Tonight is stake temple night and Paul and I plan to attend. This past week has been a very spiritual one for us as a family. Last sunday Michelle received her Patriarchal Blessing from our stake patriarch. Paul and I have been on a spiritual high since that event.
Last sunday we also had four members of our family speak in church. I was the final speaker in Sacrament meeting – topic was Creating a legacy for future generations. And Michelle was the youth speaker. She was asked to speak about her pioneer heritage and shared a wonderful story from one of our ancestors from Norway who immigrated to Utah as a young mother. Andy was the main speaker in primary, his talk was also on his pioneer ancestry, and Ben was asked to participate in Sharing time telling stories about how his family helps him grow closer to Jesus Christ. We had spent saturday preparing for all of these talks. It was a good experience and I loved sharing my views with the members of the ward.
On wednesday night Paul and I were invited to attend our Stake Preparedness Meeting. Paul was recently called to be the Elders Quorum president and I am still serving as the Welfare Specialist. We had a good turnout from the stake and a woman from the State of Colorado had been invited to speak to our group about Pandemic Flu. She gave about an hour presentation and then opened it up for Q & A. The state of Colorado is working hard to prepare for pandemic scenarios, however I felt that typical government style they are gearing up to hand out fish to the people, rather than teaching them how to fish in terms of what is being done to mitigate,
She talked alot about flu vaccines and tamiflu. She also said the main thrust of their efforts was going to be in food boxes being passed out to those people who cannot prepare for a time of living in their homes for a couple weeks of isolation from the community. The state is encouraging citizens to have on hand a two week supply of food and water, and as many months of medicine as money and insurance will allow them to purchase.
I raised my hand and asked her if anyone had brought up the issue of healthy pregnant women giving birth in a hospital overun with sick people. She said they had spent alot of time talking about it but had not come to any sort of a conclusion as to what to do.
Later in the evening I pressed the issue again by stating that during the 1918 pandemic most babies in Colorado were being born at home and an infrastructure was in place to help those women with birth. Also, most mothers were breastfeeding. I told her that the thing people start screaming for after every disaster is baby formula and plastic diapers, and that if the state really wanted people to prepare for a pandemic they should be pushing breastfeeding and a supply of cloth diapers. She sort of balked when I said that.
She said that they were pushing for families to have baby formula, a two week supply, because during a time of stress, mothers may not be able to produce breastmilk, especially if they were eating junk foods in the form of foods that are easy to prepare without electricity. I backed away at that point and did not press the issue further, especially after a neonatal nurse spoke up and claimed that during certain illnesses breastmilk could be worse for babies than formula.
What I predict if we have a pandemic in Colorado is a whole bunch of dead babies.
Now maybe with even being born to educated parents at home and breastfed by a mother who has stored the absolute best foods for survival, (wheat and beans), and cloth diapered during weeks of isolation in the home during a pandemic, some of those babes will die from flu. But looking at the odds, I would guess that a mother who births in a hospital overwhelmed with flu patients and dead bodies, bottle feeds with limited supplys of baby formula, and is diapered with whatever bits of disposable diapers can be purchased, the babe who is welcomed into the world under such conditions will not do as well as the baby born at home.
But I guess we will have to wait and see. While I thought the power point presentation from this woman was well put together and she had her facts straight about infectious disease, I was extremely dismayed, but not surprised, that most mitigation efforts are going to be put towards chemical interventions and stockpiling of food for the poor.
What this lady does not realize is that EVERY family can store food and water. If poor families were to be educated about the financial savings from eating whole foods, taught how to prepare these simple foods, and how to store them properly, every family could easily put together a three month supple of grains, beans, and salt that could help them to weather any storm.
Costs for a family of four is about two hundred bucks. And her assumption that it would only be the poor who did not have any supplies is extremely short sighted. Many families do not have more than a week supply of food on hand because of dependence on restaurants and take out food. Some of the wealthiest people in our society have the most beautiful pantrys on the planet, that are completely void of nourishing foods.
If I was king of the world, or head of the Colorado State preparedness task force, I would immediately begin an education campaign focusing on proper food and water storage, rotation of whole foods into the daily diet, and the very simple principles of caring for the sick without chemicals. I would offer home birth classes and push breastfeeding and use of cloth diapers and menstrual pads. I would not even think about food boxes or vaccine or chemical “cures” as these measures would basically be akin to rearanging deck chairs on the titanic while the ship went down.
If we truly want to save lives and mitigate for future pandemics, the people of Colorado should be educated with what will truly help rather than wait for a time of raw survival, when survival of the fittest and the law of the jungle will ensure that those who are not prepared will drop like flies.
Here, once again, are my primers on Flu and Emergency Childbirth.
Flu, Natural Remedies
Jennys Flu Soup
Flu Season is Here
Emergency Childbirth during a pandemic
And a complete roundup of my provident living information is found in that catagory. Go here
Emergency Preparedness Catagory
I believe that those families and individuals who believe government is going to “save them” during a pandemic by handing them a box of food and a shot of chemicals in the arm are very naive. Yet this is what the state of colorado is preparing to do at this point in case of a pandemic. Being at the meeting just furthered my resolve and focus that individual preparations for a pandemic are the best forms of mitigation and relying on the government will be a fruitless endeavor.
It was a good meeting overall and the final hour we spent talking about communications and how we as saints can watch over each other better, especially if communications and electricity were cut off. I was chuckling as we talked remembering the winter storms of last year. The stake president had asked that we account for every person in the stake and give him a report. We were called by a total of seven people during the worst blizzard. The checks and balances of the mormon people is a wonder to behold.
Many of our members are ready with short wave radios and generators – to be a communication tool in case the phones are out. We have a whole crew of guys in our ward who are ready to go with that endeavor.
I’m looking forward to being in the house of the Lord tonight. It will recharge my spiritual batteries.
Jenny Hatch