A MESSAGE FROM DR. WOODSON
#188
Long time readers of my blog know of Dr. Grattan Woodson, the author of an excellent guide for treating avian flu patients in the home. Dr. Woodson has recently come out with a new home treatment manual, and you may download it for free from crofsblogs or from Dr. Woodson's site. This is a PDF file, and requires the adobe software on your computer in order to read it.
Grattan Woodson, MD FACP obtained his MD at the Medical College of Georgia in 1980 and completed his internal medicine training at an affiliate of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, New York in 1983. He joined the full-time faculty of Emory University School of Medicine where he taught internal medicine and worked as a diagnostician at Emory Clinic. Presently he is an attending physician at the Druid Oaks Health Center in Decatur, GA
Dr. Woodson posts occasionally on Fluwiki, one of the best internet flu resources available. This morning, he made the following post. I thought my readers would find it of interested.
The Fluwiki is a wonderful place to take the pulse of the pandemic awakened and awakening worldwide. An open forum like this one, even when discussants are following the rules can be pretty loose. There is a pretty good likelihood that H5N1 will become pandemic this winter. This comes from someone who predicted it would happen last winter, so caveat emptor. None-the-less if you have studied the issue carefully and think there is a good chance that humankind is on the cusp of its next bout with pandemic influenza, NOW IS THE TIME TO GET READY.
What I am saying is quit gapping and start acting. The advice available on this site and others is all you need to get started. It is my opinion that we are clearly already well into WHO Pandemic Altert Phase 4 despite the WHO’s refusal to raise the level. My thinking is that as the virus approaches pandemic status, it will spend less time in each phase. This idea stems from the notion that as the virus spreads geographically and among species its total biomass is increasing exponentially. The increase in members of the H5N1 community increases the likelihood that it will achieve pandemic status by means of mutation, reassortment or recombination.
So, NOW IS THE TIME TO GET READY. We won’t be absolutely certain until late in the game. By that time, there will be a rush to prepare and the availability of plentiful and inexpensive supplies will be a thing of the past. The approach I advocate is to establish a Pandemic Survival Plan for your family. The plan should be structured with logical triggers that are predetermined. The pandemic triggers I use are tied to the behavior of the virus. As it advances, I advance my plan. This way, I can approach preparation in a rational way that avoids wasteful spending.
Grattan Woodson, MD, FACP
Dr. Woodson maintains a website at
http://www.birdflumanual.com/default.asp
Where you can download many free resources. This is, however, a commercial website, and serves as a launch pad for his book, The Bird Flu Manual. That said, Dr. Woodson has proven to be a tireless and generous contributor to the avian flu community, and I recommend a visit to his website.
