a better system and they of course were never taken up on their generous offer. Because they do not want a true system that would have alerted people long ago of the dangers in taking vaccines. This Iowa bill is also a prime example of nullification. The federal government never had the constitutional power to pass the 1986 Act or the PREP Act. When a law violates the Constitution it is null and void of law. Art. 1 Sec. 8 provides all of the legislative powers delegated to the federal government by the state and the people of the state. If it ain't on this list they have no authority to make law on it......anything not in Art. 1 Sec. 8 belongs to the states and the people of the states. It is time people understood their founding documents and stop basing your knowledge on what constitutionally illiterate lawyers and elected tell you these documents mean. The federal government was delegated extremely limited and defined powers while the states were left with the rest. But we have allowed others to tell us what those powers are and what they mean. There is no twisting of what they mean. They mean what they say and say what they mean. There is no clause in the Constitution that extends the federal government beyond their enumerated powers but they twist those clauses to steal power and the public school system is so dumbed down (by design) that most people have no clue about how things are supposed to work. Dumbed down people are easy to deceive and manipulate - ARTICLE

As USDA moves to vaccinate poultry & animals with H5N1 bird flu vaccine, RFK Jr. (Bobby Jr.) says NO, he nor CDC, NIH, FDA support use of the bird flu vaccine & actually recommend against it! Boom! - ARTICLE

[rebeccathenaturalist]

I actually had a different multi-page comic prepped for today, but over the weekend I got a wild hare to do something on topic right now. So if you've ever wondered how a disease can jump from other animals to us, now you know!

Species portrayed: Rabies virus (Rabies lyssavirus), SARS-CoV-2, Lyme disease (Borrelia sp.), Ebola (Ebolavirus sp.), human (Homo sapiens), domestic pig, (Sus scrofa domesticus) domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus), domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris), domestic cow (Bos taurus), masked palm civet (Paguma larvata), Chinese pangolin (Manis pentadactyla), large flying fox (Pteropus vampyrus), domestic cat (Felis catus), Senegal parrot (Poicephalus senegalus), bearded dragon (Pogona sp.), domestic rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus domesticus)

(Just a reminder that I have stickers and other fun merch at my Redbubble store, and you can also tip me for my work at my Ko-Fi! Like many people, my income has been pretty badly affected by current circumstances, so every little boost will help.)

Transcript under cut.

[Title: Zoonotic Diseases - the second O and the I in Zoonotic, and the I and season S in Diseases have been replaced by drawings of bacteria and viruses]

[First panel: A doctor in scrubs and carrying a chart waves to a man, a pig and a chicken all laying sick in bed. A table by the bed holds tissues, cough medicine and a glass of water. The window nearby shows a view out onto a sunny landscape.]

Animals are hosts to all sorts of diseases, and humans are no exception. Some diseases are able to infect multiple unrelated species. Those that jump from other animals to humans are called zoonotic diseases.

[Second panel: A yellow short-haired dog snarls and foams at the mouth.]

The zoonotic virus most in our consciousness right now is SARS-CoV-2, which causes the illness COVID-19. However, there are many zoonoses; some of the better known are rabies, swine flu, bird flu, Ebola, and Lyme disease. Ironically, chicken pox is only found in humans, other than a few great apes we passed it on to.

[Third panel: a man sits on a stool while milking a Jersey cow into a pail.]

When humans are in close contact with other animals for long periods of time, it’s more likely a virus or bacteria in the nonhuman species will mutate to be able to infect us. These diseases usually spread through airborne particules, contact with fecal matter, or in some cases a bite from a dog, bat, tick or other animal.

[Fourth panel: Three circles with squiggles inside them represent viruses. One has a red squiggle, another has a green squiggle, and lines from these two point to the third which has a red and green squiggle.]

One way this happens is through recombination. When a strain of a disease found in nonhuman animals encounters a strain found in humans, the former may gain the DNA that allows for infection in human hosts. Viruses and bacteria both practice recombination.

[Fifth panel: Several animals are on a blank background, including a masked palm civet, a domestic pig, a domestic chicken, a Chinese pangolin, and a large flying fox bat.]

For example, we know the SARS virus from the 2003 epidemic came from civets, through recombination. H1N1 (swine flu) came from pigs, and H5N1 (bird flu) from chickens and other birds. Scientists suspect SARS-CoV-2 was passed to us by bats and pangolins, both traded in wildlife markets in Wuhan, where it originated. DNA from SARS-CoV-2 closely resembles that from the SARS strains in pangolins and bats.

[Sixth panel: More animals on a blank background, including a Senegal parrot sitting on the back of a great dane, a bearded dragon, a domestic cat, and a domestic rabbit.]

Some worry whether zoonoses like SARS-C0V-2 can infect their pets. While there’s a small chance you could pass avian flu to pet birds, and some other pets like guinea pigs occasionally catch human respiratory illnesses, it’s not too common. If your pet isn’t regularly around lots of other animals in public they’re not likely to catch something to give to you. Just keep your pets’ vaccination up to date, and try to avoid kisses and other close contact when either of you are sick. It may be good to not let strangers pet your dog during the pandemic, as the virus could sit in the dog’s fur and then pass to you when you pet them, though it’s less of a risk than direct human to human contact.

[Seventh panel: A golden retriever in green scrubs and a stethoscope sits looking at the viewer. Next to her is a sign that says “Wash hands! Clean everything! Lots of space! Good hygiene! Let wild animals stay wild!”]

How do we prevent zoonoses? By limiting close exposure to wild animals, and keeping all captive animals in clean, uncrowded quarters. Treat sick animals as soon as possible. If you handle animals, even pets, wash your hands thoroughly before eating, drinking, or otherwise putting your hands near your face. Be familiar with zoonoses that the animals in your life may be susecptible to so you can all stay healthy!

[decentralvaccine]

Hundreds Of Millions Bird Flu Shots For Humans

Some of the world's leading makers of flu vaccines say they could make hundreds of millions of bird flu shots for humans within months if a new strain of avian influenza ever jumps across the species divide.

One current outbreak of avian flu known as H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b has killed record numbers of birds and infected mammals. Human cases, however, remain very rare, and global health officials have said the risk of transmission between humans is still low.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/vaccine-makers-prep-bird-flu-shot-humans-just-case-rich-nations-lock-supplies-2023-03-20/

[fox-bright]

My covid post from last year is going around again, as I sit here debating how and what to write about HPAI H5N1.

I'm tired.

Things to know:

HPAI H5N1, Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1, is so far wildly lethal when humans get it. Somewhere between 53% and 56% of the humans who have been found to have it have died.

Those people mainly got it from interacting with sick birds. A couple have gotten it from interacting with sick mammals. The one of those that's most important to US news right now is a worker at a milk cow farm who got sick very recently. That worker's only symptom before getting on antiviral medication was pinkeye.

(Keep your cats indoors; cats are getting it from sick birds. Don't have bird feeders this year. Do NOT interact with wild birds that are acting strangely; do not poke at dead wild birds.)

Humans are not yet giving it to humans. There are one or two cases where they might have done, in the last few years; those cases guttered out quickly, to the great good luck of our species, and did not spread.

Human-to-human transmission is the big concern.

We are not in any immediate danger of H2H transmission. When we're in immediate danger, you'll know.

When the flip happens, we will go from not being in immediate danger to being in immediate danger, very rapidly. This could happen this month, or in five months, or in five years, and we don't know when.

By the time we are in immediate danger, it is too late to do the greater bulk of your preparation.

So it's time to prepare now. This time we have is a blessing. We should not squander it. What would you have done differently in September, 2019, if you knew what was coming? Do that.

With some differences; a) flu can pass by fomite--that is, a sick person touches a doorknob, you touch a doorknob, you rub your face, you get sick--so you actually do need cleaning chemicals for this one. b) This one gets in through the eyeballs pretty easily in its current shape, so eye protection should be prepped for adding to masking in public spaces. c) this one is gonna call for fever reducers and we know how hard they were to get when covid hit; stock up. And stock up on pet food if you can keep it from going bad, because pet food gets its protein from cow and bird meat; there will be shortages.

With a lot of similarities; the flu is airborne so don't stop masking, if we have a proper lockdown this time you're going to wish you had flour and rice and canned fruit so keep stock of all your staples. If you have a nice big freezer, now is the time to get beef and chicken before the prices shoot to the ceiling. I'm also stocking up on powdered milk and powdered eggs for baking with.

We have made a lot, a LOT of mistakes with how we've handled covid. But one thing we didn't do wrong was all of the community-building in the early days. Think about what worked then, and what didn't really work. Now is the time to make sure community bonds are strong. As always, as in ANY potential disaster, there are two most-important questions?

Who can protect and support you?

Who can you support and protect?

Plan accordingly.

[kathleenseiber]

Nursing homes prepped for pandemic but big gaps remain

Responses from a survey of Michigan nursing homes suggests they were better prepared for this pandemic than for the last one.

The study includes responses from 130 nursing homes to a survey during the week the hotspot state announced its first documented case of COVID-19.

Hundreds of deaths of residents in homes from Seattle to Boston have raised concerns about how well facilities are protecting the 1.3 million older Americans who live in them. Those concerns have prompted new federal and state requirements about testing and transparency. And perhaps things could have been even worse.

The survey results indicate that nearly all had a pandemic plan in place. That’s compared with just over half of the 280 nursing homes that answered the same survey in 2007. Nearly all said they now have at least one staff member in charge of pandemic preparedness.

The findings appear in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

The University of Michigan research team has several other recent publications with direct or indirect relevance to the COVID-19 pandemic, including putting forth recommendations for nursing homes and other housing facilities for older adults to use in planning how they will respond to pandemics such as COVID-19.

Lona Mody, a geriatrician at Michigan Medicine, the university’s academic medical center, and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, is senior author of the new publications. She’s a professor of internal medicine, the associate director for clinical and translational research at the university’s Geriatrics Center, and director of the Infection Prevention in Aging research group.

“Our nursing homes house some of the most vulnerable in our society,” says Mody. “This virus unfortunately is very contagious, the disease it causes has incredibly poor outcomes in older adults with comorbidities, and nursing homes are communal settings with shared spaces and resource limitations. This creates a perfect storm of sorts.”

Mody heads the PRIISM, or Preventing Resistance and Infection by Integrating Systems in Michigan, project, which partners with skilled nursing facilities, hospitals, and public health agencies across the state to perform research and create and test education and training materials for nursing home staff. The program’s website has many free materials for use by nursing homes everywhere.

Prep between pandemics

The new survey data show Michigan’s nursing homes have better prepared for pandemics since the last time the team performed the survey. That previous survey took place before the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009, but after the H5N1 “bird flu” pandemic of 2005 raised national awareness of the importance of pandemic preparedness. Mody and colleagues published pandemic preparedness guidance for nursing homes at that time.

In mid-March of this year, 85% of nursing homes said they had stockpiled supplies before COVID-19 hit, compared with 57% after the H5N1 pandemic. Most of those that had stockpiled supplies had focused on surgical masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer. Less than half had stockpiled N95 respirator masks, which are recommended by national and global health authorities for health care workers performing certain types of care on a COVID-19 patient.

Still, 42% of the nursing homes that answered a question about COVID-19-specific concerns said they were worried about running short of personal protective gear.

“Although the size and severity of COVID-19 outbreaks in some nursing homes have taken everyone by surprise, just as so much about this pandemic has, in general nursing homes knew exactly what their challenges were going to be in a pandemic—PPE shortages, staff shortages, and worries that they did not have the capacity to care for COVID patients after their hospital stay.”

Staff training and turnover

Nearly all now said they had trained staff on how their facility would respond in a pandemic, up from 42% in 2007. But only one-third had conducted a pandemic drill. And Mody notes that nursing homes have a much higher rate of staff turnover than hospitals—meaning that training on infection prevention and pandemic response has to be offered whenever a new person joins the organization.

Michigan’s nursing homes appear to have gotten better connected to the broader health care system in the past decade, with significantly more saying they now have communication lines established with local hospitals and public health departments.

Many also says they were drawing COVID-19 guidance not just from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but also from state and local health departments. Half also received guidance from their home’s corporate parent.

And while half of the nursing homes surveyed this year said they expected significant staff shortages due to COVID-19, most of them said they had a plan to deal with that. Most planned to ask existing clinical staff to work more hours, and to redeploy non-clinical staff. Two-thirds expected they’d need to require staff to work overtime.

The survey also explored the potential for nursing homes to relieve the burden on hospitals. In all, 82% said they’d be willing to take non-pandemic patients from overburdened hospitals now, compared with 53% in 2007. But the percent that said they’d be able to accept patients with the pandemic disease stayed the same, at one-third of responding homes.

What should nursing homes do now?

Mody and her colleagues John P. Mills and Keith Kaye from the University of Michigan Division of Infectious Diseases recently published some recommendations regarding COVID-19 and older adults in the journal JCI Insight. Mody and Kaye are members of the university’s Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

They note that it’s not just nursing homes with long-term residents that need to be ready to care for vulnerable older adults during pandemics.

In fact, the trend over the past decade to use nursing homes more often for short-term stays by patients who have been discharged from a hospital, and to create state and local programs that allow older adults to ‘age in place’ instead of moving to nursing homes for the long-term, have led to potential gaps for pandemic responses to help older adults.

They call for policymakers to address those gaps, by creating pandemic-specific plans for community-dwelling older adults, especially those with health needs.

As for nursing homes, they recommend that in areas where COVID-19 is spreading widely in the community, facilities should take these steps, and others:

place patients with known or suspected disease in the same area of the facility, away from others

perform rapid COVID-19 tests on all patients, both short-stay and long-stay

screen healthcare workers and other staff for symptoms including checking temperatures

limit visitors and group activities

require everyone wear a surgical mask

require additional protective gear for clinical staff.

The limits on group activities tie in to other research by Mody and her colleagues, published in JAGS in December.

That study sampled surfaces, and the hands of patients and staff, in the common areas and rehabilitation gyms with in nursing homes, and looked for drug-resistant bacteria that can cause dangerous infections. Though the team didn’t look for the presence of viruses in these areas, they did find that half of the samples taken in rehab gyms contained at least one type of bacteria that was resistant to several types of antibiotics.

In addition to stockpiling PPE and cleaning supplies, the recommend that nursing homes should use “burn calculators” to predict how quickly they’ll use those supplies based on their patient population.

If nursing homes and other residential facilities for older adults haven’t already done so, they should establish lines of communication with local health departments in advance of any outbreak of COVID-19 in their facility. They should also focus on staff retention, including providing for generous sick leave policies so that staff can stay home when ill, and hazard pay for those who can come to work.

And, the team says, nursing homes should make sure they have an infection prevention plan in place for staff when a patient has died of COVID-19.

Another gap in preparedness that the COVID-19 pandemic is revealing, Mody says, is a gap in communication with patients and their families. Keeping families informed, and enabling them to connect virtually with their loved ones when they can’t visit in person, is crucial, she says.

Source: University of Michigan

The post Nursing homes prepped for pandemic but big gaps remain appeared first on Futurity.

Nursing homes prepped for pandemic but big gaps remain published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

[fox-bright]

We were pretty sure already, but now we're absolutely sure.

Now, cows aren't humans and so the receptors are still not the same--but 1) we can get this version from them as one person already has 2) the more time it spends in mammals the more chances it has to become something that can very happily transmit between people, to pick up new mutations as it does rapidly which would allow the spread, and 3) all it would take is for one human who already has another flu to get H5N1, and we'd have human-to-human transmission from then on out. All it would take is for a single pig that has another flu to get H5N1, and we'd have human-to-human transmission from then on out.

This is still not freaking-out time. But it is absolutely prep time. Maybe it won't happen! Maybe we'll get ahead of it! But given the number of people who are cheerily, ignorantly, arrogantly invested in minimizing this, it's not feeling super likely to me that we get to dodge it. So whether it's in us this month, or when flu season hits, or in another couple of years, I think it's probably coming.