Emergency Skills

[FreeBird122020]

Everyone knows that we are in the midst of a declared Global Health Emergency. Not quite yet a Pandemic. Every day worse than the last.

I think, having observed the diversity and intelligence brought to almost anything outdoors related, that this forum has something to offer to the problems posed in the attempts to deal with CORVID-19. I am not a doctor. I was a rural MO in Queensland and elsewhere, did private GP a bit, but mostly rural hospital work in ED, inpatients and sometimes anaesthetics and aerial retrieval. I have social anxiety, and Queensland Health does not like its faults pointed out.So, no longer a doctor.

I still love the outdoors. Whitewater kayaking in particular is my bag, I'll take sea kayaking and alpine hiking too.

Sorry to post this as late as I have. From the day China created the cordon sanitaire to contain more than 10 million citizens, I felt sure we, in Australia, needed to get ready. You, the bushwalk community, are a powerful tool for ideas and problem solving.

How would you prepare for yourselves, your families and your communities?

[Moondog55]

Well as I think I have already had it, naturally undiagnosed, I am doing nothing out of the ordinary.
But I don't like crowds myself so avoiding crowded places comes quite easily

[Gadgetgeek]

One of the youtubers I follow is Beau of The Fifth Column. Not his real name, TFC is his news outlet. Former security contractor turned conflict journalist, and very "Florida man" He's political, but really digs into nuance, shares ideas rather than pushing an opinion. Anyway, he's full black-flag anarchist, so community is one of his big focuses. Local support for local crisis, helping your neighbors etc.

If this thing goes really bad, I doubt we will loose the basic services like power and water (though there may be limiting), the fatality numbers have to get pretty extreme before stuff like that happens (double digit fatality rates, and high infection rate) but other services, schools, hospitals, and general services like that will get stressed. So I think this is where knowing your neighbors and being in that bushwalking mindset can really help. Even if you don't think you have that many useful skills, consider what you do on a group walk. Someone should be asking about rest breaks, does anyone have any hotspots, how's that pack feeling, did you drop this... Those sorts of little things can help the people beside you. Maybe someone in your very close area cannot get to the shops easily without strapping a bunch of kids into a car, being able to get a few things for them could be the thing that helps keep them safer. Odds are good that deliveries and such will continue to happen, but not everyone is comfortable with that. Knowing that things are available also keeps people from feeling like they need to hoard.

Cooking, meal planning, and food storage are things that many of us have learned "the hard way" maybe there is a power outage, the bushwalker is likely to have a better idea of not only what and how to keep cooking, but also how to get the maximum efficiency from the fuel they have. Yes, you can boil noodles in a pot directly on the BBQ hotplate, but is that the best way to accomplish that? Maybe you have gasbottle service, do you "need" hot water, or is it possibly a good idea to let the hot water tank go cold, and save that fuel for cooking? Lots of people have at least a little metho in their home for cleaning, but how many know how to make a tuna-can burner?

These are things that to a bushwalker are part of the process, if you took a list of all your resources, and how to stretch them, you would probably come to these same conclusions. What about your neighbors? What do you have that you can pool together to make sure everyone is okay? Maybe your street has limited skillsets that are "useful" but I bet those folks are telecommuting and might need help with some other things. Maybe your neighbor is actually a really skilled tradie and can do a lot, but needs tasks and a planner? Many people have just never planned every meal and snack for a week, let alone for longer, or for a group of people. But maybe one of them has.
I'm guessing that many of the folks on this site have some reasonable first aid training, and decent kits. More than that, I bet many have handled wound care for a few days on their own, maybe longer. That's scary to a lot of people. Wounds need doctors, and what happens if that little cut can't be seen by a doctor? Does that person really need to risk going in for a tetanus shot if the doctors office is full of people with coughs and sneezes? Or can you tell if an infection is starting to go bad, so that you can help that person get to help rather than letting the fear hold them back? I bet many people here could. Or maybe its as simple as knowing who down your street has more knowledge about a thing and helping connect the person who can help with the person who needs it?

This is going to get worse before it gets better, and we will decide what the new normal looks like afterwards. Lets make it a normal that we aspire to, not the one based on fear. The response to the fires was amazing, and a lot of us could help while staying safe. We don't get the option this time.

This vid was done just post Hurricane Michael (2018) and he caught the edge of it. Worth a listen I think
https://youtu.be/1BMl6phxWpU

[CraigVIC]

Surely if it becomes wide spread in the community it will become a case of good luck more than anything else to avoid catching it. Certainly for people living in cities.

[Moondog55]

Really bad is the Black Death.
This is not going to be anything like that. Distrusting government and politicians to the max most of me thinks this is nothing but a beat-up to scare us and keep us compliant and subservient. When they start bulldozing mass burial pits in the Domain I'll start to worry

[Gadgetgeek]

Really bad is the Black Death.
This is not going to be anything like that. Distrusting government and politicians to the max most of me thinks this is nothing but a beat-up to scare us and keep us compliant and subservient. When they start bulldozing mass burial pits in the Domain I'll start to worry

The only problem with that is that it leads to y2k thinking. If we take it seriously and everything goes right, then we have little to worry about, and thus no proof that it could have been bad. If we don't take it seriously and it goes wrong, by the time we know that, its too late. What will Australia do if a large scale war breaks out in central europe? What will it do if the US fractures? The illness on its own isn't the problem, but might be an ignition source, and the world is plenty full of tinder.
I can get behind the distrust, the boy has cried wolf enough times in the past, but this wolf has a really good press agent.

The Inuit have a "tradition" if food gets scarce, the elders, when all their knowledge has been passed down to the next generation, walk out on the ice alone. I get the appeal of the noble sacrifice or heading off into the woods knowing that the end will find one sooner rather than later. But at the same time, the path of the individualist is not the path towards a better society. Part of the problem we have now is the "got mine, screw you" mentality of the industrial age. I'm not going to judge the person who decides its time to leave civilization behind, but I'm not quite ready to give up on it yet. The whole is made of the parts, and what happens when the smaller community circles realize they need more local guidance?

[Gadgetgeek]

Surely if it becomes wide spread in the community it will become a case of good luck more than anything else to avoid catching it. Certainly for people living in cities.

True, but if all those cases happen over 12 months instead of 12 weeks, its a much different story.

[Moondog55]

To the best of my knowledge that "Inuit tradition" is more an urban myth than anything else.
The true urban emergency seems to be running out of toilet paper but they keep delivering advertising so I think I'll cope.
I do think we need to; in many respects; return to the 1950s and bring back all those signs that exhorted people to "Wash your hands" and put soap dispensers back in all the public toilets and stop being filthy pigs in public with many more toilets available etc.

[Son of a Beach]

The only problem with that is that it leads to y2k thinking. If we take it seriously and everything goes right, then we have little to worry about, and thus no proof that it could have been bad.

I'm going way off topic, and I'm in general agreement with why you said this. However, from the perspective of somebody who worked in a large IT department in the late 1990's, there was an enormous amount of proof that y2k could have been bad. But because the vast majority of it was fixed in time, it mostly went well, and people think it was all a beat up. Nobody wants to hear about the plethora of bugs found and fixed during the many years and millions of dollars worth of testing and fixing that went on. Even with all of that work, testing, fixing, I know of at least 2 y2k issues where I worked that were not fixed and only found afterwards when things went wrong (interestingly, one of them was a 2 digit year bug, and one was a no leap year bug - so both of the anticipated y2k bugs).

...and now back to your regular program...

[Moondog55]

I don't remember people hoarding toilet paper in the lead-up to Y2K tho.
I also know that it was a real problem and things were done to obviate it by good government spending and actual good policy.
I see no good government in the current beat-up, just smoke and mirrors and photo opportunities

[ribuck]

I also know that it was a real problem and things were done to obviate it by good government spending and actual good policy.

As a software developer in the 1980s, I was already making sure my code was Y2K compliant. Some of my competitors, who had been writing quick-and-nasty code that was destined to fail, received taxpayer money to fix their crappy software. A "good policy" would have been to let each non-compliant business clean up their own mess (or fail), then in future everyone would have insisted on better quality from their software developers. Cultural change always has better long-term effects than top-down control.


Anyway, if the health services become overwhelmed by this current crisis, I might "go bush" for an extended period. There's nowhere safer than the bush during a pandemic.

[Gadgetgeek]

My reference to Y2K was more of a shorthand for a type of problem. I appreciate the comments surrounding it though, as I know a lot of people who still think it was no big thing. And I know people who found out the hard way that not all the bugs were found in time.
Comparing emergencies, I've not seen TP be the sell-out item here on the Sunny Coast in 9 years I've been here. Two "major" storms near by, and two rounds of pretty severe fires, this last year being the worst. I've seen water be hard to get, even though we've never gone to a boil water advisory (and empty jugs were available during that time I'm sure). Some canned goods. During the fires, due to highway closures we had limited supplies of eggs and chicken. I've seen the BBQ area get cleaned out harder before Aussie day. Shortages in general are a new thing, and that freaks people out.
Also, just tracking by age, I remember SARS, and due to having medical people in the family got more info after it had pretty well died down than most people. I was about to graduate highschool at that time. MERS was a blip on the radar, though it was bad in some parts of the world, it didn't spread as far, as fast, and in 2012 there was still a bit more trust in the news. Now we have a bunch of people (a generation really, many who have kids now) for whom this is their first pandemic, we now have news from all over the world via our social media and a news system that we do not trust. A massive cultural divide in which news to trust between generations, and just a hunch, but I bet that there are a lot of millennial that no longer trust the opinions of anyone older than them. The reality is that apart from a few lost homes, we have not had that bad of incidents around here for a long time, and there was always help coming. Now people are realizing that help isn't coming, but no one has taught them how to deal with this. I know people trying to convince older relatives to cancel travel plans, and wondering what happens if they are not successful.

Maybe it comes from having a job for a long time where dealing with other people's fear was such a key part of it, I can't laugh at the "stupid sheeple" anymore. The fact that so few people have someone to reach out to for comfort and advice just hurts. I don't know, I think its just one more sign of how not functional the system is.

[FreeBird122020]

Thank you for tackling this issue so well and so promptly. In Tasmania, I fear we are on the cusp of something much worse than we can imagine. Hospitals literally roadblocked and multi ramping of ambulances is normal operating procedure. I fear the worst, and don't know what that might amount to. We shall see in due course.
I generally see things as Gadgetgeek has opined. There has been too much sleep walking and plain wrong assumptions in thinking about this Global Health Emergency.

As an aside, I really liked the movie The Men Who Stare at Goats. Then I decided to read the 'novel". It was very different to the movie. About half way in, I did a bit of googling. And, OMG! It's a non-fiction account of a journalist's attempt to look into the USA psyops programs over a few decades. Maybe right up Beau's alley? I have read a few John Pilger books in my time.

I hope my family and neighbors pull together. I want a "FOOD DRIVE B4 COVID-19 to fall into place.(there are many working poor in Tassie, let alone the homeless and poverty stricken.) An emergent Neighborhood Watch may be important, if things get more desperate than a shortage of TP what would that look like ?. We all need to instigate the right conversations to get our respective communities united before COVID-19 makes it too hard. We all have skill sets. Let's find out who can contribute for the greater good. If we had a bushfire everyone would pull together. This time we have to pull together first and not too late.

Back to google. ABC news Hobart is OK. Try G of coronavirus plus or minus say Singapore and follow the Straits Times. Guardian, BBC, NYTimes all good.
Type in CIDRAP. Try EMCRIT.ORG COVID-19. Do not do this at bedtime. Stuff fake news. Listen to the experts. It is thought that COVID-19 will go down more like the 'Spanish Flu', than any other recent historical contagion event, at least in my opinion. Again. Not a doctor.
Let's keep thinking and asking google the right questions.

[FreeBird122020]

A small question as a new member. I could not find this topic from the main forum index. Please show me as a Newbie, where it is placed , forum/topic wise.

[Son of a Beach]

If you look near the bottom-left of this page, it shows which forum it it in: "Return to Between Bushwalks".

Also, near the top-left, it shows a breadcrumbs trail of links to all of the parent forums: Board index ‹ Side Track ‹ Between Bushwalks

(Although if you're using a small/mobile device, these features may not be visible.)

So it's in the "Between Bushwalks" forum.

[andrewa]

Oh well. I am a doctor - one of those “frontline” GPs, apparently!

I feel that we (GPs) have had minimal Government support to date, except for the new “fever/Covid19” clinics, which have given me a backstop over the last week or so, and we have had lousy provision if useful information, despite the twice weekly long winded emails. I’ve received 2 boxes of masks! But I did get a phone call today asking whether I needed any more masks or hand sanitiser.

My personal anxiety is low. I’m in good health. My patient anxiety is very high. I look after a wealthy subgroup, whose anxiety seems directly related to their potential lack of ability to enjoy their wealth!

I think that my many years in the bush , along with my self reliant (single child, self employed, and no doubt somewhere on the spectrum!) personality has assisted with me with all this.

My wife is anxious about food/supplies/toilet paper etc. Maybe it’s a mothering thing? I don’t get it.

If we can’t shop for specific items for whatever reason, we have enough at home to “concoct” some calorific intake if needed. It may not taste great, but I don’t care.

I would presume that many of us would be quite content with some weasel infested flour, and some mouse chewed noodles,if we actually were hungry, and that was all we had. Plus, some of us have the subcutaneous fat stores, which will help!

Having just spent a wonderful 10 days flyfishing and bushwalking in NZ, where we actually ran short of food, our major stresses at the time were not food, but lighting a fire in the rain, and not falling off cliffs whilst navigating along the river. Shelter and warmth could have been on the agenda, but our gear was fine.

On reflection, maybe my lack of anxiety relates to my situation as an ?older (57yo) GP and being used to the outdoors? I’ve seen most things, and not yet died from my time in the outdoors. I’m also a fatalist, and, if I happened to die from some disease, would just accept that that was life’s lot.

There you are!

A

[Moondog55]

I'm getting a mind picture here of a barrel of mustilids romping in a barrel all coated in white stuff
Best finger fart I've seen in ages
Well Done Andrew

[wildwanderer]

At the moment I think the most translatable skills between bushwalking and the current emergency are

- Planning skills. Foods (how to live on longer life food, not wasting foods), what equipment is essential, what is not. What do I need to be safe. All the things we do to prepare for a trip. Those skills will come in handy.

- Ability to be comfortable alone or in a small party. Social distancing will be a thing for a couple of months.

- Ability to deal with hardships and the unexpected. On a bushwalk sometimes things don’t always go to plan. Same with now.

- and if you have ever done a hut to hut walk you will know the importance of good hygiene.. vigourous hand washing with soap

Wishing everyone on the forums well and the best of luck.


As for what the government and broader community leaders should do....

I would be looking to the countries that have been successfully controlling this as the example.
Singapore, China, Hong Kong. Our government already sounds defeated..and now in panic prevention mode. like the large epidemic is inevitable and they will only scale measures up as it becomes worse... What they should be doing is enacting strict measures now to prevent!! it becoming worse. Like Singapore has done for example.

Why we have not repurposed a few factories for 24/7 mask, soap and sanitizer production and then for mass distribution I will never understand. Even if masks are not currently made in Australia surely it cant be that hard to set up production.. Its not rocket science. 3d printing if needed. Giving them out for people using public transport especially in peak hour would be a huge help to prevent spread.

Masks do work, 4 times less likely to be infected by respiratory type illnesses and most importantly they have a essential role in preventing people who are already infected passing it on to others (especially those who dont know they are infected yet!). What’s another difference between countries that are successfully controlling this and Australia. They are all wearing masks! The reason the governments are saying they are not necessary is because they need to preserve the masks they do have for medical staff if this becomes a full blown epidemic. They need to prevent hoarding and rightfully so.

Sources. My partner is a senior surgical nurse working in a hospital. A close friend of mine works in ED. Both know a lot about infection control. Also.
https://www.abc.net.au/health/talkinghe ... 556226.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... ts-checked

[wildwanderer]

Some more thoughts

We are going to have a mass of casuals out of work soon. Use this labour to ramp up the coronavirus response. Would also help inspire the nation. All working together to fight it. Sort of like the RFS but paid.

- Need more online delivery drivers for Coles and Woolworths and other retailers. Government why not set up mass truck driving tuition and licensing programs now.. we are going to need more truck/ delivery drivers.

- our food bowl regions are going to need more pickers/workers as the foreign tourists are not here anymore. Plan now with infection control so people can go to a farming region and not bring the infection with them.

- More orderlies/admin people for hospitals and fever clinics. Save the nurses for the job of caring for patients not processing them.

- employ casuals as case tracers. As cases rise it becomes more burdensome to case trace and isolate contacts(which is critical to stop an epidemic). To say we will come to a point where we have to many cases to case trace is defeatest and is not the experience in South Korea. Where case tracing is saving lives and holding the epidemic at bay.

- Build temporary hospitals now in the areas set to be worst effected. (I’m sure there are plenty of casual labourers who could be employed). China built a hospital in 7 days.. and having watched construction sites in Australia is amazing how fast prefabricated temporary buildings can be set up.

- set up factories making protective medical gear. Likely the private sector could do it faster and more efficiently so shout from the rooftops that you need industry to step up. Gov is apparently asking but there is nothing on https://www.aigroup.com.au/ or https://www.industry.gov.au/ on what is needed and who to contact. I’m sure there are many jobs in those factories that after a couple of weeks training an unemployed casual could make a valuable contribution. This virus is here with us for months.

- I don’t know if we have the tech/skills/materials to manufacturer ventilators quickly in numbers but if it’s at all possible that’s what we should do. For sure can’t rely on overseas supply of the one good the entire world is scrambling to get.

- Employ people as random temperature monitors checking at entrances train, bus stations, airports and shopping centres. Fever is one of the first signs. Seeing temperature monitors in protective gear will educate people to take this seriously better than a pdf on some website. Random checking because you don’t want queues.

- Limit interstate passenger air travel now so you can contain the worst epidemic to a few states. (keep the goods flowing). Then the nurses and doctors of the less affected states can be sent to the most affected. Right now we are heading for every state to be affected more or less equally so we will have no surge capacity. Yes bail out the airlines.. we will need them after we get through this.

[Gadgetgeek]

WW, all sounds like some really good ideas. I hate to be cynical, but if those ideas are not already in play now, it means that no one up top has thought about it. Its not like this was unforeseeable, its never been a matter of if but when. And we could have had a turn-key solution in place, but instead, we have everyone looking out for their own. There is a really big bunch of rooms that could be turned into a care facility not too far from me, but ol' Clive probably doesn't want to make that donation for the common good. It'd actually make a good temporary situation for the folks who are going to be evicted shortly.

[FreeBird122020]

I would like to know from the major expeditioners on this forum, how they have planned and purchased expedition medical kits in the past. This is cheap and easy if you are working in a country hospital ( lots of out of date stuff and single use only suture kits among other treats ). I was always a fan of fixamol (ED duct tape ) and loose bags of compresses and the like. Being sutured to avoid a hospital may be life saving for months to come. Hibiclens also goes on atreat. It is always cheaper to build your own, or so I believe, but which suppliers have forum members had good results with. My local pharmacy is helping with this at present.

Much harder still is getting along with fellow travellers for months at a time. I knew I was never cut out for Antarctica as an MO, as much as I wanted to go. 20 days down the Grand Canyon is my longest trip with the same folks. It is hard to keep on getting on weeks at a time. What do people think about the art of not getting out of shape with fellow travellers over an impossibly long stretch of time. Clearly working together not against each other is paramount.

And lastly, how about a 'Wear your Buff to Work Day'? A half way step to mask wearing and a bit of a PR opportunity. Maybe keep it lower if doing some old school banking though!

[Moondog55]

I dunno about a buff but I just put my bandanna on prior to leaving the house.
Silk and one of those expenive designer scarves from Italy Hermes ? Or the other bloke
I think $4- in the local Op-Shop

[Gadgetgeek]

FreeBird, I've not had to buy major trauma kit stuff, just bulk first aid supplies. I've generally had good luck with the aussie suppliers, though some are more used to corporate accounts, they were always willing to be helpful. I've gotten stuff from Independence australia, they were a good source of Setopress bandages before the other marked bandages were commonly available. They carry mostly homecare stuff. Firstaidkitsaustralia.com.au has a sale on right now. Looks like the other top ones have had a run on sanitizer, but honestly if it comes to it, digger's metholated is 95% ethanol and a shot of Bitrex, so safe to add either glycerine or aloe to, to bring it down to the ideal 60-70%range. Most people are not going to be stocking up on wound care supplies, and given the delivery rate, I'm not either, if I have to do long term care on someone I'll order as needed.

Worst case for a major cut, as long as you can keep from leaking, if you have to splint it to keep it closed, its an option.

[FreeBird122020]

I will see how I get on with the pharmacy and their supply chain. They seemed to be familiar with industry requirements for building sites and long range tourers/Grey Nomads.
May have to phone a friend for some bits and pieces, if they even have the time for it. Let you know later if it comes together well.

[FreeBird122020]

WHO has a document available with directions for making 'backyard' hand sanitiser. I am rubbish at posting links, but google and you will find.

[andrewa]

Hi Freebird,

If you’ve been trained with “skills”, maybe now is the time to use them, rather than question them?

Reflect about being rational.

It’s essentially a flu like illness but with a 3-4% mortality, which is higher than normal

If everyone turned off their newsfeed, drowned their iPad, turned off their power, and got rid of devices, we’d be way better off.

The financial consequences of the ailment are going to be way worse than the actual health consequences.....but all driven by media hype.

Disclaimer....if I die at the “frontline” of healthcare (GP) , and I’ve got it wrong, then so be it. I’m dead. Not my problem!

A

[Moondog55]

You can't save everybody
Probably half of those over 80YO will be in serious trouble, triage has to start somewhere
Save your self Andrew
This is speaking as a 70YO with a 90YO mother

[Son of a Beach]

The financial consequences of the ailment are going to be way worse than the actual health consequences...

No doubt the financial consequences are going to be huge. Possibly worse than the Great Depression. I already know several people who've lost their full-time jobs (in retail). My wife's hours have been cut right back, and there is also potential for the company she works for to go under entirely and she would lose her job.

However, the actual health consequences, in my opinion, are somewhat more serious than this. Even now, it's to early to give accurate mortality rates, but as you said, it looks like 3-4%. For older people, it's close to 10% but even for middle aged people, it's 0.5-1%. It's an order of magnitude higher than for influenza, even for young people. For older people, it's several orders of magnitude higher.

This means there's a reasonable chance that at least somebody I know who is not elderly will die this year from COVID-19 (and a somewhat higher chance that an elderly relative/friend/acquaintance will die). That has not happened for the 'flu in my lifetime so far.

Its hard to compare financial consequences to health consequences. It's apples to oranges and opinion based to some extent. I guess "way worse" depends on people's personal priorities, but for me, if one or two friends die, that would be way worse than for many of them (and/or me and/or my wife) to be out of work for a year or so.

For me personally, I'm not too worried about either the financial or the health consequences to me personally. I know that happiness is entirely unrelated to wealth (and sometimes quite the inverse, according to some research) and I'm OK that my own life here is transitory.

comarison.png (20.1 KiB) Viewed 22204 times

Even ignoring the older people, the stats for the 40-60 year olds are seriously high (compared to 'flu).

[Moondog55]

You have to look on the positive side tho, if all the very old people in nursing homes do die than all the houses they own will get released into the market and with luck prices will fall.
But a 15% mortality rate actually says that 85% will survive and those are very good odds; because at that age anything can knock you off your perch quite easily.
Italy is in trouble because they are trying to save everybody.
Britain seems to have already decided to not do that, hence Boris Johnsons speech saying that a lot of people are going to die.
I wish our politicians had the guts to make a decision one way or the other and let us know

[Son of a Beach]

Italy is in trouble because they are trying to save everybody.
Britain seems to have already decided to not do that, hence Boris Johnsons speech saying that a lot of people are going to die.

Whatever strategy is followed, a lot of people are going to die ("a lot" being a relative term, of course). The primary mitigation strategy that most governments are using (eventually - and in some cases too late) is whatever it takes to slow the spread. So that the resources required to save lives are not as over-utilised as can be avoided. Ie, trying to reduce the number of people getting sick all at the same time and spread them out over a longer period of time. A lot of people will still die, but hopefully fewer than if they were all sick at the same time and medical facilities were even more overloaded at that time.