How to survive the coming pandemic

Wretched, terrible, destructive year, the remnants of the people alone remain."

An infected aeroplane passenger could bring a pandemic across the world in less than 24 hours. Such is the speed and convenience of air travel. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimated that 4 billion passengers used aviation in 2017 alone.

It was the international disease gripped planet Earth during the Middle Ages. In just four years, from 1341 to 1351, the Black Death killed up to 200 million people in Europe, with the disease steadily advancing west across the Continent. As a fifteen-year-old, princess Joan of England was to be betrothed to Peter of Castile. As Joan of England disembarked at Bordeaux she ignored the warnings of Bordeaux’s mayor, Raymond de Bisquale that the Black Death had gripped Bordeaux.

The royal castle where the princess and her entourage had lodged were surrounded by hundreds of decomposing corpses of the pestilence. Those still in the Black Death's grip showed tell-tale signs of infection: buboes, often painful and swollen lymph nodes as large as chicken eggs under the armpits. Those sick people were coughing up blood, lying prostrate from the fatigue of struggling with the plague before collapsing and dying in the street.

During the Great Plague of 1665-1666, the most deadly to affect England since the Black Death of 1348, opportunist quacks began peddling pills and potions, like this one advertised circa 1670. Source: British Library

Not even royalty was spared: Joan of England died after contracting the plague, changing the course of European royalty. One English survivor of the plague, reflecting on the Black Death in 1348-1349 scrawled on a church wall in St Mary's, Ashwell, Hertfordshire, "Wretched, terrible, destructive year, the remnants of the people alone remain."

The next black death could catch us all unaware. A major pandemic the likes that we have not seen nor experienced could cripple nations, shuttering major facilities, closing cities, and causing anarchy.

During World War II, authorities issued millions of gas masks to all British citizens fearing they would be attacked by gas bombs. Masks were carried at all times, and quickly pulled out during regular gas drills. Today's equivalent for a pandemic event might be an n95 respirator.

The trends of globalisation are increasing the risk of the emergence or re-emergence of zoonotic disease due to the movement of people and goods. Bill Gates has repeatedly warned that the world is not ready and that a global pandemic could kill as many as 30 million people in a timeframe of just six months.

A pandemic could be a natural occurrence or be due to the evil of bioterrorism. Even the Black Death was used by the Tatars as a biological weapon. The Tatars ordered cadavers riddled with the pestilence to  be catapulted over the city walls in the siege of Caffa in 1346. 

We are also in an age where antimicrobial resistance is threatening the effectiveness of antibiotics. Before antibiotics, bacterial disease meant higher mortality than is contemplated today. Further to that is the effect that climate change is having in disturbing hidden viruses and bacteria such as smallpox and anthrax. The pathogenesis for zoonoses (animal diseases that can infect humans) is attributable to our longstanding interactions with wild and farmed animals.

In 2009, Mexico City shut down schools, cinemas, restaurants, gyms and public facilities like museums and libraries to minimise the spread of H1N1 flu.

You may be asking what this has to do with the Identity Strategist.

It is about being strategic about your choices and taking advantage of circumstances as they arise or before certain events occur. CSL (ASX: CSL) made record profits on the hysteria of the Swine Flu outbreak in 2009. In 2014, during the Ebola outbreak, there was a rush of investor activity into trades of publicly-listed Ebola vaccine developers.

It is recognising that a catastrophic pandemic event will cause anarchy in every affected place, shut down roads and airports. A panicked populace will clean out stockpiles of canned goods, bottled water and cleaning products. Sick people will increase the chances of widespread infection. Supermarkets and pharmacies will be sold out of stockpiles of vaccines and probiotics. Businesses, schools and shops will be restricted or whole cities even closed.

There are three main things you can do to prepare for such a possibility:

1. Having a plan - you should know what to do when someone in the home becomes sick and know what essential services are available in a crisis. Your plan might also mean knowing how you could benefit from the crisis - from investing in certain stocks that have the technical know-how and whose core business is disease management and control.
2. Stocking up on essentials - now and not when it's too late (you may be housebound for several weeks until the disease is under control). This might include food and medicine, including prescription medicines that are useful in fighting opportunistic infections or supportive medicines during an illness.
3. Controlling the spread of infection - basic hygiene will minimise the chance of becoming infected. This could include being up to date with the most relevant vaccinations.

We may not know when the next pandemic will strike, but preparing for the worse will put you in the best position.