It's looking like Coronavirus will be rocket fuel for all things remote. Work, schooling, conferences... I think we'll see a lot of new tools and processes emerge. More companies, schools, conferences being remote friendly.
Anyone seeing concrete signs of this at your employer or school yet? And what other second-order effects do you think we'll see?
My workplace sent out this update not an hour ago:
> From March 2nd, employees should not attend any large meetings or events that are not hosted and controlled by [company], or where attendees cannot be confirmed as following a comparable travel policy. Individual or small group meetings where you can verify the travel histories of all attendees are fine.
To clarify: Is your workplace asking you to refrain from attending meetings or events, even in your private life, unless it is directly concerning your job there?
No, this is in regards to official business travel. Personal travel is entirely separate, and is right now at the stage of "if you visit <any of the hardest-hit countries>, work from home for two weeks before coming into the office."
"The Ministry of Education on Monday introduced a 'national Internet cloud classroom' supported by more than 7,000 servers and designed to cater to 50 million elementary and middle school students at the same time. Lessons cover 12 academic subjects, including 'moral education' and 'epidemic education.'"
We have a forced 2-week work from home policy for people who've just returned from China. My employer is known to be relatively remote friendly, so it wasn't a huge deal.
> It's looking like Coronavirus will be rocket fuel for all things remote. Work, schooling, conferences...
I worked at a company that was forced to go all-remote very suddenly when our office space had some issues.
We made it work, but it was a struggle. Tossing unprepared people into the deep end of remote work is not a recipe for success. Many of our employees had young children at home and no dedicated, quiet working space. Others couldn't handle the sudden change to remote communication. A few people tried to treat it like an extended vacation, doing the bare minimum to respond to e-mails from their phones. Some people excelled at remote work, but many others failed to adapt.
If anything, it turned company leadership off of the idea of remote work for a long, long time.
> Anyone seeing concrete signs of this at your employer or school yet?
I make software in the workplace collaboration and knowledge sharing space, and we've been seeing a big uptick of interest in the last few weeks. In our case it mostly isn't because of COVID-19, I think there are a couple other macro trends that are driving interest in the space right now and then this will be another one.
I'm lucky enough to work remotely so if schools do close, I can still earn a living while the kids are at home. I can't even imagine what kind of hell it's going to bring parents if schools shut down for any extended period of time.
Same thing with small businesses - shutting them down is really going to hurt local economies. In my city, small business are about to shut down because of construction on a main stretch of road where people would ordinarily find parking. With no parking spaces, the businesses are on the verge of collapsing due to lack of customers. A shut-down due to this virus would really be catastrophic.
That’s not a fair thing to say. Closing businesses doesn’t guarantee anything about the virus. The halting of economic activity, even temporarily, can devastate people’s lives because it doesn’t always come back and many people already live paycheck to paycheck.
It's not "a couple stores". On a shutdown of sufficient enough scale, you're going to kill more people by lack of income / products, than by letting the virus run its course.
The 2% figure is misleading, mortality is overwhelmingly restricted to the elderly and particularly those with existing health problems:
PRE-EXISTING CONDITION DEATH RATE*
Cardiovascular disease 10.5%
Diabetes 7.3%
Chronic respiratory disease 6.3%
Hypertension 6.0%
Cancer 5.6%
no pre-existing conditions 0.9%
AGE DEATH RATE*
80+ years old 14.8%
70-79 years old 8.0%
60-69 years old 3.6%
50-59 years old 1.3%
40-49 years old 0.4%
30-39 years old 0.2%
20-29 years old 0.2%
10-19 years old 0.2%
0-9 years old no fatalities
Shutting down the economy and quarantining whole areas will do more harm than the virus. Tens of thousands of Americans already die of the flu and Coronavirus us just a very virulent form of that.
I realise that its grim to talk about, but there may actually be economic benefits from the very sickest dying from the virus and thus relieving the burden of large pension and healthcare expenses.
The annual death rate in the USA is 2.8m. The virus will spread throughout the biosphere and become a standard part of the human virus paradigm, like the common cold or flu.
The best than can be done is to manage and stage its extent as much as possible, to avoid overwhelming healthcare services all at once. The Japanese seem to have the same idea.
Cases should be triaged and medical resources dedicated to those aged 50 and lower, who are still working and in generally good health.
The US pension system across many states, companies, and the federal Government itself is unsustainable, so this virus may be the key to bring those programs back into proper operation. Cities like Chicago will face a huge relief as Coronavirus spreads and lessens their pension burden.
Additionally, the housing freed up could be used by younger people and families, dramatically improving the quality of life for much of society. Inheritances could be used by younger generations to invest in businesses or upgrade personal living situations.
Lower pension and healthcare expenditure will allow lower taxes, perhaps allowing the elimination of payroll taxes.
The deaths will be tragic but from a purely economic perspective Coronavirus looks like a major opportunity for Western societies to de-age. We are very lucky that unlike other Pandemics, this virus is restricted to the sick and elderly, and barely impacts the young and healthy, unlike say the Spanish Flu.
On the premise that this virus does become standard, I've been wondering whether post infection you have a better immunity towards other related SARS-like viruses in the future? In which case, would there potentially be a net positive if SARS-like viruses no longer have the same effect?
Is it possible that this could be like getting chickenpox young and protecting you from worse things (measles as adults) in the future?
(note: I know nothing when it comes to health related issues like this so I'm assuming it's completely naive thought since I haven't seen anyone else mention anything similar)
The coronavirus family includes SARS, MERS, COVID-19, and 4 viruses that cause the common cold. Coronavirus causes about 15% of common colds per year. If you don't get SARS immunity from the coronaviruses that cause the common cold, it's unlikely that you'd get it from COVID-19.
Curious, do you know how it is that a vaccine could potentially be developed for Wuhan coronavirus, whereas the common saying goes, “there’s no cure for the common cold”?
The common cold is just a phrase said when you have a mild unknown respiratory infection. If you could narrow down the cause you could devise a vaccine, but you would have to find all the possible forms and then get vaccines against those also if your goal is to not get some version of the common cold.
The reason there's no cure for the common cold is that the common cold is caused by ~200 different viruses. You can vaccinate against the individual viruses, which prevents infection from that particular strain only.
There are additional complications in that many cold viruses generate only partial or temporary immunity, and the immunity wears off in a couple years. Also that coronaviruses mutate fairly quickly (though not as quickly as influenza, another illness that's caused by a family of viruses rather than a single one and generates only temporary immunity). I've heard that coronaviruses are also fairly hard to develop vaccines for because of technical reasons that I don't really understand.
But if your goal is partial, temporary immunity to protect against a circulating pandemic - similar to a flu shot - it's theoretically possible. That partial, temporary immunity is why adults get fewer colds than children do - they already have immunity to many of the cold viruses circulating within the local population.
Ex: You're 35, but you have asthma and high blood pressure.
Does that mean your mortality rate is 12.7%?
Also, your list says:
> no pre-existing conditions 0.9%
and
> 10-19 years old 0.2%
Does that mean a teenager with no pre-existing conditions has 1.1% mortality rate, or is it just 0.9%, or just 0.2%?
I'm honestly asking cause I know nothing about disease or mortality rates.
It's a very virulent form of SARS not influenza. It's not related to the flu at all. [0]
>I realise that its grim to talk about, but there may actually be economic benefits from the very sickest dying from the virus and thus relieving the burden of large pension and healthcare expenses.
What an optimistic perspective... I would think that this is more likely to over burden our already fragile health care systems in the short to medium term though.
> I can't even imagine what kind of hell it's going to bring parents if schools shut down for any extended period of time.
It would only be hell because its illegal, not because it's actually a problem.
There is no good reason for why you couldn't leave a healthy school-aged child home alone for the duration of a workday. That is, if you've actually raised them well.
Billions of people around the world have been raised in an environment where this sort of thing was normal - only a few western countries police this.
I don't think this is true at all. I actually immigrated to the US from Iran and even decades ago it wasn't acceptable there either. There was always a parent, grandparent, family member, or neighbor to look after the children. That includes rural areas.
> That is, if you've actually raised them well.
I don't think it's that simple. I have two kids and the younger one is completely independent requiring less supervision while the older one is dependent on us for everything and needs constant supervision. Their personalities are so drastically different that defining "raising them well" can mean basically anything with hundreds of dynamic factors.
I watch a documentary series on YouTube called "Most Dangerous Ways to School" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tg0ipCdiQQ) where kids travel to school alone for via dangerous terrain, but in most episodes the parents acknowledge how many kids die attempting to do such things and how dangerous it is. It's far from safe.
Utah has made it explicitly legal to leave children home alone.
In response to a well publicized case where the police initiated a neglect investigation of parents who allowed their children to walk to a nearby park alone, Maryland issued a policy directive specifying that such investigations cannot be initiated solely because children are seen in public alone, without any indication of specific impending harm[1]
Here are some actual documents on preparing for an influenza pandemic that the CDC is repurposing to prepare people for the coronavirus because of the similarity to the spread of the flu.
One thing to note is that a lot of the slowing down of disease spreading is going to be from the voluntary efforts of individuals. We should prepare ourselves and help prepare people around us to know what's up and what to do if you think you may be sick.
Thanks for posting these. I'm putting some time into preparing my family for any potential quarantine situations here in the US. These guides are aimed at policymakers and government officials. Have you, by chance, found any practical guides for what individuals can do to increase the resiliency of their households? I assume this is all very similar to having a well-stocked earthquake kit (which we do have), but I'm curious about any disease-specific preparations.
I haven't seen any good guides for individual and household preparedness, but I think that this guide "Interim Guidance for Preventing the Spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Homes and Residential Communities" (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/guidance-preve...), especially the precautions section, can be a useful place to see what would be needed to prepare.
Some things to have besides food storage and a normal supply of medicine would be to have cleaning supplies, maybe gloves and rubbing alcohol, and perhaps face masks. One issue is that face masks may be good to keep available for those who need it most. I'm not sure what is best practice to ensure you aren't taking face masks from healthcare providers or someone more in need.
Milk does not go bad a week after opening. Eggs don't spoil after two to four weeks in the fridge. A bag of bacon in the freezer isn't going to end you because it sat there for three months. Fruit juice doesn't go bad in 3 days. Butter doesn't go bad after two weeks at room temperate, let alone in a fridge.
> because they remove the outer antibiotic coating before sending them to stores.
The coating is oil from the chicken, and they wash it and replace it with mineral oil, which works just as well.
I speak from experience: I have not refrigerated US bought eggs for around 10 years. Not a single problem.
If you keep them un-refrigerated for more than 2 months (which I did because there was a really good deal, so I bought a lot), the eggs are not fresh, the yolk falls apart easily. (So not great in certain recipes.)
However they are not spoiled or anything like that, and the taste is unchanged.
If eggs are oiled and refrigerated, they'll last more like 8 or 9 months. I think the oiling is an old maritime technique, but came across it wintering at South Pole.
Of course, 3 months is plenty for the present discussion.
That really does depend upon your definition of room tempreature. I'm pretty sure anything above about 30 degrees C will put pay to many food stuffs in fairly short order. Everybodies storage conditions differ, tempreature, humidity and light exposure all have an impact on how long foods will safely store.
The other element is how the item is handled. Traditional bacon stored in brine can last for months in most conditions however I would not attempt to store opened bacon for more than a week or so. Likewise if you have raw meat, it is all about what it has been exposed to that can make it dangerous. Cooked meat, if uncontaminated and cooked through can last for quiet a while and still be safe. Once contaminated it can become dangerous quiet quickly.
My understanding is that the main purpose of the mask is to prevent people who are already infected from coughing and sneezing particulate onto other people.
Not really, other than limiting spread from someone who is potentially infected and making it harder for someone to touch their face (virus on hands getting into body via eyes/nose).
N95 masks will also limit the spread from someone who is actually infected, too. So the masks will, when used correctly help limit all spread and I am not sure why you say "not really".
But I should add, the CDC only recommends face masks for the infected and limits recommendation of N95 respirators to healthcare providers and those in workplace settings.
People generally aren’t going to use them correctly, aren’t going to change them frequently enough, are likely to touch their face frequently if not used to the mask, and aren’t nearly as concerned about infecting others so much as protecting themselves.
N95 masks are complicated to fit properly. For it to work you need a proper seal. The CDC says there is no general sizing guideline and recommends that the fit be tested yearly. I'm unsure how to go about doing this as an inexperienced individual.
my take on this is that those masks are probably useless, and even if they were useful, most members of the public will not utilize them correctly.
so, i advise people to leave the face masks of all types for utilization by our healthcare workers, as there will soon be a shortage and as a member of the public you should mostly be sitting at home rather than wandering around areas with other people anyway.
This isn't true. Someone with general intelligence can figure out how to use one of these things correctly, and I think that people who care to figure it out will do exactly that.
This proves not to be the case. Even intelligent people who are not used to wearing a mask will find that they regularly compromise the masks efficacy.
If worn by infected people it can reduce the spread, but if this is the case the infected person should not be around others anyway.
I'm not knowledgeable about the efficacy of the masks themselves, but I suspect there's a forest-for-the-trees issue, here. There are at least a few ways to think about whether masks (broadly, or any specific mask) "work"...
- Whether wearing a mask makes it less likely someone will pick up an infection in constant conditions (direct mask efficacy, reduced touching, etc.)
- Whether wearing a mask makes it less likely someone will transmit an infection in constant conditions.
- Whether wearing a mask leads infected people to spend more time around others.
- Whether wearing a mask leads uninfected people to spend more time around others.
- Whether the way masks end up getting allocated in the event of a shortage promotes or inhibits spread at population scale (for example, if masks ended up overallocated towards people who're so concerned that they stay home anyways and away from people who don't have the ability to).
Good questions. You remind me of some of the arguments against wearing a helmet on a bike. In particular, real studies show that automobile drivers are more careful in the presence of bikers without helmets - that is, if you're wearing a helmet, drivers are more careless around you.
And sometimes you just fall on your own as well. Out of the few times I’ve met the ground while biking, I’d estimate roughly half to be because I lost balance after hitting a pothole I didn’t see or ice/snow/rain making my bicycle slide. I was glad to have a helmet in these cases.
I'm not making an argument against helmets, partly because I don't know if that effect is large enough to overcome the additional safety of the helmet. I'm just trying to illustrate that sometimes there are non-obvious offsetting effects.
> I'm curious about any disease-specific preparations.
Before you get sick, start taking a multivitamin. Most people are vitamin D deficient in winter, which increases your risk of dying from respiratory infections, and it takes about 6 weeks to get your levels up. Also vitamin C, like 250mg. And do cardio.
- If you're in a cold climate, be aware of how to drain your heating (if you use water) or water supplies within the house in the event of an extended power outage.
What are the chances that residential electricity, gas or water get shut off as a result of an outbreak in North America? I live in a mid-sized town and we have enough dry beans and cereals to last a few months, but without hot water it would be a week at most.
I don't know the chances but some of the linked documents go over how the governments should work to minimize service disruptions like these. Of course, it will depend on the specifics of where you live, but I would guess that there are very few issues in this regard through the country.
I don't know more than anybody else. All I can tell you is that I'm not personally expecting that to happen, or at least, no more so than usual.
One of the reasons for that is that there's actually multiple phases to this sort of thing. Quarantine is a response you use when trying to completely squash it early, but as the virus escapes quarantine, you go to a different strategy of trying to reduce the virus' effective r0, involving preventing mass gatherings, encouraging self-quarantine, encouraging working from home, etc. Some quarantines may still be part of the strategy, but it's not the only arrow in the quiver. It's not a matter of choosing between "quarantine everybody completely for weeks" or "everybody dies".
Broadly speaking, it's reasonable to expect a very high chance that the infrastructure industry will successfully keep transmission within itself low enough that it won't actually catastrophically fail. It's a high priority and everybody knows it. A lot of the work involved in this sort of infrastructure doesn't involve being up close and personal with people.
You might want to try to avoid having a plumbing problem in your residence or something, though.
I live in an area prone to power outages (a 4 day outage less than a year ago, although that was an outlier), and I haven't been buffing up my "power outage" supplies. I do have them. But I've been filling up my freezer in stages instead for this. To be honest, I don't even expect the stores to completely fail, though there may be a run on them at the beginning. But the stores will be one of the biggest remaining hubs there will be, by necessity. If I can just pre-buy some stuff I would have bought anyhow and avoid having to go there at all during the containment period, it seems worth it. The extra package of toilet paper from Costco isn't going to go bad in the meantime.
Let me give my generic "preparation" spiel here: Basic prep is a good idea anyhow. Society is far more resilient against a wide variety of threats when more people can last a week or two of infrastructure outage. Being prepped is the socially responsible thing to do. If this is what it takes for you to set up a bit of prep, ok, fine. It's not panic, it's being responsible. Shoot for not having to go to the grocery store for 2-3 weeks, probably. Buy things you'll use anyhow, which means you're just forward-loading some spending you'd have done anyhow. Don't forget to think beyond food; toilet paper, tissues, medicine, shampoo, soap, etc. (Fortunately most of this stuff keeps even better than food.)
No need to panic. But it is a good idea to be ready, because even if COVID-19 never hits your area, someday it's going to be something.
And let me emphasize again, I don't know more than anybody else; I'm just saying where I personally have put some skin in the game.
While I don't expect the power to shut off from this, I want to point out that the flu virus doesn't directly destroy heart and kidney cells as COVID-19 does in some of the patients.
I cannot believe people are still saying this. It's literally 1-2 orders of magnitude more deadly than the flu, and 5% of the survivors walk away with permanent lung damage.
They say in the article that you linked that it looks like 20% of cases are severe and that the mortality rate is around 3% (though that is probably high because we are still early on in the epidemic). Last flu season around 1.4% of symptomatic cases ended up in the hospital and less than .1% of symptomatic cases ended with death. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html
Survivors of ARDS often have decreased quality of life including lung damage and cognitive issues. I wasn't able to find percentages of these issues in covid-19-related ARDS survivors though.
These services generally require someone in the production facility monitoring them 24/7, along with some form of repair crews available 24/7. But, on the other hand, these are services that require 24/7 monitoring, even in the face of blizzards, earthquakes, hurricanes, or other natural disasters that severely impact physical infrastructure, and so they'll have contingency plans for "people can't come into work" scenarios.
Build and test Mark Jurey's penny stove design. You can do it in half an hour with household materials, and then you can fry an egg on a skillet over it. (If you have a gas stove, you can put the penny stove on the gas stove to provide the needed air space.)
Alcohol is the best liquid fuel to use. It's nontoxic, can be extinguished with water, and serves double duty as an antiseptic and a nonpolar organic solvent. If you store the alcohol bottles floating in a larger container of water, they are inherently fire-safe for storage, although I don't bother. Considerable exploration of these themes is in Dercuano.
‘Mark Jurey's penny stove‘ oh lord! If the virus doesn’t get you the fire you create in your house with this surely will. Not for nothing, seriously do not do this in the house, on top of your non-functioning whatever stove. Maybe in the sink? Or better outside like the backpacking stove it is meant to be used as.
I actually have one of these I made from Guinness and soda can. It has absolutely no safety measure to prevent spilling the fuel. Tip that little can over on the top of a regular stove and you have a fire inside your stove. Ieeee
My electric stove is by necessity fireproof, as is my girlfriend's gas stove. If you have a combustible stove (!?) then the sink is a better idea, like you say. Or possibly the bathtub. Or the back yard. This is less of a concern for me because my house is not made from combustible materials.
I have in fact had a raging alcohol fire on top of another gas stove due to spilled fuel (for reasons much more stupid than cooking over a camping stove in my kitchen). Things stored above the stove started to burn (more stupidity). But because my stupidity didn't extend to using something like gasoline or lighter fluid, a cup of water instantly extinguished the blaze. Now I have an ammonium phosphate fire extinguisher in my kitchen. You should too.
Local governments and utilities can vary in competence. Best to still have some water storage and alternative heating methods. A good camp stove is handy to have regardless.
> store up ... enough (but not more than enough) medications
I'm not clear how this would work in practice. In the US, between insurance and the DEA, patients get very little choice about how many meds are dispensed at which intervals. There are all kinds of constraints.
Yes, it of course depends on the medications and you can just do what you can do. Some people use over the counter medication, and sometimes you can get a prescription for a longer period of medication but not always.
The key here in any pandemic is to make sure you reduce the chances of being infected. That works better than any surgical masks, N95 respirators, etc.
In essence, minimize or eliminate social contacts like hugs, hand shakes, kisses or touching anyone during this period. If you need to do so, remember to not touch your face, nose or eyes, and wash or sterilize your hands immediately after that. Stay away from public places with large amounts of people or confined areas. Your face is sacred, remember not to touch your face, eyes or nose when you're outside, or else wear a surgical or N95 mask (if you can find one), which helps in enforcing the above. Wash your hands for at least 20-30 seconds when you return home. Do not touch things like lift buttons with your fingers. Use a key, pen, elbows or knuckles (not so ideal but it's better than using fingers). If you're travelling in a car or cab, request the driver to wind down the windows. Stock up on medicine, and avoid visiting hospitals unless required.
> CDC is repurposing to prepare people for the coronavirus because of the similarity to the spread of the flu.
this is the recurrent theme in Taleb's Black Swan book and his later Antifragile. e.g. Preparing for the next big catastrophic event based on the experience from the last big event, is the reason he gives on why we can never escape Black Swans
The tens of millions of people in the US who are underinsured, lack sick leave, or can’t afford to miss work would seem to almost guarantee a disaster if this hits with force, no?
27% of people in the US can’t even afford a $400 emergency expense, which is (generously) the cost of maybe one visit to verify illness or moderate symptoms.
"The tens of millions of people in the US who are underinsured, lack sick leave, or can’t afford to miss work would seem to almost guarantee a disaster if this hits with force, no?"
Well, I mean, yeah. Have you been watching the stock market in the past few days? Everybody's got a pretty clear view of this.
But "death" has that certain finality about it. A quarantine can pass in a way that death doesn't. Even a bad one.
I think they're stating a preference for a quarantine, even with all its potential impacts, since not having one could result in more deaths. Quarantines being transient in nature vs death being permanent.
Oh of course. I just think effective quarantines or delays of imposing them because of the underlying tenuousness of the American economy poses numerous risks. Short-sightedness is kind of a hallmark of American culture.
Insurance is irrelevant if there aren't enough hospital beds or medical staff/facilities to handle a widespread pandemic. I think you're focusing on the wrong issue, likely based on the political nature of the current healthcare debate.
The real guarantees of a disaster are: Do businesses have enough cashflow to handle lack of just in time inventory from China if their shelves run dry? Do millions of people in the US have enough cashflow to handle rent payments if jobs are shut down due to quarantine and they don't get hourly wages? Do we have enough pharmaceuticals on hand to overcome the supply dip, given that 80% of our drugs are manufactured in the Wuhan area? IMO health insurance rates are the least of our problems.
> Insurance is irrelevant if there aren't enough hospital beds or medical staff/facilities to handle a widespread pandemic.
It's far from irrelevant. There are millions of people for whom a visit to the ER means bankruptcy, and should they contract the virus, they will avoid diagnosis, continue to go to work, and silently spread the disease to those who come in contact with them.
People are doing that anyway. By the time critical symptoms appear and you need to visit the ER, you have already been infectious and spreading the virus. Meanwhile the 80% of cases that are not critical won't drive people to even consider the ER (which is full of sick people with Coronavirus), and they will go about their day spreading the virus. As an example, see the rest of the world.
The 27% of people in the US you're referring to, almost all have free healthcare coverage.
That's not the correct number regardless, it's closer to 10-12% of adults, directly from a prominent study performed by the Federal Reserve.
By far the biggest healthcare problem the US will have, if the virus hits hard, is a swamping of resources, a general over-taxing of the entire healthcare system and all ICU beds.
The US can, anytime it sees fit, fire off a very large healthcare emergency funding program, printed magically out of thin air. We can offer waivers to the entire population for expenses. It will be considered a national emergency. The national guard will be mobilized. The population will pay for it via taxation and wealth debasement (debt, printing), just as they do in natural disasters now. Money is not the primary concern, Congress is always happy to spend - it's going to be health system infrastructure vs case load. We won't be able to put together the resources fast enough in an emergency situation (eg NYC & LA having having 100,000 cases). China moved as fast as they could and couldn't manage it, and they're able to move drastically faster than the modern US will be able to.
Not sure if this is the right place but what would be best for one stock up on ahead of time? I'm thinking non-perishables or stuff with a high shelf life but what else should you consider buying?
Water plants need people to run them. And power, which means power plants need people (or fuel trucks to refuel their generators if the power goes out).
If those people are sick, the water may stop flowing.
I mean, having a bit doesn't hurt, but I'm not seeing this as a situation where you need to go a month with no public water. But I don't really know anything about it - maybe I'm wrong.
It seems reasonable to make a run to Costco or Sams club to load up on dry goods and paper supplies. Better to do so now than after a panic hits. You don't have to go all doomsday prepper and get 10 year shelf life cans of beans. But maybe enough toilet paper, ramen noodles, and bottled water to last through 30 days of not wanting to leave the house much.
Anecdotally, I was in Costco last week and saw a woman shopping directly from a "Disaster Preparedness Checklist". I strongly suspect that there will be a wave of panic shopping in the next few weeks. Better to get after it now. Actually ignore that, wait until I finish shopping then go out.
Medicines have me a little worried. I can get a three-month supply, but only when my previous supply is almost exhausted. I can't get three months extra "just in case".
In the past when I've told my pharmacy I'm traveling somewhere with less medical facilities than the US, they can get a refill sooner from my insurance provider than I'd otherwise be good for.
That said, it doesn't work for all drugs. One of the medications I'm on now I can't get filled one day early under any circumstance, nor can I get it shipped to me. For extra fun points, if I'm late by more than a week, it's doubtful I can get it refilled ever again.
Try to get things with some nutritional value, not just empty calories. Poor nutrition will make you more susceptible to illness, and any illness you encounter worse. If our healthcare system is overburdened, you don’t want this.
Apart from obvious things like canned beans and veggies, dry quinoa is great. It is one of the few plant-based complete protein sources, it is rich in B-vitamins (mostly found in meat - short shelf life and could become scarce) and minerals, has good fat content, has a long shelf life, is relatively affordable, and tastes really darn good. You can get organic quinoa from Costco for a good price.
Speaking of B-vitamins, if you’re not able to access meat or eggs, you may want a B12 supplement - it is vital for cellular metabolism and nervous function, and isn’t readily available from plant-derived sources. A supply of multivitamins may be a good idea in general, depending on how long your access to fresh food is impeded. Vitamin C may be important if you’re not eating much in the way of fresh fruit or veggies.
Nuts - almonds and walnuts are good. High fat, moderate protein content, good sources of certain vitamins and minerals. Good shelf life.
Some non-preserved produce have long-ish shelf lives - squash, sweet potatoes, onions, cabbage, carrots. I just got some 10lb bags of organic carrots for $5.75/bag from Costco. It’s rare to find any food for just $0.57/lb.
In short, please don’t buy 50lbs of ramen noodles and pasta and expect to come out of this healthy a month or two down the line.
So take a moment every time you use something and ask yourself - what will I do if I don't have this thing? If there is no good alternative or if the alternatives are unthinkable...Make a list from that. One thing to start with: You are on the toilet and you reach for the TP - there is none...now, add that to your list.
Yeah, most of my disposables I have 1 month+ already (Subscribe and Save is a godsend for things like TP, paper towels, shaving cream, razors, mouthwash, etc). Medicine/Masks/etc is something I don't have large stocks of but that will be rectified shortly.
"I'm thinking non-perishables or stuff with a high shelf life but what else should you consider buying?"
This is by no means my area of expertise, but in provisioning for earthquakes and other disruptions, I have simply bought more of what we're already using.
Not only will you not waste the items, you will keep them refreshed and current as you cycle through your (longer) queue of normal foods you eat.
This seems like odd advice to me. Nearly all of what I eat is composed primarily of meat and fresh vegetables. No amount of stocking up one what I already use is going to get me a month's worth of food. Am I really that much of an outlier?
If this pandemic has exposed anything, it's that the WHO is a political entity woefully unequipped to handle any real scenario. The leadership has been seemingly downplaying this from day 1 and repeating talking points from the CCP. They are obviously trying to avoid causing panic in the financial markets, and putting that above actually informing world leaders and the public of the danger.
See their recent release stating that they can't call this a pandemic because they conveniently don't have the criteria setup for that classification any more.
The WHO is still using Chinese figures without any sort of disclaimer. The director of the WHO has been accused by the new York times of covering up multiple epidemics in how home country[1].
Hopefully this virus will upend the blind Faith that people recently have come to put into international establishments.
I would personally prefer to see a NATO based combination of the USA and EU CDC (does something like this exist?). The problem with these global organizations like the WHO and the UN is that they receive large funding from competing ideologies and interests. They end up rewarding beurocracies and politically motivated leaders. The CDC seems to be much less politically influenced and focused on their mission.
Personal reliance. Empowering people to take protective steps at their own discretion. If you encouraged your population to, say, keep a small stockpile of rice and beans on hand (not expensive) store overruns wouldn't be such a problem during times of panic.
But this would require a radical cultural shift outside of urban areas. And unfortunately individualism I think has become a bit of a slur in many circles, a manifestation of the two party split among collectivism (leftist) and individualism (rightist).
I don't see the contradiction. The WHO is talking about the current state. The CDC is talking about preparing for the future state.
The other issue is that the WHO is being very conservative in their reports. They won't claim uncontained global spread until there is hard evidence. Before that point, however, there will be week evidence.
If I recall correctly, several days ago, the WHO excplicitly warned that "the window for containment is closing". Even before then, I never recall them saying that containment was assured. Particuarly if the spread is occuring in areas with week health infastructure, or that are trying to supress the numbers.
I'm glad some people are starting to take this more seriously. We're still at least a few weeks away from a shift in mentality in the US. Right now, it's general apathy. Next, it'll be alert and preparedness. Last, it will be panic. I don't think it will reach chaos, but you certainly don't want to be at Costco in a few weeks.
There's no downside in being prepared - worst case scenario you slowly consume the perishables or donate them. In related news, Zoom's stock is surging. I wonder if Slack's stock will eventually have a similar boom.
I'm assuming it's the increase in people working remotely, thus having to use tools like Zoom and Slack to communicate more effectively with their teams.
Well Costco has been selling the emergency food supplies, at least out on the Olympic peninsula. Of course I’m sure some people will capitalize off the panic, I’d be tempted to dump 50k into VTSAX and head for the hills too.
I'm advising everyone in my circle to prepare for a 30 to 45 day at-home stay and assume no stores will be open during that time. I think this is the prudent thing to do.
I would also advise speaking to your neighbors to make them aware of the need to be prepared. To that point, buy a little extra of everything --well, maybe food only-- so you can help a few people out during what is likely to be a difficult time. Happy neighbors are as important to safety as anything else.
I'm actually thinking of making a preparedness checklist and going door-to-door around the neighborhood to hand them out.
I am absolutely baffled that someone would down-vote this comment. I don't understand. I would love for someone to actually match their down-vote with an explanation. Maybe there's something to be learned there.
Having lived through at least a couple of important earthquakes in the Los Angeles region I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, you do not want to wait until the last minute to get ready for any kind of an out of the norm situation.
Then there's the question of what would constitute responsible behavior in the event of COVID-19 getting more serious in the US. I would guess this would, at a minimum, include preparing to stay home for somewhere around 30 to 45 days, particularly considering that we are starting to think the incubation period could be as long as 27 days.
And so, from this perspective alone --that of being a responsible citizen-- I am not equipped to understand someone who would down-vote advise to prepare for 30 to 45 days of at-home isolation.
If EVERYONE stays home, how do stores remain open? Do we think they are run by robots?
I try to use language with some degree of precision. I said "assume no stores will be open during that time". ASSUME, not "stores will definitely be closed during that time". Assume, as a part of planning, not categorically know, because the assumption will make for better planning.
It is far safer to make this assumption and be wrong, than to discover not making the assumption was a mistake.
In the first case you end-up with extra food and supplies you did not need and will simply consume over several months (or donate to the Red Cross, which would be fantastic). In the other case you and your family could suffer greatly due to being utterly unprepared.
Maybe it's my aerospace background...I have learned the hard way that ignoring potential failure modes and corner cases is the mother of all fuck-ups.
There's always some risk that infrastructure will catastrophically fail, and in general I think a month-long self-sufficiency stock is a perfectly reasonable thing to have. (I have one myself, although primarily because I live in an earthquake zone.)
But when people are reacting to the coronavirus, the implicit question isn't what preparations are good to have for general worst case scenarios; it's which preparations you're likely to need, which ones you can no longer afford to be without. As many a doomsday prepper will attest, there's always one more contingency you could plan for, but telling people to start with extreme measures makes it less likely they'll plan at all.
You are over-complicating simple advice that is perfectly reasonable and not extreme at all:
Assume stores will be closed. Plan accordingly. Be glad if things don't play out that way. No harm done. Not difficult. Not extreme. Not a big deal. Just reasonable assumptions and planning in the face of what could be a very serious event in human history.
I have to agree here with robomartin. Stores might be open or they might not. Even though there is large chance they might remain open - they will almost certainly be overrun if this were to go into panic mode.
I can't even buy dust masks at my local home improvement store as they are out of stock. And that's not even a necessity!
It makes me really wonder about these people who savagely down-vote stuff like this on HN. Are they so out of touch with reality? Or is it just a fun sport of sort. There's a strain of people on HN that love down-voting anything that is common sense. As if that single click will take reality and make it align with the way they would like the universe to exist. It's laughable at best, and very very sad. I don't really care about points but it is interesting to see how certain things are not debated and just stomped on and anything that aligns with the cargo cult is supported.
Here's news from Italy that very much applies to what I've been saying:
As you said, there's nothing wrong to prepare for an emergency. And, by definition, you have to do it before the need arises. I have no interest in having to fight though desperate mobs to get food for my kids. I pretty much got everything we need to shelter in place for about 60 days now, including medicine, masks, etc. I also got extra supplies to be able to help neighbors who might not be as prepared as we are. I guess I am an evil person for suggesting this and acting this way. So sorry.
>I'm advising everyone in my circle to prepare for a 30 to 45 day at-home stay and assume no stores will be open during that time. I think this is the prudent thing to do.
I think that's the paranoid thing to do. I'm stocking up a bit so that I can stay inside if I personally get sick, but that doesn't require 30-45 days of supplies. I don't even really have room for that much stuff in my tiny apartment.
>I would also advise speaking to your neighbors to make them aware of the need to be prepared. To that point, buy a little extra of everything --well, maybe food only-- so you can help a few people out during what is likely to be a difficult time. Happy neighbors are as important to safety as anything else.
>I'm actually thinking of making a preparedness checklist and going door-to-door around the neighborhood to hand them out.
You're obviously much friendlier with your neighbors than I am. If any of my neighbors did that I would probably assume they were a bit off and avoid talking to them from then on. I certainly wouldn't act on some random dude's checklist.
Well, I would avise you not to map your own deficiencies onto others. If you don't have enough room for a 30 day supply of essentials and would think a neighbor approaching you with concern for your own safety would make them "a bit off" to the point that you would "avoid talking to them from then on"...well, not sure what to say.
I know all of my neighbors, well, at least somewhere between 30 to 40 of them. We've known them for years, decades in some cases. We actually have gatherings at each other's homes every so often. Try it, it's called contact with humanity. Not that hard. Neighbors are human beings, just like you. Sure, it requires a bit of effort, but anyone can do it.
> I think that's the paranoid thing to do
Yikes. More of the above. Sorry you feel that way. Ask the people in Wuhan it they think such a recommendation might be paranoid. Or how about the 1,000 people in Spain who just got quarantined in a hotel. Of the 300+ in Austria?
Proposing families and individuals prepare for a potentially extended quarantine isn't paranoid, it's caring enough about other to make sure they are aware of what might lie in the horizon. In my experience not everyone is well informed. I've had many conversations with people during the last few days who a) had no idea how bad things are around the world b) had no clue there's a better than 50% probability we'll have to contend with it in the US (not my words, this was said today at the CDC press conference).
> that doesn't require 30-45 days of supplies
If we get hit hard with COVID-19 in our large cities you'll be lucky if you have to stay locked-up for just 30 days. First of all, we now think the incubation period could be as long as 27 days (this is news out of Wuhan). So, right there you have justification for 30 days as a MINIMUM period. And it is worse because you can't risk re-infection. Aside from the fact that it would absolutely implode every economy in the world and cause more death, re-infection for not observing a reasonable 30 to 45 day quarantine period is just irresponsible.
Coming back to your own situation, I refuse to believe someone doesn't have the space for 30 days worth of food and essential supplies. OK, you don't have room for stake and burgers. You have to adapt. A 50 lb bag of rice will probably feed you for a month. Not ideal, but better than nothing. Add to that, say, 3 cans for something per day (soup, meat, whatever you like) and you have the basics. Do you have room for 100 cans of food under your bed, behind the TV, under the desk, in the bathroom? Probably. Not that hard.
Anyhow, free country and all that. You get to choose which reality you get to navigate. I'd rather be responsible, coordinate with friends, family and neighbors, help each other, prepare for a reasonable set of circumstances and come out of it in good shape.
This could be reality in one or more US cities in days, weeks or months from now. Would it be better to take the time to be ready for this before people panic or just wait and wing it? Maybe go door-to-door betting for food and supplies? Sure, that sounds like an excellent plan.
We are witnessing a massive geopolitical event. This could be a chance for the U.S. to reassert it's global hegemony - China has been brought to its knees over this virus, and a critical weakness of globalism has been exposed, the dependence that comes with offshoring too much production. This could drive the return of manufacturing jobs to the U.S.
Rumors abound in China about party members openly criticizing the government, including a petition signed by 2500 academics and professionals demanding free speech. Iran is also in full blown crisis after seeing its first case only 3 weeks ago. Two of the U.S.'s primary enemies are in "wartime conditions" dealing with 2019-ncov.
This is not just another flu. This is not SARS of MERS, this is well into Spanish Flu territory and it will test the modern geopolitical establishment and the resilience of human government. At the very least it will define a generation.
Edit: check the CDC's Twitter. They've suggested that individuals ,including with families, start preparing "across all sectors" saying "disruption to everyday life might be severe". The steady stream of silent downvotes I've been receiving for a few days is a testament to how far people are willing to go to deny unpleasant realities. This is why there are panics and bank runs and why the stores will be empty in cities across the U.S. in the next week or so. It's already happening in Italy.
Can you cite evidence of governments that were overthrown or even moderately affected by the Spanish Flu? It was a terrible epidemic but most effects seem to have been at the personal or micro-economic level.
I'm not a historian, but you're missing the big picture. The CCP has been extremely secretive with it's handling of the virus, including employing the usual means of thought control by forcing whistleblowers to deliver public statements of apology and disappearing others.
If the rumors regarding dissent are remotely true, anti government sentiment over how the virus was handled is unprecedented. There are hundreds of leaked videos online of Chinese citizens publicly expressing discontent. In 2020 it isn't just the party members that have internet access now - this virus is likely acting as a trigger for the possible end of the CCP, or at least some sort of reformation.
Further, the world was not nearly as interconnected and interdependent in the 1910s. And urban density was far lower as well. What's happening in China alone is already disrupting global supply chains, and the virus has already spread to other third world manufacturing economies like Vietnam, which shut down all schools. In many ways this is a perfect storm.
What happens if the next viral outbreak occurs in the US? How is putting factories in one arbitrary geographic location any safer than putting them in another arbitrary location?
If anything, this isn’t an argument against offshoring, it’s an argument for offshoring your factories across as many different countries as possible so you have less concentrated exposure to a specific country.
Our entire industry is already forecasting shortages because literally every industry depends on raw components from china. The market is down 7 percent in 2 days. Not to mention the other indicators for the long overdue recession that we've been seeing for months now.
> it’s an argument for offshoring your factories across as many different countries as possible so you have less concentrated exposure to a specific country
That isn't entirely incorrect, but it still pays to have reserve domestic capacity, not just for events like this virus but to limit the power that other nations have over the U.S. in any case it's good that we're likely to reduce reliance on China after all of this is over.
But moving factories to the US just decreases your exposure to China-related epidemics, natural disasters and other crises at the expense of increasing your exposure to US-related epidemics, natural disasters and other crises. You’re just trading one risk factor for another.
Reducing economic relations with another country means you have less power and influence over them, not more. Having hundreds of billions of dollars worth of trade conducted between two countries and having millions of their jobs tied to international trade is a good incentive for them not to antagonize you too much.
Any local outbreak is less likely to disrupt your domestic operations to the same degree that foreign dependence would. Primarily because the U.S. is a first world country where any disaster is more likely to be better dealt with and when the event is local, you have you have more reliable information for handling a disaster when you are communicating with local channels. Particularly when you are in a country with free speech and limited government suppression.
In any case, to ideally minimize risk you want both foreign and domestic production, even if that means some degree of subsidy for local operations. There are other downsides to excessive free trade of labor and goods as well - we need a happy medium.
Basically every household should already have, regardless of the origin of the disaster: 1 month of clean drinking water or reliable (tested) filtration devices and a impure water source (local streams likely to have various bacteria that will make you sick). 1 month of food that requires minimum water and fuel to cook (quick oats > slow cook oats). Enough fuel to cook that food (most of your food should not require cooking). A reliable camping stove that you have already tested. Plenty of ways to start a fire/stove. Warm clothes, blankets, med kit, sleeping bags. Soap.
I've lived for 30 days in alaska on a glacier with only what I could carry in a large pack; water and fuel were the largest by weight, sleeping bag/tent/clothes were the largest by volume. By the end, campers had devolved into small groups of people who didn't share food.
I was on a course from something like the Wilderness Education Association- basically training to be a "wilderness leader" (but the instructors were pretty clueless). Some things I learned:
While in most places if it rains you will dry out after a few days, but it's so humid in alaska the only way to dry clothes is to wear them at night in a wet sleeping bag (it dries by morning). Glacier runoff rivers are no joke, we almost lost an instructor and a student while crossing. If you don't manage your food properly, you will end up subsisting on things like cake mix(!) for the last few days. When supplies get low, people act different (greedy).
There's a saying: "civilization is only three meals away from anarchy", that only made sense to me after day 28.
You should only prep for disaster if you want to survive a disaster, which is rare for more people. I live in earthquake country, and though I have not experienced anything larger than M4 in the past 28 years, stochastically we can expect a very large ($BILLIONS, with massive short term problems) quake at some point in Northern California in the next 50 years.
The items I describe fit on a single shelf (except the water; I have a water filter and a nearby stream, so I only keep a few liters on hand).
The stuff described would mostly fit in a backpack as it's all backpacking gear to begin with. The only thing that wouldn't would be 30 days of food and water which is probably overkill. A reasonable food supply would fit in a couple cubic feet and multiple redundant water purification options could fit in a pocket.
I'm just a backpacker though not a doomsday prepper, the stuff we carry isn't always appropriate for an emergency situation and is generally geared towards being very portable rather than robust/100% reliable.
I always have a few of these things called "The Water Bob" stored in a closet, a few cause QC isn't that great. Its like a giant plastic bag that sits in your tub and holds water.
I only know this cause I lived over seas during the first gulf war, and we had to have prep stuff for scud attacks. We didn't have the WaterBob, but there were plenty of 50gal plastic storage containers. When the sirens went off, we set the jugs to fill in the showers, and hid in our inner most room. Fun times all around really. Free gas masks though! So that was nice.
I wonder if all the beans and rice I bought in preparation for Y2K are still good?
There's one thing prepper fantasies have in common... the impending doom never comes. It's fun to think about. But, real honestly, if the survivors at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were able to get by in the days after their tragedy, I bet I could figure something out on an ad-hoc basis.
If you want to take this seriously you should be rotating all canned goods every few years. You're basically trading off the tiny cost of canned goods with a small risk of getting a disease from bad food (well-stored cans should be fine for 5 years, any bulging cans should be discarded), which isn't normally a huge problem, but during emergencies, could be.
If you look at history, a lot of wars were won or lost based on how well a city prepared for a sustained siege.
You develop antibodies to the virus. However if that virus mutates seasonally (like influenza does for example) a different strain may still infect you at a later date.
Thus far that doesn't seem to be the case but who knows what will happen in the future.
surviving it might not be much fun either depending on the severity of the case. survivors have a 45% risk of pulmonary fibrosis (onset within 3-6 months after initial infection), then there is testicular damage in men, among others, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22412112
A quick online search isn't yielding anything substantial on that either.
EDIT: N/M found it, but they're saying it's a possibility due to observations found during SARS:
> Gaohong Sheng et al. [20] have shown that viral infection can increase the risk of pulmonary fibrosis.Xie et al. [21] found that 45% of patients showed signs of pulmonary fibrosis within one month after being infected with SARS-CoV.Hui et al. [22] found that 36% and 30% of patients infected with SARS-CoV developed pulmonary fibrosis at 3 and 6 months after infection, respectively.Therefore, we believe that pulmonary fibrosis will become one of the serious complications in patients with 2019-nCoV infection.How to prevent and reduce the occurrence of pulmonary fibrosis in patients with 2019-nCoV infection is an urgent problem for medical workers in the treatment of 2019-nCoV.
Not food, however buy some cheap cases of bottled water. Usually at places like Kroger or Walmart you can find generic bottled water for ~$2.50-$3.25 for a 24 or 32 pack case. In theory the water supply should be fine, but, clean water is one thing you can die without fairly quickly (compared to food), and it's very inexpensive in non-panic times. Buy two or three cases of water and put them to the side. If everything goes fine, you can drink them regardless. If everything goes very badly, you will be thankful to have the supplies.
Even the rate in younger people, such as those in their 20s, is higher than flu at 0.2%. The rate for flu in the 18-49 age range averaged about 0.001%[1]
It's not just the flu. Please don't assert that without checking the numbers.
I'll assert that panic and fear is worse than this disease. I'll also assert that the tens of thousands that are surmised to have the virus are largely unreported therefore this disease is vastly overplayed.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 237 ms ] threadAnyone seeing concrete signs of this at your employer or school yet? And what other second-order effects do you think we'll see?
> From March 2nd, employees should not attend any large meetings or events that are not hosted and controlled by [company], or where attendees cannot be confirmed as following a comparable travel policy. Individual or small group meetings where you can verify the travel histories of all attendees are fine.
"The Ministry of Education on Monday introduced a 'national Internet cloud classroom' supported by more than 7,000 servers and designed to cater to 50 million elementary and middle school students at the same time. Lessons cover 12 academic subjects, including 'moral education' and 'epidemic education.'"
I worked at a company that was forced to go all-remote very suddenly when our office space had some issues.
We made it work, but it was a struggle. Tossing unprepared people into the deep end of remote work is not a recipe for success. Many of our employees had young children at home and no dedicated, quiet working space. Others couldn't handle the sudden change to remote communication. A few people tried to treat it like an extended vacation, doing the bare minimum to respond to e-mails from their phones. Some people excelled at remote work, but many others failed to adapt.
If anything, it turned company leadership off of the idea of remote work for a long, long time.
I make software in the workplace collaboration and knowledge sharing space, and we've been seeing a big uptick of interest in the last few weeks. In our case it mostly isn't because of COVID-19, I think there are a couple other macro trends that are driving interest in the space right now and then this will be another one.
Same thing with small businesses - shutting them down is really going to hurt local economies. In my city, small business are about to shut down because of construction on a main stretch of road where people would ordinarily find parking. With no parking spaces, the businesses are on the verge of collapsing due to lack of customers. A shut-down due to this virus would really be catastrophic.
PRE-EXISTING CONDITION DEATH RATE*
Cardiovascular disease 10.5%
Diabetes 7.3%
Chronic respiratory disease 6.3%
Hypertension 6.0%
Cancer 5.6%
no pre-existing conditions 0.9%
AGE DEATH RATE* 80+ years old 14.8%
70-79 years old 8.0%
60-69 years old 3.6%
50-59 years old 1.3%
40-49 years old 0.4%
30-39 years old 0.2%
20-29 years old 0.2%
10-19 years old 0.2%
0-9 years old no fatalities
Shutting down the economy and quarantining whole areas will do more harm than the virus. Tens of thousands of Americans already die of the flu and Coronavirus us just a very virulent form of that.
I realise that its grim to talk about, but there may actually be economic benefits from the very sickest dying from the virus and thus relieving the burden of large pension and healthcare expenses.
That's a lot of people.
Edit: and it might climb if people aren't getting proper care because the medical system is overloaded.
The best than can be done is to manage and stage its extent as much as possible, to avoid overwhelming healthcare services all at once. The Japanese seem to have the same idea.
Cases should be triaged and medical resources dedicated to those aged 50 and lower, who are still working and in generally good health.
The US pension system across many states, companies, and the federal Government itself is unsustainable, so this virus may be the key to bring those programs back into proper operation. Cities like Chicago will face a huge relief as Coronavirus spreads and lessens their pension burden.
Additionally, the housing freed up could be used by younger people and families, dramatically improving the quality of life for much of society. Inheritances could be used by younger generations to invest in businesses or upgrade personal living situations.
Lower pension and healthcare expenditure will allow lower taxes, perhaps allowing the elimination of payroll taxes.
The deaths will be tragic but from a purely economic perspective Coronavirus looks like a major opportunity for Western societies to de-age. We are very lucky that unlike other Pandemics, this virus is restricted to the sick and elderly, and barely impacts the young and healthy, unlike say the Spanish Flu.
(note: I know nothing when it comes to health related issues like this so I'm assuming it's completely naive thought since I haven't seen anyone else mention anything similar)
There are additional complications in that many cold viruses generate only partial or temporary immunity, and the immunity wears off in a couple years. Also that coronaviruses mutate fairly quickly (though not as quickly as influenza, another illness that's caused by a family of viruses rather than a single one and generates only temporary immunity). I've heard that coronaviruses are also fairly hard to develop vaccines for because of technical reasons that I don't really understand.
But if your goal is partial, temporary immunity to protect against a circulating pandemic - similar to a flu shot - it's theoretically possible. That partial, temporary immunity is why adults get fewer colds than children do - they already have immunity to many of the cold viruses circulating within the local population.
I think this will take a long long time. so far that hasn't happened with SARS and MERS. (we also don't have a vaccine for those 17 years later).
Ex: You're 35, but you have asthma and high blood pressure.
Does that mean your mortality rate is 12.7%?
Also, your list says: > no pre-existing conditions 0.9% and > 10-19 years old 0.2% Does that mean a teenager with no pre-existing conditions has 1.1% mortality rate, or is it just 0.9%, or just 0.2%?
I'm honestly asking cause I know nothing about disease or mortality rates.
>I realise that its grim to talk about, but there may actually be economic benefits from the very sickest dying from the virus and thus relieving the burden of large pension and healthcare expenses.
What an optimistic perspective... I would think that this is more likely to over burden our already fragile health care systems in the short to medium term though.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus
It would only be hell because its illegal, not because it's actually a problem.
There is no good reason for why you couldn't leave a healthy school-aged child home alone for the duration of a workday. That is, if you've actually raised them well.
Billions of people around the world have been raised in an environment where this sort of thing was normal - only a few western countries police this.
I don't think this is true at all. I actually immigrated to the US from Iran and even decades ago it wasn't acceptable there either. There was always a parent, grandparent, family member, or neighbor to look after the children. That includes rural areas.
> That is, if you've actually raised them well.
I don't think it's that simple. I have two kids and the younger one is completely independent requiring less supervision while the older one is dependent on us for everything and needs constant supervision. Their personalities are so drastically different that defining "raising them well" can mean basically anything with hundreds of dynamic factors.
I watch a documentary series on YouTube called "Most Dangerous Ways to School" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tg0ipCdiQQ) where kids travel to school alone for via dangerous terrain, but in most episodes the parents acknowledge how many kids die attempting to do such things and how dangerous it is. It's far from safe.
Utah has made it explicitly legal to leave children home alone.
In response to a well publicized case where the police initiated a neglect investigation of parents who allowed their children to walk to a nearby park alone, Maryland issued a policy directive specifying that such investigations cannot be initiated solely because children are seen in public alone, without any indication of specific impending harm[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitiv_incidents
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/php/pandemic-prepa...
States will have their own influenza preparedness plans that they will probably be following for the coronavirus as well.
One helpful thing that they advise governors to advise individuals to do is to store up food and enough (but not more than enough) medications.
https://www.nga.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pandemic-Infl...
One thing to note is that a lot of the slowing down of disease spreading is going to be from the voluntary efforts of individuals. We should prepare ourselves and help prepare people around us to know what's up and what to do if you think you may be sick.
Some things to have besides food storage and a normal supply of medicine would be to have cleaning supplies, maybe gloves and rubbing alcohol, and perhaps face masks. One issue is that face masks may be good to keep available for those who need it most. I'm not sure what is best practice to ensure you aren't taking face masks from healthcare providers or someone more in need.
http://extensionpublications.unl.edu/assets/pdf/ec446.pdf
Milk does not go bad a week after opening. Eggs don't spoil after two to four weeks in the fridge. A bag of bacon in the freezer isn't going to end you because it sat there for three months. Fruit juice doesn't go bad in 3 days. Butter doesn't go bad after two weeks at room temperate, let alone in a fridge.
Commercially bought eggs in the US need to be refrigerated because they remove the outer antibiotic coating before sending them to stores.
The coating is oil from the chicken, and they wash it and replace it with mineral oil, which works just as well.
I speak from experience: I have not refrigerated US bought eggs for around 10 years. Not a single problem.
If you keep them un-refrigerated for more than 2 months (which I did because there was a really good deal, so I bought a lot), the eggs are not fresh, the yolk falls apart easily. (So not great in certain recipes.)
However they are not spoiled or anything like that, and the taste is unchanged.
Of course, 3 months is plenty for the present discussion.
The other element is how the item is handled. Traditional bacon stored in brine can last for months in most conditions however I would not attempt to store opened bacon for more than a week or so. Likewise if you have raw meat, it is all about what it has been exposed to that can make it dangerous. Cooked meat, if uncontaminated and cooked through can last for quiet a while and still be safe. Once contaminated it can become dangerous quiet quickly.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/respirator-use...
But I should add, the CDC only recommends face masks for the infected and limits recommendation of N95 respirators to healthcare providers and those in workplace settings.
Should you go buy some? Probably jot
so, i advise people to leave the face masks of all types for utilization by our healthcare workers, as there will soon be a shortage and as a member of the public you should mostly be sitting at home rather than wandering around areas with other people anyway.
Theoretically they can... But practically there are so many routes to failure, the average person cannot use it.
If you were the guy with impeccable lab technique... Maybe.
If worn by infected people it can reduce the spread, but if this is the case the infected person should not be around others anyway.
- Whether wearing a mask makes it less likely someone will pick up an infection in constant conditions (direct mask efficacy, reduced touching, etc.)
- Whether wearing a mask makes it less likely someone will transmit an infection in constant conditions.
- Whether wearing a mask leads infected people to spend more time around others.
- Whether wearing a mask leads uninfected people to spend more time around others.
- Whether the way masks end up getting allocated in the event of a shortage promotes or inhibits spread at population scale (for example, if masks ended up overallocated towards people who're so concerned that they stay home anyways and away from people who don't have the ability to).
https://sentido-labs.com/es/biblioteca/coronavirus-2020-02-L...
(Text and video subtitles are in Spanish, but sound is the original English)
Before you get sick, start taking a multivitamin. Most people are vitamin D deficient in winter, which increases your risk of dying from respiratory infections, and it takes about 6 weeks to get your levels up. Also vitamin C, like 250mg. And do cardio.
- If you're in a cold climate, be aware of how to drain your heating (if you use water) or water supplies within the house in the event of an extended power outage.
- Have a normal kit.
- Keep the cars gassed up.
- Avoid travel to crowded places and aircraft.
One of the reasons for that is that there's actually multiple phases to this sort of thing. Quarantine is a response you use when trying to completely squash it early, but as the virus escapes quarantine, you go to a different strategy of trying to reduce the virus' effective r0, involving preventing mass gatherings, encouraging self-quarantine, encouraging working from home, etc. Some quarantines may still be part of the strategy, but it's not the only arrow in the quiver. It's not a matter of choosing between "quarantine everybody completely for weeks" or "everybody dies".
Broadly speaking, it's reasonable to expect a very high chance that the infrastructure industry will successfully keep transmission within itself low enough that it won't actually catastrophically fail. It's a high priority and everybody knows it. A lot of the work involved in this sort of infrastructure doesn't involve being up close and personal with people.
You might want to try to avoid having a plumbing problem in your residence or something, though.
I live in an area prone to power outages (a 4 day outage less than a year ago, although that was an outlier), and I haven't been buffing up my "power outage" supplies. I do have them. But I've been filling up my freezer in stages instead for this. To be honest, I don't even expect the stores to completely fail, though there may be a run on them at the beginning. But the stores will be one of the biggest remaining hubs there will be, by necessity. If I can just pre-buy some stuff I would have bought anyhow and avoid having to go there at all during the containment period, it seems worth it. The extra package of toilet paper from Costco isn't going to go bad in the meantime.
Let me give my generic "preparation" spiel here: Basic prep is a good idea anyhow. Society is far more resilient against a wide variety of threats when more people can last a week or two of infrastructure outage. Being prepped is the socially responsible thing to do. If this is what it takes for you to set up a bit of prep, ok, fine. It's not panic, it's being responsible. Shoot for not having to go to the grocery store for 2-3 weeks, probably. Buy things you'll use anyhow, which means you're just forward-loading some spending you'd have done anyhow. Don't forget to think beyond food; toilet paper, tissues, medicine, shampoo, soap, etc. (Fortunately most of this stuff keeps even better than food.)
No need to panic. But it is a good idea to be ready, because even if COVID-19 never hits your area, someday it's going to be something.
And let me emphasize again, I don't know more than anybody else; I'm just saying where I personally have put some skin in the game.
As for the 5% permanent lung damage figure, ARDS is found in around 20% of cases with mechanical ventilation for around 12.3% (https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus-disease-2019-c...)
Survivors of ARDS often have decreased quality of life including lung damage and cognitive issues. I wasn't able to find percentages of these issues in covid-19-related ARDS survivors though.
Or heat them in the sun? Sun tea beans??
These services generally require someone in the production facility monitoring them 24/7, along with some form of repair crews available 24/7. But, on the other hand, these are services that require 24/7 monitoring, even in the face of blizzards, earthquakes, hurricanes, or other natural disasters that severely impact physical infrastructure, and so they'll have contingency plans for "people can't come into work" scenarios.
Alcohol is the best liquid fuel to use. It's nontoxic, can be extinguished with water, and serves double duty as an antiseptic and a nonpolar organic solvent. If you store the alcohol bottles floating in a larger container of water, they are inherently fire-safe for storage, although I don't bother. Considerable exploration of these themes is in Dercuano.
I actually have one of these I made from Guinness and soda can. It has absolutely no safety measure to prevent spilling the fuel. Tip that little can over on the top of a regular stove and you have a fire inside your stove. Ieeee
I have in fact had a raging alcohol fire on top of another gas stove due to spilled fuel (for reasons much more stupid than cooking over a camping stove in my kitchen). Things stored above the stove started to burn (more stupidity). But because my stupidity didn't extend to using something like gasoline or lighter fluid, a cup of water instantly extinguished the blaze. Now I have an ammonium phosphate fire extinguisher in my kitchen. You should too.
I'm not clear how this would work in practice. In the US, between insurance and the DEA, patients get very little choice about how many meds are dispensed at which intervals. There are all kinds of constraints.
https://theprepared.com/wuhan-coronavirus/
The key here in any pandemic is to make sure you reduce the chances of being infected. That works better than any surgical masks, N95 respirators, etc.
In essence, minimize or eliminate social contacts like hugs, hand shakes, kisses or touching anyone during this period. If you need to do so, remember to not touch your face, nose or eyes, and wash or sterilize your hands immediately after that. Stay away from public places with large amounts of people or confined areas. Your face is sacred, remember not to touch your face, eyes or nose when you're outside, or else wear a surgical or N95 mask (if you can find one), which helps in enforcing the above. Wash your hands for at least 20-30 seconds when you return home. Do not touch things like lift buttons with your fingers. Use a key, pen, elbows or knuckles (not so ideal but it's better than using fingers). If you're travelling in a car or cab, request the driver to wind down the windows. Stock up on medicine, and avoid visiting hospitals unless required.
this is the recurrent theme in Taleb's Black Swan book and his later Antifragile. e.g. Preparing for the next big catastrophic event based on the experience from the last big event, is the reason he gives on why we can never escape Black Swans
27% of people in the US can’t even afford a $400 emergency expense, which is (generously) the cost of maybe one visit to verify illness or moderate symptoms.
Well, I mean, yeah. Have you been watching the stock market in the past few days? Everybody's got a pretty clear view of this.
But "death" has that certain finality about it. A quarantine can pass in a way that death doesn't. Even a bad one.
The real guarantees of a disaster are: Do businesses have enough cashflow to handle lack of just in time inventory from China if their shelves run dry? Do millions of people in the US have enough cashflow to handle rent payments if jobs are shut down due to quarantine and they don't get hourly wages? Do we have enough pharmaceuticals on hand to overcome the supply dip, given that 80% of our drugs are manufactured in the Wuhan area? IMO health insurance rates are the least of our problems.
It's far from irrelevant. There are millions of people for whom a visit to the ER means bankruptcy, and should they contract the virus, they will avoid diagnosis, continue to go to work, and silently spread the disease to those who come in contact with them.
That's not the correct number regardless, it's closer to 10-12% of adults, directly from a prominent study performed by the Federal Reserve.
By far the biggest healthcare problem the US will have, if the virus hits hard, is a swamping of resources, a general over-taxing of the entire healthcare system and all ICU beds.
The US can, anytime it sees fit, fire off a very large healthcare emergency funding program, printed magically out of thin air. We can offer waivers to the entire population for expenses. It will be considered a national emergency. The national guard will be mobilized. The population will pay for it via taxation and wealth debasement (debt, printing), just as they do in natural disasters now. Money is not the primary concern, Congress is always happy to spend - it's going to be health system infrastructure vs case load. We won't be able to put together the resources fast enough in an emergency situation (eg NYC & LA having having 100,000 cases). China moved as fast as they could and couldn't manage it, and they're able to move drastically faster than the modern US will be able to.
We stock up on very low glycemic index protein bars and water. Lots of bottled water.
This isn't some natural disaster where infrastructure is ruined, just people can't go out much.
If those people are sick, the water may stop flowing.
Imagine that you'll be stuck in your home for three weeks. What would you need?
i can do that!
Anecdotally, I was in Costco last week and saw a woman shopping directly from a "Disaster Preparedness Checklist". I strongly suspect that there will be a wave of panic shopping in the next few weeks. Better to get after it now. Actually ignore that, wait until I finish shopping then go out.
Anybody have a good way of dealing with this?
That said, it doesn't work for all drugs. One of the medications I'm on now I can't get filled one day early under any circumstance, nor can I get it shipped to me. For extra fun points, if I'm late by more than a week, it's doubtful I can get it refilled ever again.
Apart from obvious things like canned beans and veggies, dry quinoa is great. It is one of the few plant-based complete protein sources, it is rich in B-vitamins (mostly found in meat - short shelf life and could become scarce) and minerals, has good fat content, has a long shelf life, is relatively affordable, and tastes really darn good. You can get organic quinoa from Costco for a good price.
Speaking of B-vitamins, if you’re not able to access meat or eggs, you may want a B12 supplement - it is vital for cellular metabolism and nervous function, and isn’t readily available from plant-derived sources. A supply of multivitamins may be a good idea in general, depending on how long your access to fresh food is impeded. Vitamin C may be important if you’re not eating much in the way of fresh fruit or veggies.
Nuts - almonds and walnuts are good. High fat, moderate protein content, good sources of certain vitamins and minerals. Good shelf life.
Some non-preserved produce have long-ish shelf lives - squash, sweet potatoes, onions, cabbage, carrots. I just got some 10lb bags of organic carrots for $5.75/bag from Costco. It’s rare to find any food for just $0.57/lb.
In short, please don’t buy 50lbs of ramen noodles and pasta and expect to come out of this healthy a month or two down the line.
Specifically this one http://ready4itall.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/General_-_...
This is by no means my area of expertise, but in provisioning for earthquakes and other disruptions, I have simply bought more of what we're already using.
Not only will you not waste the items, you will keep them refreshed and current as you cycle through your (longer) queue of normal foods you eat.
“For the moment, we are not witnessing the uncontained global spread of this virus, and we are not witnessing large-scale severe disease or death.”
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/who-tries-to-calm-ta...
See their recent release stating that they can't call this a pandemic because they conveniently don't have the criteria setup for that classification any more.
Hopefully this virus will upend the blind Faith that people recently have come to put into international establishments.
1. https://cloverchronicle.com/2020/01/30/world-health-organiza...
But this would require a radical cultural shift outside of urban areas. And unfortunately individualism I think has become a bit of a slur in many circles, a manifestation of the two party split among collectivism (leftist) and individualism (rightist).
The other issue is that the WHO is being very conservative in their reports. They won't claim uncontained global spread until there is hard evidence. Before that point, however, there will be week evidence.
If I recall correctly, several days ago, the WHO excplicitly warned that "the window for containment is closing". Even before then, I never recall them saying that containment was assured. Particuarly if the spread is occuring in areas with week health infastructure, or that are trying to supress the numbers.
There's no downside in being prepared - worst case scenario you slowly consume the perishables or donate them. In related news, Zoom's stock is surging. I wonder if Slack's stock will eventually have a similar boom.
https://theprepared.com/wuhan-coronavirus/
I would also advise speaking to your neighbors to make them aware of the need to be prepared. To that point, buy a little extra of everything --well, maybe food only-- so you can help a few people out during what is likely to be a difficult time. Happy neighbors are as important to safety as anything else.
I'm actually thinking of making a preparedness checklist and going door-to-door around the neighborhood to hand them out.
Having lived through at least a couple of important earthquakes in the Los Angeles region I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, you do not want to wait until the last minute to get ready for any kind of an out of the norm situation.
Then there's the question of what would constitute responsible behavior in the event of COVID-19 getting more serious in the US. I would guess this would, at a minimum, include preparing to stay home for somewhere around 30 to 45 days, particularly considering that we are starting to think the incubation period could be as long as 27 days.
And so, from this perspective alone --that of being a responsible citizen-- I am not equipped to understand someone who would down-vote advise to prepare for 30 to 45 days of at-home isolation.
If EVERYONE stays home, how do stores remain open? Do we think they are run by robots?
I try to use language with some degree of precision. I said "assume no stores will be open during that time". ASSUME, not "stores will definitely be closed during that time". Assume, as a part of planning, not categorically know, because the assumption will make for better planning.
It is far safer to make this assumption and be wrong, than to discover not making the assumption was a mistake.
In the first case you end-up with extra food and supplies you did not need and will simply consume over several months (or donate to the Red Cross, which would be fantastic). In the other case you and your family could suffer greatly due to being utterly unprepared.
Maybe it's my aerospace background...I have learned the hard way that ignoring potential failure modes and corner cases is the mother of all fuck-ups.
But when people are reacting to the coronavirus, the implicit question isn't what preparations are good to have for general worst case scenarios; it's which preparations you're likely to need, which ones you can no longer afford to be without. As many a doomsday prepper will attest, there's always one more contingency you could plan for, but telling people to start with extreme measures makes it less likely they'll plan at all.
Assume stores will be closed. Plan accordingly. Be glad if things don't play out that way. No harm done. Not difficult. Not extreme. Not a big deal. Just reasonable assumptions and planning in the face of what could be a very serious event in human history.
I can't even buy dust masks at my local home improvement store as they are out of stock. And that's not even a necessity!
Nothing wrong in being prepared for an emergency.
It makes me really wonder about these people who savagely down-vote stuff like this on HN. Are they so out of touch with reality? Or is it just a fun sport of sort. There's a strain of people on HN that love down-voting anything that is common sense. As if that single click will take reality and make it align with the way they would like the universe to exist. It's laughable at best, and very very sad. I don't really care about points but it is interesting to see how certain things are not debated and just stomped on and anything that aligns with the cargo cult is supported.
Here's news from Italy that very much applies to what I've been saying:
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australians-in-italy-s-coronavir...
As you said, there's nothing wrong to prepare for an emergency. And, by definition, you have to do it before the need arises. I have no interest in having to fight though desperate mobs to get food for my kids. I pretty much got everything we need to shelter in place for about 60 days now, including medicine, masks, etc. I also got extra supplies to be able to help neighbors who might not be as prepared as we are. I guess I am an evil person for suggesting this and acting this way. So sorry.
>I'm advising everyone in my circle to prepare for a 30 to 45 day at-home stay and assume no stores will be open during that time. I think this is the prudent thing to do.
I think that's the paranoid thing to do. I'm stocking up a bit so that I can stay inside if I personally get sick, but that doesn't require 30-45 days of supplies. I don't even really have room for that much stuff in my tiny apartment.
>I would also advise speaking to your neighbors to make them aware of the need to be prepared. To that point, buy a little extra of everything --well, maybe food only-- so you can help a few people out during what is likely to be a difficult time. Happy neighbors are as important to safety as anything else.
>I'm actually thinking of making a preparedness checklist and going door-to-door around the neighborhood to hand them out.
You're obviously much friendlier with your neighbors than I am. If any of my neighbors did that I would probably assume they were a bit off and avoid talking to them from then on. I certainly wouldn't act on some random dude's checklist.
I know all of my neighbors, well, at least somewhere between 30 to 40 of them. We've known them for years, decades in some cases. We actually have gatherings at each other's homes every so often. Try it, it's called contact with humanity. Not that hard. Neighbors are human beings, just like you. Sure, it requires a bit of effort, but anyone can do it.
> I think that's the paranoid thing to do
Yikes. More of the above. Sorry you feel that way. Ask the people in Wuhan it they think such a recommendation might be paranoid. Or how about the 1,000 people in Spain who just got quarantined in a hotel. Of the 300+ in Austria?
Proposing families and individuals prepare for a potentially extended quarantine isn't paranoid, it's caring enough about other to make sure they are aware of what might lie in the horizon. In my experience not everyone is well informed. I've had many conversations with people during the last few days who a) had no idea how bad things are around the world b) had no clue there's a better than 50% probability we'll have to contend with it in the US (not my words, this was said today at the CDC press conference).
> that doesn't require 30-45 days of supplies
If we get hit hard with COVID-19 in our large cities you'll be lucky if you have to stay locked-up for just 30 days. First of all, we now think the incubation period could be as long as 27 days (this is news out of Wuhan). So, right there you have justification for 30 days as a MINIMUM period. And it is worse because you can't risk re-infection. Aside from the fact that it would absolutely implode every economy in the world and cause more death, re-infection for not observing a reasonable 30 to 45 day quarantine period is just irresponsible.
Coming back to your own situation, I refuse to believe someone doesn't have the space for 30 days worth of food and essential supplies. OK, you don't have room for stake and burgers. You have to adapt. A 50 lb bag of rice will probably feed you for a month. Not ideal, but better than nothing. Add to that, say, 3 cans for something per day (soup, meat, whatever you like) and you have the basics. Do you have room for 100 cans of food under your bed, behind the TV, under the desk, in the bathroom? Probably. Not that hard.
Anyhow, free country and all that. You get to choose which reality you get to navigate. I'd rather be responsible, coordinate with friends, family and neighbors, help each other, prepare for a reasonable set of circumstances and come out of it in good shape.
Good luck.
Here's a dose of reality for you:
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australians-in-italy-s-coronavir...
This could be reality in one or more US cities in days, weeks or months from now. Would it be better to take the time to be ready for this before people panic or just wait and wing it? Maybe go door-to-door betting for food and supplies? Sure, that sounds like an excellent plan.
Rumors abound in China about party members openly criticizing the government, including a petition signed by 2500 academics and professionals demanding free speech. Iran is also in full blown crisis after seeing its first case only 3 weeks ago. Two of the U.S.'s primary enemies are in "wartime conditions" dealing with 2019-ncov.
This is not just another flu. This is not SARS of MERS, this is well into Spanish Flu territory and it will test the modern geopolitical establishment and the resilience of human government. At the very least it will define a generation.
Edit: check the CDC's Twitter. They've suggested that individuals ,including with families, start preparing "across all sectors" saying "disruption to everyday life might be severe". The steady stream of silent downvotes I've been receiving for a few days is a testament to how far people are willing to go to deny unpleasant realities. This is why there are panics and bank runs and why the stores will be empty in cities across the U.S. in the next week or so. It's already happening in Italy.
If the rumors regarding dissent are remotely true, anti government sentiment over how the virus was handled is unprecedented. There are hundreds of leaked videos online of Chinese citizens publicly expressing discontent. In 2020 it isn't just the party members that have internet access now - this virus is likely acting as a trigger for the possible end of the CCP, or at least some sort of reformation.
Further, the world was not nearly as interconnected and interdependent in the 1910s. And urban density was far lower as well. What's happening in China alone is already disrupting global supply chains, and the virus has already spread to other third world manufacturing economies like Vietnam, which shut down all schools. In many ways this is a perfect storm.
If anything, this isn’t an argument against offshoring, it’s an argument for offshoring your factories across as many different countries as possible so you have less concentrated exposure to a specific country.
> it’s an argument for offshoring your factories across as many different countries as possible so you have less concentrated exposure to a specific country
That isn't entirely incorrect, but it still pays to have reserve domestic capacity, not just for events like this virus but to limit the power that other nations have over the U.S. in any case it's good that we're likely to reduce reliance on China after all of this is over.
Reducing economic relations with another country means you have less power and influence over them, not more. Having hundreds of billions of dollars worth of trade conducted between two countries and having millions of their jobs tied to international trade is a good incentive for them not to antagonize you too much.
Any local outbreak is less likely to disrupt your domestic operations to the same degree that foreign dependence would. Primarily because the U.S. is a first world country where any disaster is more likely to be better dealt with and when the event is local, you have you have more reliable information for handling a disaster when you are communicating with local channels. Particularly when you are in a country with free speech and limited government suppression.
In any case, to ideally minimize risk you want both foreign and domestic production, even if that means some degree of subsidy for local operations. There are other downsides to excessive free trade of labor and goods as well - we need a happy medium.
I've lived for 30 days in alaska on a glacier with only what I could carry in a large pack; water and fuel were the largest by weight, sleeping bag/tent/clothes were the largest by volume. By the end, campers had devolved into small groups of people who didn't share food.
> devolved into small groups of people who didn't share food.
In what context did this happen? Doesn't sound like a fun camping trip
There's a saying: "civilization is only three meals away from anarchy", that only made sense to me after day 28.
The items I describe fit on a single shelf (except the water; I have a water filter and a nearby stream, so I only keep a few liters on hand).
I'm just a backpacker though not a doomsday prepper, the stuff we carry isn't always appropriate for an emergency situation and is generally geared towards being very portable rather than robust/100% reliable.
tl;dr - All you need is a bathtub, a WaterBob, and 10 teaspoons of bleach.
The average bathtub holds about 80 Gallons of water, that's enough for two and a half people for 30 days. The rule of thumb is one gallon per person per day. See: https://www.beprepared.com/blog/18680/much-water-store/
I always have a few of these things called "The Water Bob" stored in a closet, a few cause QC isn't that great. Its like a giant plastic bag that sits in your tub and holds water.
You can add 1/8 teaspoon (or 8 drops) of household bleach per gallon to get potable water. See: https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/pdf/emergency/09_202278-b_m...
I only know this cause I lived over seas during the first gulf war, and we had to have prep stuff for scud attacks. We didn't have the WaterBob, but there were plenty of 50gal plastic storage containers. When the sirens went off, we set the jugs to fill in the showers, and hid in our inner most room. Fun times all around really. Free gas masks though! So that was nice.
There's one thing prepper fantasies have in common... the impending doom never comes. It's fun to think about. But, real honestly, if the survivors at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were able to get by in the days after their tragedy, I bet I could figure something out on an ad-hoc basis.
If you look at history, a lot of wars were won or lost based on how well a city prepared for a sustained siege.
in the case of hiroshima, water pumps were restored 4 days after the bombing, but of course the story is more involved (http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=47988)
Thus far that doesn't seem to be the case but who knows what will happen in the future.
I'm not seeing this in the link you posted ( https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.18.20024539v... )
A quick online search isn't yielding anything substantial on that either.
EDIT: N/M found it, but they're saying it's a possibility due to observations found during SARS:
> Gaohong Sheng et al. [20] have shown that viral infection can increase the risk of pulmonary fibrosis.Xie et al. [21] found that 45% of patients showed signs of pulmonary fibrosis within one month after being infected with SARS-CoV.Hui et al. [22] found that 36% and 30% of patients infected with SARS-CoV developed pulmonary fibrosis at 3 and 6 months after infection, respectively.Therefore, we believe that pulmonary fibrosis will become one of the serious complications in patients with 2019-nCoV infection.How to prevent and reduce the occurrence of pulmonary fibrosis in patients with 2019-nCoV infection is an urgent problem for medical workers in the treatment of 2019-nCoV.
This shit is no deadlier than the regular flu. If you’re not 80+ or have a bad health you’re fine.
They need to fire these officials.
b) Despite that, what data we do have suggests that it's at least quite a bit deadlier, we're just waiting to see how much.
It's not just the flu. Please don't assert that without checking the numbers.
1. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/179/2/156/123327