Warning: This is not a happy post today. I just want you to be prepared.
I am starting to wonder -- in the dim recesses of my quiet mind -- if the Universe is against me EVER moving to Paris. Up until now, I have been stubbornly committed to my desire to move to Paris, come hell or high water, despite the fact that it doesn't seem to be happening as fast as I would like and despite dire warnings from family members about terrorism, French rioting, and any number of other objections they have raised at the very idea of me choosing to live so far away in a non-English-speaking country.
If I had the financial reserves in place, I'd BE there already, and money is truly my only real obstacle to immediate relocation. So I'm constantly working and trying to make more money and save more money and I'm basically doing all the right things. Yet I can't help but wonder why this is such a struggle when all I really want to do is make this one big dream in my life a reality. No one else is being hurt by it. It will be challenging but also good for me in many ways. It's nothing but positive, as far as I can see. So what's the problem? Why isn't it HAPPENING already?
For the most part when I get in that frame of mind, I just tell myself that it WILL happen because I'm so serious about doing it and it's what I want more than just about anything else in my life. But today, for the first time, I entertained a rather scary and frustrating thought. What if the reason this move to Paris isn't falling into place more easily is because maybe -- dare I even say it out loud? -- I'm not meant to be going there after all, at least not right now? Is the fact that it's NOT falling into place a sign that I'm not on the right track with my life?
I'm a big believer that when something is supposed to happen, then it will tend to happen almost effortlessly and things will just flow, without excessive struggle. And when things aren't flowing, and you find yourself constantly fighting an uphill battle and banging your head against the wall in frustration because no matter how hard you work or try, it just ain't happening, then it usually means it's just not the right time or the right place or the right person or the right goal. And that surrender is then sometimes your best option.
Is the Universe now sending me a REALLY big sign that I need to table this idea of moving to Paris because things are about to occur on such a scale that I'm better off being right here, in boring old New Jersey, the place I now want to be far, far away from?
Here's why I am suddenly in this unpleasant frame of mind. I've been kind of blowing off all this talk of bird flu pandemic as being not so bad as the media wants us to believe. After all, most of us are aware that with 24-hour cable news, "journalism" has gone by the wayside in favor of ratings and making money. News is a business, not a public service. So the more sensationalistic the media can make a story, the more money they make. I also don't take my own government that seriously either, because I don't trust politicians, so even President Bush going on TV and talking about the possibility of a bird flu pandemic hasn't swayed my "oh, it won't be THAT bad" attitude. I've been pretty cavalier about the whole thing, hoping for the best but not really expecting the worst.
Until Oprah has now started focusing on it, first in her June "O" Magazine and then yesterday on her TV show. Oprah, in my mind, has more credibility than the American news machine and government put together. Because Oprah tends to try to inform people, not sensationalize, about issues no one else wants to talk about, I have a tendency to sit up and pay attention when she speaks.
Watching Oprah's show yesterday, it occurred to me for the first time that perhaps there is a bigger risk of pandemic than I wanted to believe was possible before now. The expert guest on the show, Dr. Osterholm, was someone who seemed to really know his stuff, and if his concerns are to be believed then the world IS due for some kind of flu pandemic, and if it's not from this avian flu strain then it will be some other type of flu, because historically we've had one about every 30-60 years. The last one was in 1968-69. There was one in the 1950's. And in 1918 there was a whopper that killed between 20 and 40 MILLION people world-wide.
In a pandemic, the government is basically telling us that we'll be on our own to a large extent because medical and other services will be totally overwhelmed in any community or city hit by flu, for maybe 6-8 weeks. Picture it: people won't want to go to their jobs if they don't have the flu because they won't want to risk getting it, or if they do have it they'll be too sick to work and won't want to give it to others. If people don't go to work, who will grow, harvest, and ship fresh foods? No one. Who will manufacture and ship and distribute your important medications? No one. If you need medical treatment, who will help you if the hospitals are already overwhelmed and doctors and nurses themselves are sick or dying from the flu? Who will bury the dead? Who will keep the electricity, water, phone and sewage facilities running? How will you and your family survive if you are unable to leave your home for many weeks at a time and the every day technology and services we all take for granted are temporarily out of commission? And don't forget the catastrophic economic impact on a global scale... if businesses are shut down for a long stretch because of flu or because those businesses can't get the raw goods and supplies they need in their manufacturing chains, personal and corporate and government economies will be in serious trouble.
During the last big pandemic in 1918, the world wasn't as reliant on technology as it is now. There was no air travel, for one thing, and travel by land and sea was something few people did... so contagious diseases didn't spread then they way they will now -- and 20-40 million (or 50-100 million depending on what source you read) people still died of that flu. With avian flu, not only do we have the potential for the flu to spread worldwide due to bird migration, but in the event that the bird flu mutates into a form that can be transmitted human-to-human, then we're in big trouble because our global population is so mobile now. You know how when you fly on a plane, you often get a cold afterward because you're trapped on that airplane for hours with recycled air and some germy sick person? Yeah, well, guess how any flu pandemic will be transmitted the fastest.
If you really want to scare the living shit out of yourself and imagine a worst-case scenario, read Stephen King's The Stand, or go rent the DVD of the TV miniseries, because that book is based on what might happen in the world if one of our own biological warfare germs accidentally 'escaped' (with a bit of King's usual supernatural stuff thrown in for good measure of course). In the book, the germ in question created what they called a "Superflu", one that mutated so quickly and had such a high communicability and mortality rate (like 97%) that within a month of the "accident" only about 3% of the people were left standing. (King's description of the symptoms of this Superflu and the speed and violence with which people caught it and died from it sounds quite a bit like the descriptions of the 1918 epidemic... which makes me think King probably got his research from the 1918 event.) In the aftermath, the survivors had to figure out how to continue to live in a world without electricity and the usual modern conveniences and without law enforcement or authority, and they had to try and rebuild their lives and society in general, when not all of the survivors were the "good guys". Granted, it's Stephen King's imagination doing its worst, but the fact is that it's a pretty accurate picture of how bad things could be if the things we take for granted every day break down.
And if you think something like a pandemic can't happen, you're kidding yourself as much as I have been. Pandemics can and will happen and no amount of medical science will ever prevent it. And if it happens, you can forget being able to rely on the authorities to save you because they will have their hands full. Don't forget -- we had a recent first-hand view of that very type of thing in New Orleans last September after Katrina. We thought we'd never see the like of that happening in this country, we thought our government would always be able to protect us and help us in a disaster... but the truth is, the government is made up of human beings who get scared and sick just like the rest of us, and to a large degree it will be our own responsibility to fend for ourselves for at least a little while until the pandemic passes -- and it eventually will.
So what does all this have to do with my frustration about moving to Paris? Well, it was when I heard that bird flu might reach the United States this coming fall. And that there might be a period of up to 18 months of having to worry about it. My hope had been that I would be able to at least travel to Paris for a few weeks this fall to do a little pre-moving research and prep, and also travel around Europe to get material to write my next book, the one based on my grandmother's travels. But if bird flu is prevalent in Europe by that time, and already hitting the U.S., I suspect it might not be such a hot idea to plan to travel because I'd be putting myself at greater risk. (And one of the things that expert on Oprah said is that with this flu, unlike the regular type of flu we're used to, the most at-risk group is between age 20-40 or thereabouts -- it has something to do with the fact that we ARE healthier and this flu mutates or something like that, so your healthy immune system goes into overdrive.) And that Tamiflu stuff everyone is already trying to stockpile? They're not even sure it's going to do a bit of good. I work part-time in a pharmacy and there is no regular flu right now... so why are all these people getting prescriptions filled for Tamiflu?
When I realized that it's very possible that over the next 1-2 years the world will be coping with a global health crisis unlike anything that has been seen before, and I thought about being away from my family and friends alone in another country... all of a sudden I started to wonder, "Is THAT why I'm not making faster progress with this goal? Is this the Universe's way of telling me I need to be home so I can be with and support and survive with my family?"
I don't have the answer to that. Part of my brain still doesn't want to believe that something that big could happen... or that I don't have total and complete control over my world. This is what happens with our big dreams. We can have them and plan for them and cherish them, and more often than not they will come to pass. But not always on OUR time schedule.
Paris will still be Paris and I will continue to plan to move there. But I can't shush that little voice in the back of my mind that is whispering to me: "Before you plan to move to Paris, maybe you should plan how you're going to prepare for a flu pandemic." Paranoid? Or just being sensible and going into it with my eyes open? I guess time will tell.
But did you notice if you take the "dem" out of PANDEMIC, all you've got left is pure PANIC?
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More on Bird Flu and how to prepare:
- International Herald Tribune article: U.N. says Bird Flu under-reported in many countries
- World Health Organization: Avian Influenza Resources
- Ten Things You Need to Know
- About Avian Influenza and more articles
