The Difference Between Life and Death: Outliving the Flu Pandemic of 2009

By Dennis Miner

This is a story of hope and survival. Self-reliance and traditional family values help our family to stick together and outlive the flu pandemic crisis. In the process of overcoming this struggle, our family becomes stronger, as does American society. Throughout this life changing experience, there are elements of self reliance, fear, death of a loved one, courage, family conflict, self preservation, life's lessons, going back to the simple basics, and so much more. Although this book was written as fiction over two years ago, much of it has already come true.

My hope is to create more public awareness and help people to prepare themselves and their families for the imminent calamity that one day each of us will likely have to face. On that dreadful day when the deadly contagious pandemic affects your our own family, we all will know in our hearts that we did not do enough to prepare for it, and if it just so happens that we do live through it, we will live out the rest of our lives burdened with the knowledge and the guilt of that unforgiving fact.

The Difference Between Life and Death: Outliving the Flu Pandemic of 2009" was awarded second place in the Young Adult Fiction category of the 2009 Premier Book Awards, and was a Finalist in the Fictional Short Story category for the Indie Book Awards 2009.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 9, 2008
• ISBN: 9781425144272

Dennis Miner

Dennis Miner has a B.A. degree in Speech Communication and a M.A. degree in Communication Studies from California State University, Sacramento. He is retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of Major. He currently lives in a log cabin in a forest in Northern California.

Book preview

This book is fiction.

© Copyright 2008 Dennis Miner.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4251-6133-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4251-4427-2 (e)

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Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Website Designed by: Dave Cervera

http://www.outlivingtheflupandemic.com

Photo Retouching: Monarch Digital & Rick Nashleanas

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Contents

Before

Day One

First Six Weeks

After Three Months

Aftermath

Epilogue

Dedicated

to

Veronica, Luke and Mark

Dedication-color.tif

Live long and live well, my children

Before

The day after Thanksgiving started the winter of 2008 for us and it pretty much began like the winter of 2007. Everyone got in a hurry as they went about their business of doing their Christmas shopping, mostly worried about their pocketbooks than anything else. No one had time to pay close attention to what was happening in the world news. When you are behind in your shopping and you need to find that one gift that shows that you really do care, well, it is important to stay focused. It makes it harder if you are looking for that perfect gift to be on sale. We all heard the annual government warning that there was a possibility of a terrorist attack at the malls, somewhere in the country, and no one paid much attention to it. The warning was just a new holiday tradition we had come to expect every year. With Christmas music playing in the background, we say, Happy Holidays...but watch out for the terrorists.

We had, after all, just finished electing a new President who had run a campaign that promised Together we will make history, and Universal Health Care. With a Presidential inauguration and a new year coming soon, we were all rather optimistic and looking forward to making that important history in just a matter of a couple of weeks. We had also elected new members to the US Congress and it was still a fairly evenly divided Congress. Already the partisan bickering was starting behind the scenes concerning the winding down of the war in Iraq. Some were saying it wasn’t happening fast enough and had gone on far too long, while others were saying we were still on track for an orderly withdrawal, having achieved our stated purposes, or something like that. Even though Congress was going into a holiday recess, both Democratic and Republican leaders had publicly announced that they wanted bi-partisan cooperation and would try to find middle ground on implementing a National Health Care Program that will take care of everyone. It would be the first order of business for the new President to sign. In spite of the stated optimism and the good intentions, the Presidential honeymoon period was destined to be a short one.

My youngest son, Mark, is 13 and he wanted the newest interactive multiplayer game so he could get online and play with his friends and they could slay monsters in a virtual world together. The interactive game that he wanted had been released just after Thanksgiving and was priced way more than any Christmas present should ever cost. He also wanted the annual release of the football game, Maddness ’09. My oldest son, Luke, is 19 and my daughter, Veronica, is 21, and since both of them are in college, they preferred cash for Christmas. My shopping had been put off too and I was way behind on it because of my job. A lot of additional work had been piled on during the first part of December. Our management team was anticipating everyone taking holiday vacations so they were piling on the work for us to do so we didn’t get behind. Then they could say that they were productive through the holiday season thanks to their good management practices. It was just another holiday tradition we had come to expect every year.

The winter flu season seemed to be a typical one, with the local grocery store and drug store providing flu vaccinations for the regular $50 fee. There was the usual common cold being passed around with store check-out clerks coughing and sneezing on customers, while shoppers waited in line.

It was cold with high humidity and a light dusting of snow outside when I met Dave, a friend of mine, at the local bar and grill for a pitcher of beer. We needed to celebrate the end of another work day. We sat at our table for a period of time and we seemed to be ignored by the barmaids.

I told Dave, The tip clock started ticking when we walked in the door, not when it is time to pay the bill. That is the way I think, anyway. The clock starts ticking to see how long it takes before someone greets me, the time it takes for me to be seated, the time before someone waits on me and takes my order, and then the time it takes for someone to bring me my order, just the way I asked for it. Then I consider if anyone checks on me and how long does it take for my bill to arrive. These times are all considered in my tip amount, and I can go to the extreme either way, by tipping a lot or not tipping at all. I do not calculate the tip based on some preset percentage of the bill. That method rewards negative behavior in my view. Being social, friendly and smiling when the bill is delivered does not figure in at