Wuflu Precautions #3

Know your enemy

This started out to be a post on what you’d need if the Wuflu comes home to roost and you have to deal with caring for yourself or someone else. It turns out that it isn’t that simple.

I’m not going to give you the links to all the places I’ve been over the last two days trying to write this post. I doubt if I could find them all again, and the information is changing about every day. We’ve went from a 14 day incubation period to, according to the Chinese, possibly 24 days, during the period I’ve been working on this. I can only write about the subject in the most general terms or it’ll be out-of-date by the time I hit the “Publish” button.

I will tell you that, if you have only a single source, you could do worse than relying on Chris Martensen at the Peak Prosperity YouTube channel. The guy is doing yeoman’s work on this subject. Required viewing for the duration.

So here’s the deal, as close as I can make it out. Apparently, the Wuflu has read about the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. Roughly 80% of the people who get Wuflu have symptoms ranging from almost none to a bad case of the flu. They’ll get over it. That’s our good news.

The remaining 20% are going to get very sick. Most of these people will be very young or very old, have some pre-exisiting condition(s) that weaken them in some way, or possibly have existing lung conditions, such as COPD. These people will be subject to “opportunistic infections” and will need extensive medical intervention, possibly including things like being on a respirator. They will definitely need antibiotic, antiviral and antifungal meds. The serious Wuflu infectee seems to be most subject to various forms of pneumonia, and it’s caused by all 3 of those things.

Unless you happen to have an ICU in your home, you cannot take care of someone this sick outside of a hospital setting, except to keep them comfortable while they live or, more likely, die. Even in a hospital setting with the most intensive interventions available, at least 5% will die.

There is also word of young, healthy people people being stricken and dying quickly. This may be cytokine storm related.

These simple facts, plus the sheer number of people infected, are slowly bringing China to its knees. There are too many sick and not enough medical facilities, personnel or supplies. If you’ve been exposed to Wuflu, at this point you’re being stuffed into some sort of “quarantine facility”, the quality of which is likely problematic. One infected person will quickly infect the entire place, a la the plague ship in Japan.

People testing positive are maybe getting into a hospital, but are more likely being sent to various large buildings pressed into service as sick wards. I’m guessing the standard of care there is low, but that may be enough to get many through.

The seriously ill are still too many, and they’re overwhelming the system. From what I’ve read, few of them are surviving. That could mean the CFR (Case Fatality Rate) could be approaching 20%. That’s the upper bound of numbers reported for the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak.

For those not ill, food and other supplies are getting short as closures and quarantines elsewhere are causing supply chain problems. Factories were supposed to reopen this week, but that isn’t going so well.

And yes, the Chinese are lying through their teeth on the numbers. Bet on it.

(While I was writing this, this shows up: “China Reports Huge Jump In New Coronavirus Infections And Deaths; Oil, Stocks Tumble“)

That’s our bad news.

At this point this thing is still mostly confined to China. Of the 60,329 cases reported this instant at the Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracking site, only 175 are *not* in China. Bad for the Chinese, good for us so far. If we can keep it contained in other countries, we may still get out of this lightly (understanding that “lightly” is a relative term in this context).

And yes, the Chinese are lying through their teeth on the numbers. Bet on it.

Containment within China may well not happen. There are rumors that North Korea, which has a long and porous border with China, is being hit hard, and they don’t have the medical facilities to deal with it. We’re getting nothing out of Africa and South America, and that bothers me. It stretches credibility that, given the amount of Chinese involvement in Africa, there isn’t one Wuflu case there that’s been reported. Chances are there are many, and won’t know what is happening until it’s already out of hand. This thing can find a million ways to get loose and then we’re all in for it.

I am concerned. At this point I think the best preparations we can make is to prepare for an extended period where we “self-quarantine” to some extent, keeping our distance from everyone else until this burns out (or it all burns down). How long this period might be is anyone’s guess, but I’m figuring if it gets bad in a given area, it could easily be weeks to months. Food, water and standard influenza supplies should be good ideas. At The Freehold, Mrs. Freeholder and I are both allergic to flu shots, so every winter we take certain precautions, such as Vitamin C, B Complex, Vitamin D and elderberry extract. There is also much hand washing and sanitizing going on. I recommend these to you as well as they seem to be enough that the flu rarely visits our home.

And that’s where this stands, as far as I can tell. This is probably the end of the Wuflu Precautions mini-series. I’m not sure there is anything else useful I can say. Pray for the Chinese and for the rest of the world, and hope God smiles upon us.