Disease Control After Hurricane Katrina
Rebuilding America’s Atlantis, part two
Remembering the basics in the City that Care Forgot
There are two kinds of threats inherent to any natural disaster: Those you CAN control and those you CAN’T. Both exist in New Orleans right now. Among those that can’t be controlled are the actions of others or nature itself. However, beyond falling prey to looters and thugs (or snakes and gators), there’s a whole universe of threats those affected by Hurricane Katrina can control their risks of – namely, disease and poisoning.
The 3 keys to minimizing risks of these are: Sanitation, disinfection, and avoiding exposure.
Currently, the CDC is recommending NO contact with flood waters of any type. This is a wise policy, but perhaps impossible for people in those areas still flooded out. Therefore, a great first step would be to use hip waders, rubber gloves (the thick kind crabbers and lobstermen use would be great), and breathing masks at all times to avoid exposure to infections, toxins, or the spores, molds, and fungi the near-tropical Louisiana climate will inevitably spawn
Beyond this, Big Easy residents who want to stay alive and healthy need to do 5 things (if they can’t stay away for now, that is):
- Eat ONLY canned food and drink ONLY bottled water to avoid toxins and contaminants most “purified” water will still contain.
- Liberally use bleach and hydrogen peroxide to disinfect eating, bathing, and living areas to cut down on germ-borne illnesses like salmonella and dysentery.
- Contain all waste in airtight canisters or jumbo ziplock bags. This will help stop the spread of parasites and microbes like E. coli.
- Avoid running power generators inside or upwind of your home or living area. This CDC-recommended step will cut the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.
- Stock up and use liberally insect repellants with 100% DEET to help stop the likely spread of mosquito-borne fevers and illnesses like West Nile Virus.
Of course, there are some other common-sense things returning New Orleans residents can do, but the above list will guard against most anything that can harm you in the air or water.
Things that can harm you on the ground are another matter – and there’s only one solution. Find out what I mean in the final chapter of this 3-part essay, in the next Daily Dose
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Bonfire of the insanities
How’s this for a logical extension of the government’s bungling of the Katrina disaster: Instead of being airdropped into hardest-hit disaster zones or handed out by patrolling National Guard units, hundreds of tons of perfectly safe, preserved food donated by Great Britain for disaster relief are instead scheduled to be BURNED.
That’s right – according to the UK Mirror, the foodstuffs (which cost British taxpayers millions of Pounds) have been condemned and consolidated at an Arkansas incineration facility after being declared by U.S. FDA bureaucrats as “unfit for consumption.”
The foods in questions are sterile, safe, high-quality NATO military rations – the same ones British troops in Iraq chow down on by the thousands every day, and exactly the kind of reasonably healthy, no-cooking-required food best suited to crises. Yet the Feds are impounding over 400,000 desperately needed rations of the stuff simply because of the infinitesimally remote risk that some of the ones containing meat could pose a risk of Mad Cow disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or BSE).
This is ludicrous! For one thing, Mad Cow isn’t just a “British beef” problem anymore. As diseases will, it has spread all over the globe – including to America and Canada. Secondly, the animal tissues affected by BSE, namely the brain and spinal column, aren’t those used in foods. And thirdly, I’m not sure if anyone knows whether Mad Cow disease can even withstand the freeze-drying (or whatever other kind of processing) military rations undergo.
But even if there WERE a one-in-a-million Mad Cow risk from these rations (there isn’t, though – otherwise British troops would be developing it in large numbers), the greater good is still served by distributing them in the Katrina-ravaged zone. Isn’t it? Similar donations of rations from other European countries have also been impounded, and are scheduled for the torch.
Oh, the insanity, er – the humanity?
Burning mad about government’s blunders,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
