How to Stay Healthy During a Pandemic
- In This Quick Guide:
- The Danger Is In the Dose
- Flu Shots
- Hygiene Habits
- Stay Home
Pandemics are the most far-reaching of all the disasters, having global effects and inconceivable death tolls. And yet, you can do a number of things to prepare for the coming pandemic that will minimize the effects and may even help you and your family stay alive and healthy.
The Danger Is In the Dose
The key to avoiding the disease in the first place is to decrease your exposure. Even if you’re not vaccinated, it’s possible for you to develop immunity. The ideal of immunization is to expose yourself to enough of the bug to trigger your immune system.
The key is to do two things. Most importantly, you need to decrease your personal exposure level by doing things such as bumping elbows rather than shaking hands, not sharing glasses, and washing your hands frequently. This reduces the likelihood of encountering viruses.
In addition, if you and everyone else cover their mouths when sneezing, the chance of exposure to stray viral particles is reduced. In fact, this can work out for a whole group: by reducing overall exposure, lots of people have a chance to build up immunity through exposure to just enough virus. (Along the same lines, if everyone in a group gets immunized, the number of people who can get the flu and then pass it on to other people is markedly reduced. This is known as herd immunity.)
Flu Shots
Flu shots are a good idea. The standard flu vaccine contains an inactive (killed) virus that triggers your immune system to develop antibodies. The types of viruses that appear in the vaccine are two type A viruses and a type B virus. (The type C virus isn’t included in the vaccine because it’s rarely life-threatening.) These viruses are chosen six to nine months before the vaccine is released based on information about the strains of flu that are likely to infect people.
You should get vaccinated as soon as the vaccine becomes available. It takes two weeks after vaccination for your body’s immune system to kick into gear. Getting a flu shot early on will give you protection during the height of the flu season. (Children younger than nine years old who haven’t been vaccinated before are likely to need a second dose in a month to make sure their immune systems figure out what to do.)
After you’re vaccinated, you’re ready for the flu viruses you’re most likely to encounter for the whole flu season. You need to get vaccinated each year against the latest varieties of viruses. And even if you’ve been vaccinated, you can still get the flu in several cases:
- If you catch the flu while your body’s still developing antibodies after a vaccination
- If the flu virus you’re exposed to isn’t the same one as you were vaccinated for
- If your immune system is compromised because of youth, age, or another condition (such as diabetes)
The good news is that if you get the flu after you’ve been vaccinated, the chances are good that it will be much milder than it would have been otherwise. This may not be much comfort when you’re feeling sick, but it’s true.
Hygiene Habits
Flu viruses are transmitted either by respiratory droplets from coughing or sneezing or by touching something with the virus on it. When the virus enters your system, it multiplies rapidly and you start developing symptoms within one to three days.
The basic rules of hygiene and cold prevention you learned as a child are all the sanitation knowledge you need to keep from getting the flu. First, wash your hands. You should wash your hands whenever you do the following:
- Touch something that may have been infected.
- Go to the bathroom.
- Before and after dressing a cut, wound, or other break in the skin.
- Blow your nose, cough, sneeze, or brush your teeth.
- Touch something that’s not itself reasonably clean (including garbage, animals, and animal waste).
- Before preparing food and after touching raw meat or fish.
- Before eating.
- After changing a diaper or cleaning up a child who’s gone to the bathroom.
- Before and after touching anyone sick.
Most people don’t wash their hands very well. Start by wetting your hands with clean running water. Use warm or hot water if possible. Apply soap to both hands, then rub your hands together until you form a lather. Scrub all surfaces on your hands, including under the nails, for at least 20 seconds. (Many people will sing to themselves: a couple verses of “Happy Birthday” or “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” work, but feel free to suit your own musical tastes.) Rinse your hands thoroughly in running water and then dry them completely using a paper towel or air dryer. If you use a paper towel, turn off the faucet using the paper towel.
Hand-sanitizing gels and creams use alcohol to sterilize. They’re not as good as soap and water—your hands will be sterile but not necessarily clean—but they’ll do in a pinch. Put a small squirt of sanitizer on your palms, then rub your hands together briskly. Be sure that you get sanitizer over all the surfaces of your hands and fingers and keep rubbing until the sanitizer dries.
Second, cover your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze so you don’t spread germs or viruses. For example, the flu virus is particularly hardy. It spreads primarily by being inhaled and the virus remains infectious for up to 24 hours after someone sneezes. Minimizing the droplets of virus people might encounter is a very good technique for preventing disease. Particles can travel as fast as 100 m.p.h. when you sneeze.
Covering your mouth and nose with your hands when you cough or sneeze isn’t effective. You just create a cloud of droplets around your head. The best way to cover your mouth and nose is by tucking your face into the crook of your arm. This aims droplets down rather than outward.
Finally, keep things clean. This includes anything you’re likely to touch that someone else may touch. During flu season, you may want to carry sanitizing wipes, a pocket hand sanitizing gel, and a small container of Lysol or disinfectant spray.
Stay Home
Working at home is a good way to keep yourself away from potentially infectious people and things. If you’re isolated from other people, you minimize opportunities to get sneezed on or near and to touch anything that was handled by someone infectious. Parents with children will have a harder time isolating themselves because kids that go to school will get exposed to everything fairly quickly and then bring it home. If you can, get your child’s homework from their teacher and keep them at home until whatever bug is going around passes.
All this is a lot of work, but it’s actually fairly effective at preventing not only the flu, but the common cold, staph, strep, E. coli, and any other pandemic that you’re better off without as well. Be well, and stay healthy!
From The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Disaster Preparedness by Dr. Maurice A. Ramirez, DO, and John Hedtke
