Welcome to the "Survive Pandemic Flu" Blog

The point of this blog is to empower you to keep you and your loved ones safe during an episode of pandemic influenza. In this blog post, I describe the following: (1) what pandemic flu is, (2) how to read this blog, (3) how you can get your questions answered, and (4) who the author is.

Pandemic flu is scary. This blog is here to help you feel less fear and more confidence. The important thing for you to understand at this point is that you can do a lot to take control of the situation. That may sound optimistic to you, but it is the truth. Use the things you learn on this blog to bring a greater degree of safety and health to you and the people you love.

What Is Pandemic Flu?

Every year or so, the countries of the world experience an epidemic involving some strain of the human influenza virus, which infects the respiratory system (basically, the lungs). The common flu is very uncomfortable, but with proper care it will not kill most adults. It is dangerous to infants and the elderly, who have weakened immune systems, and most fatalities from the regular flu are among the infants and elderly.

Every once in a while, the world experiences an influenza epidemic that infects a much larger number of people than normal; this is called a pandemic. Pandemics often involve a mutant strain of the flu, a strain to which most people have little or no immunity.

It seems that pandemics often involve flu strains that include, not only elements of human influenza virus, but flu viruses that usually infect either birds (avian flu or bird flu) or swine (swine flu). Viruses like this are especially dangerous, because human beings usually have little or no immunity to viruses like this.

How to Read This Blog

The next three posts on this blog are all titled "The Basics":

• "The Basics, Part 1: The Current Threat." This post describes the current real or potential threat involving pandemic flu. Although originally posted in late April 2009, I plan to update this post from time to time to reflect current conditions.


• "The Basics, Part 2: Why You Should Be Concerned." This post describes why the current situation is fundamentally different from, for example, the swine flu scare of 1976, or the bird flu scare of 2006--neither of which materialized into pandemics--and why you should be particularly concerned about the current threat.
• "The Basics, Part 3: What You Can Do." This post describes, in brief, what you can do to be prepared to deal with pandemic flu, either the current threat, or any future threat.

Posts beyond "The Basics" give more detailed information. I plan to add at least one or two posts a week to this section, more during periods of heightened threat. I expect that many of these posts will respond to your questions: see the next section.

How to Get Your Questions Answered

There are two ways to address questions to this blog:

1. Comment on a blog post. Commenting has been enabled for anyone, and is not moderated. (Be civil here, please: no profanity, and no personal attacks, especially involving someone who has posted a comment. I will delete offensive comments and block the offenders. We have no time for immaturity here.) I encourage you to comment on the blog posts. If I answer your question or address your point in a later post, I may delete your comment just to clear some space, but I appreciate what you have to say.
2. Send me an e-mail at flu_mekr@yahoo.com . Depending on the volume of questions I receive, I may not respond to you personally, but I will try to address the more pressing concerns in this blog itself.

All comments submitted in either of these methods become the property of the blog author.

The Author of This Blog

The author of this blog is Mark Koltko-Rivera, Ph.D. I am not a physician. My doctoral degree is in counseling psychology (New York University, 2000). My expertise here is relevant, because although the flu virus is a biological phenomenon, people either increase or decrease their likelihood of infection through what they do, which is a behavioral phenomenon.

Why am I writing on this issue? Part of my job at my firm is to be a 'professional futurist,' to note developing trends (like virtual reality) and potential future developments, and to come up with innovative ways to address them (like applying psychology to the defense against terrorism). I had been studying the potential for pandemic flu since the late 1990's, and ramped up this effort during the bird flu scare of 2006. Thus, I have looked at these issue with a professional eye for some time. I think I have a good grip on the behavioral issues that need to be addressed to maximize the likelihood that people will get through a pandemic safely.

Conclusion

You may not know it yet, but what you do makes a great deal of difference in terms of your surviving a flu pandemic. This blog is intended to help you do just that.

We are all in this together. Please share your comments and questions for everyone's good.

(Photo of the Ben Todd Jealous family by chaosimperfect_chaos, presented here via the WikiMedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License. This blog has no association with, and is not sponsored by, anyone pictured in this photograph. We do think they are a handsome-looking family, though.)