64F, low humidity, some sun. Might be a nice day today.
Fun night out with neighbors, met our local bee keepers. Tasty stuff.
n
Read the comments: 22 Comments
64F, low humidity, some sun. Might be a nice day today.
Fun night out with neighbors, met our local bee keepers. Tasty stuff.
n
NB- after seeing how big this comment was, and recalling RBT’s instructions to me, I am promoting this comment to a Post.
On an entirely separate subject, pandemic preparedness….
https://asprtracie.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/aspr-tracie-hcc-pandemic-checklist-508.pdf
I’m looking thru the CDC’s Flu Pandemic readiness checklist for health care providers and I see a whole bunch of stuff that’s worth thinking about. So I’m highlighting some here:
3.11 Pre-identify strategies and resources to ensure behavioral health support for staff to mitigate adverse stress and grief and loss reactions.
[translation- EMS is gonna have family and friends that die from the pandemic- try to keep them working]
3.12 Determine virtual coordination mechanisms that will enable remote engagement of senior staff to prevent exposures and maximize ability to engage in both daily and incident operations”
[translation- senior staff need to be kept out of the treatment areas to keep them alive while everyone else risks dying.]
“3.21 Develop criteria for on-scene denial of transport by EMS personnel for influenza-like illness and other patients – with or without on-line medical control – ideally regional rather than agency-based criteria and process.
[trans- figure out at what point do you stop bringing flu cases into the hospital and effectively quarantine them at home, and when you let EMS make that decision on their own.]
3.22 Develop/provide patient information sheets on homecare for influenza-like illness
including usual clinical symptoms and course, infection prevention, treatment, and when to seek additional medical care.
[trans- people are on their own at some point, figure out what point, and give them some info about what to do]
3.23 Develop/provide patient information sheets for other conditions that may be left without transport if the service volume suggests a relevant need (e.g., minor injuries).
[trans- again, you’re gonna be on your own, with minimal guidance]
3.24 Determine alternate transport resources and triggers to utilize them, e.g., private
ambulance, wheelchair, contract/courier, for hire vehicles, military assets, buses
[trans- martial law at some point, and how many NG or regular Army units will want to deploy into a Flu zone? How many will be ABLE?]
Here’s a nice one:
4.5 Determine actions that the state emergency management or public health agency is likely to take that affect health care including:
• Suspension or modification of requirements for hospitals or clinics
[when will you be able to use tents, parking lots, warehouses]
• Specific emergency orders or actions that may limit liability or expand scope of
operations (for facilities and providers, including volunteers)
• Requests for 1135 waivers from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
• Crisis standards of care activation
[when will you drop normal operations and just do whatever you can without liability- ie at what point does S really HTF?]
• Issuance of clinical guidelines for care and resource allocation
[when do you start rationing and triage?]
• ‘Taking powers’ of the state relative to medical materials and staff (i.e., does the state have ability to commandeer resources under their emergency powers and does this include medical materials?)
[trans- when will they come for YOUR stuff, and do you need to give it to them. side question- where would ‘the state’ be TAKING the siezed materials????]
• Promulgation or enforcement of legal obligations of medical staff to provide care
[trans- when will they come for YOU, and what if anything can you do about it?? this is where preppers worry about ‘being on a list’ of EMS or First Aid trained, or CERT, etc, can they force you to provide medical aid? what if you are licensed?]
And these are grim:
4.38 Develop a plan for implementing a supplemental facility security/controlled access plan (which may be phased) particularly during the peak pandemic weeks to assure controlled campus ingress and egress and monitoring.
4.39 Provide patients and staff with information about stress responses, resilience, and available professional mental health resources. Develop staff monitoring for those exposed to high levels of cumulative stress or specific severe stressors (death of coworker, etc.).
4.40 Consider ways to maintain staff resilience and morale when congregate gatherings and close physical contact are discouraged. This may need to include memorial services for staff members.
4.41 Determine if the fatality management plan is sufficient for an increased volume of decedents at the facility
There’s lots more and it’s worth looking at. After all, this is what CDC thinks your local health care providers need to consider and plan for WRT flu pandemic.
-EMS not transporting sick people
-facilities and services shut down or reaching capacity and rationing of other treatment
-local authorities SEIZING medical supplies
-local authorities FORCING med staff to work
-deaths among EMS, facility staff, and care providers
-physically securing the treatment areas
-giving priority to staff family and pets
-using the military to provide transportation, reserve medical services, and security
-too many dead people to deal with normally
nick
(the link came to me in the weekly newsletter I get for EM and first responders)
I’m tellin’ ya, time is flyin’ by….
70F and 99%RH. Moisture condensing on concrete deck and floor, and anything metal or solid in the garage. Can anyone say “less than ideal storage conditions?”
I did make a great dessert last night from “middle” term storage. I’ve found that the fruit cups from costco will discolor and the fruit gets mushy after the expiration date. This is pretty typical, “color and texture might change but contents remain healthy and safe” is true for cans as well. I’ve mentioned here before that when I notice that a case is aging out, I make fruit cobbler.
So last night, a delicious mango cobbler was made, and half was consumed after dinner. The mango tastes pretty much like peaches after canning. I used prepackaged cobbler mix. It couldn’t be much easier- melt butter, pour in mix with milk, dump in 4 fruit cups. Bake. Serve with vanilla ice cream. Kids asked for seconds. Success!
Managing your stores probably deserves a whole post, but the short story is — use what you have too much of. In other words, if we’ve eaten fewer eggs than normal, I will make something to eat that requires more eggs, like French Toast (Freedom Toast!). That’s a good way to use up some bread too. Or fruit desserts to use aging fruit cups that don’t LOOK attractive, but are still delicious. Think about baking, or pre-cooking meat and freezing. Pies are a way to make fruit last a few more days. Juice fruits and freeze the juice…
Anyway, I’m toying with the idea of a “use less week.” The idea is that you probably use more than needed during these times of prosperity, and would use less if times were tough, so why not try it now??
Some easy examples: toothpaste. Most people probably learned to put a stripe of toothpaste the whole length of the toothbrush. I find that less than half of that is sufficient to fill my mouth with foamy cleaning action. I’ve completely internalized this change.
Shampoo. The bottle usually says how much to use, but do you just pour some in your hand? Bigger than a ‘quarter’? I’ll bet half will give the same sudsing action. If not, just “lather rinse repeat” like the bottle says. Nothing to lose.
Hand soap, hand sanitizer. The dispensers kick out way more than needed.
Eggs. I love eggs. I now only buy the Large size though. Simple change from the Extra Large I grew up with and just kept buying. They are cheaper too. And I’m finding that one is enough for breakfast when I habitually ate two.
Toilet paper. I’d bet that most of us just use this the way we learned as kids. I did. Having kids to teach, and someone else’s butt to wipe, made me rethink both technique and amount. Not something to skimp on, but if you knew the supply was limited, would you be more careful and use less? TP is a very bulky item to store as preps, and not something you want to run out of.
Laundry and dish soap. Do you just dump some in? When was the last time you read the bottle or looked at the different marks on the measuring cup?
Ketchup or dipping condiments. Just dump a big squirt on the plate? Why not put half as much and then squirt more if needed?
Hmm, this is turning into a coupon clipping, make your own soap kind of post, so I’ll end it here, but I challenge you to look at your habits, and see if you are being a ‘good steward’ of the resources you have.
nick
Holy cow, time is flying by. Coming up on halfway thru the semester. Gonna be summer in an eyeblink.
68F, overcast, and very humid here today. All day yesterday I had moisture condensing on anything cool. Every can and bottle in the garage had wetness on it. Floors got slick with moisture. NOT ideal food storage conditions, or car storage conditions for that matter.
Another school shooting. As the details come out, we are seeing the same things. Troubled ‘youth’ (in this case an adult), made threats, made obvious comments, F’d up home life (why is he an orphan?)
I was heartened to see the EMS response which looked like the new doctrine of “scoop and scoot”. It looked like they were not waiting for the scene to be declared “secure” either. Good news for the victims. I hope there are some lessons to be learned from this that can help in the future.
nick
Just a reminder, you still have time to pick up a card or flowers, if your significant other expects that sort of thing… and what a nice surprise if they don’t!
n
Added- 64F and foggy. Weird smells too. Swampy, with an extra tang.
Did we kill a bunch of russian mercenaries? If we killed a hundred, how many russian mercenaries are there in Syria?? WTF are we playing at here? Why are we dancing on a powder keg with a road flare dripping fire?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-13/us-strikes-kill-100-russian-soldiers-syria
Why are we there at all if it is ” a conflict that started as a domestic crackdown only to morph into a proxy war involving Islamic extremists, stateless Kurds and regional powers Iran, Turkey and now Israel.”
Russian mercenaries???
n
45F and overcast. Supposed to be raining later….
37F and breezy today, bit of an overcast.
12F in Korea last night for the Olympics. That’s cold.
Watched men’s biathalon. I like biathalon because I can’t imagine the training to be able to shoot like that, and because the medals are up for grabs. Last olympics the world favorite and ‘grand old man’ came in dead last. This year, the three guys who had dominated the results all year ALL shot poorly and missed out on medals. That made for a much more exciting finish as people realized they had a chance to actually medal.
Also watched a bit of figure skating, ice dancing, and snowboarding. Which leads me to the title of this post. I’m a grumpy old man. Yup. Watching those punk kids doing skateboard tricks on the snow IN THE OLYMPICS brought it home. And they are GOOD, they are extraordinary athletes, and they are exciting to watch. Another thing that brought it home was when the russian female figure skater made the Sign of the Cross as she left the ice. I remember very well when that would have gotten her sent off to Siberia, figuratively if she was lucky, in actuality if not. 30 or more years ago. Sheesh I’m feeling old today.
nick
Watched some curling and women’s biathalon last night. Both were good, both had USA eliminated from the medal running.
The speed skating is good too.
Very interesting camera tech, robots everywhere.
n
65F and thunderstorms, with heavy downpour at the moment.
Daughter’s basketball game this am, and my hobby (that isn’t prepping) has a monthly meeting… so I’ll open with this thought….
From watching the Olympic ceremony last night, who could have predicted that [probably] Trump’s hard line with NORK would bring them to the table? And, it’s abundantly clear, the only way to be taken seriously on the world stage is to become a nuclear power. Man o man, did we really want to set that example for the mass o crazies?
nick