The state of California and essentially all of the smaller governments inside like Counties and Cities are not ready for a flu crisis… and they never will be.  Today’s article in the LA Times goes into detail on all the reasons why we will never be "ready", ready meaning being able to give medical treatment to all of the many peope who would get sick during "waves" of the pandemic.  The bottom line is that it is just not financially possible to maintain all of the medical staff, equipment, and space needed for such a huge surge in need.  So if or when the next pandemic of whatever nature arrives our hospitals will be instantly overburdened and quickly run out of every sort of medical supply you can think of.

What the Federal Government is telling the States and Localities applies even more to you, from the LA Times :

Federal officials have essentially warned local health authorities around the nation that they would be largely on their own in a pandemic, perhaps for an extended period.

An "extended period".  How long might that be?

Experts say an influenza pandemic lasting up to 18 months would have at least two peak waves, each lasting several weeks.

"Any community that fails to prepare, with the expectation that the federal government or … the state government would step in and rescue them, will be tragically wrong," said Leavitt, the Health and Human Services secretary, at the summit.

If we are to believe Federal officials the answer is "several weeks" at each major outbreak, a few times over an 18 month period.  You need to gather some basic food stocks and other necessary supplies now because you won’t be able to go get them once the crisis hits.  Why?  Because in order to stop the wild spreading of the deadly disease all levels of government will have no option but to stop people from gathering in large numbers:

Jeffrey Levi, executive director of Trust for America’s Health, said local officials should be planning ways of keeping people from infecting one another. Such "social distancing measures" would put areas where people congregate in large numbers off-limits.

The LA Times article goes on to mention really large venues like movie theatres and theme parks, but this is officials skirting the real issue.  They don’t want to cause a panic so they aren’t saying what that really means because it means that basically people will need to stay at home in order to prevent the perpetual spread of the disease.

If people are getting sick and dieing from a communicable deadly disease that is widespread could anyone possibly allow life to go on as normal with stores being open so that people go there and keep passing the deadly disease to constantly newer people?  Of course not.

Even if officials were stupid enough to do that would you want to go join the panicked mob that would decend on the stores at the last minute to gather supplies, knowing that many of them would be spreading the disease to potentially everyone present?  Its a hard choice if you haven’t prepared beforehand.  Personally I’d rather starve for a few weeks after whatever limited supplies at home ran out than deliberately go into a plague infested crowd of people and face a solid chance of getting a possibly fatal disease.  You can survive with suprisingly small amounts or no food for quite a while, and heck many of us could stand to lose some weight anyways.

Don’t wait, don’t rely on governments that are actively trying to tell you they won’t be able to help, and take action now to do the preparation you know you are supposed to for any disaster anyways.  We’ve been told here in California to prepare for earthquakes for so long and everyone’s heard the drill many times but most people just put it off until tomorrow.  But this is different than an earthquake that might not come in your lifetime.  Experts are saying there is a 50% chance the Bird Flu makes the leap and starts transmitting from person to person, likely within the next year or two.  Do you feel lucky?