I am informed by the New York Times and friends on Facebook that coronaplague was easily foreseeable and every intelligent person (i.e., not Donald Trump) saw it coming. Regrettably, in our own household we thought that coronavirus might be like the H7N9 avian influenza, about which WHO raised the alarm during 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 outbreaks (that later fizzled).
Because I like to be awesome at fighting the last war, what should be in our garage to prepare for a flu-like epidemic?
Here’s the beginning of a kit:
- masks (50 per household member?)
- gloves (100 pair)
- pulse oximeter
- ear thermometer
- infrared forehead thermometer (how are these different from grill thermometers, if at all?)
- hand sanitizer
- Clorox Multi-Surface Cleaner
- Clorox wipes (will these dry out between plagues?)
- toilet paper (still can’t figure out why!)
- paper towels (ditto)
- high quality webcam for any desktop computer
- high quality USB headset
- Facebook Portal or Google Nest Max for keeping in touch with friends and family from the living room? (which one is better?) Also have a similar device already set up inside the homes of any older relatives.
- ordinary cold/flu remedies
Readers: What else?
Your prior ideas about leaving the centre seat empty on airline flights have now come true. The Corona Plague has caused Easy Jet to now offer this as the standard arrangement.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52306868
Adrian: Thank you for this! It proves that even a stopped clock is right once or twice a day!
Ring doorbell camera with thermal option
Since the virus becomes inactive after a while, you don’t really need 50 masks. On cardboard, the virus becomes effectively gone after 24 hours (half life is a couple of hours) and in steel or plastic 3 days. So you should be able to reuse a mask after letting it sit idle for 3 days. This isn’t a medical application, but just personal protection to let you proceed with ordinary activities.
So get 3 nice quilted masks that you can wash instead of 50 throwaways.
Also N95 masks suitable for construction are likely to be effective for more than one day’s use. In construction applications, the mask clogs up with dust in a day. For everyday wear, probably doesn’t clog up for a while. We had a few masks that we wear when cleaning out the furnace filter (which is a messy job since the previous owner basically broke it, and I haven’t got it fixed yet…). You may find that your a well-chosen mask is useful even without a pandemic.
Toilet paper because a) often disease increases your TP usage and if you are sick at home you don’t want to run out, and b) it’s cheap and easy to store, so although you may not be able to hoard milk, you *can* hoard TP, so you might as well, and c) since others will hoard it, you need to.
A box of gloves is cheap and easy to store. But like masks, you might not want to treat them as throwaways in a bad pandemic.
And wipes will try out. Just keep a full spare bottle of bleach and make your own wipes with a rag. The wipes are just a convenience.
Soap and sanitizer last forever. I don’t think much of sanitizer, but using it instead of soap may protect your hands from getting sore.
Flour, pasta, baking powder, canned soup, canned veges and fruits, dried beans, soft drinks (optional). Hair cutting clippers and scissors.
Quick cavity repair kit with dental pain kit ($6 on Amazon). I agree with Bradley on mask re-use, recommend N95 for better filtering.
Oh, lest I forget, new iPads for the kids, which are currently back-ordered at Costco, apparently. And some sort of backup for your wifi, which will inevitably fail when you need it most.
G C: Why do we need to stockpile food? There was never a time during this plague when food ran out at the supermarkets and Costco. No bread? That’s bad for us anyway! No pasta? Also a good thing when faced with a virus that likes to kill the obese. We almost always have enough calories stored up in our fridge and pantry to sustain ourselves for a week or two, even if not on our most preferred items.
Awesome idea on the cavity repair kit! Thank you! Good point on the hair clippers (we already had due to certain household members who refuse to go to the barber).
Unable on the WiFi backup! The only thing that the Millionaires for Obama/Hillary/Biden hate more than a church without Black Lives Matter and Rainbow flags is a cell tower. You’re talking satellite perhaps?
Most of the items on your list would be good to have in general, not just for emergencies. For the consumables, you should only have to stockpile just enough products to get you through the time (2 weeks?) required to get manufacturing redirected to the items on your list. The main problem is that the US and other countries in the West outsourced all their manufacturing to China, so now they are incapable of producing the necessities. The outsourcing of US manufacturing was very good for wall street, who is now isolating in their vacation home mansions and mega yachts. It is really sad that a country like the US cannot manufacture all the required items on your list in a matter of weeks. China was able to manufacture all the items on your list with no difficulty and now has the world by its short strings. Another 10 years and Washington will be reporting to Beijing.
When will the people responsible for outsourcing US manufacturing be lined up against a brick wall and shot for treason?
Note to readers. Pavel is a foreigner who has admitted to “meddling” in our election. This may be a crime. Also we typically do not line up people against a wall and shoot them. In fact, many of our leaders on the left want to decriminalize all non violent offenses.
Toucan Sam, I can see that shooting people for treason being looked down upon in New York or California, but at least in the good old US southern states, can you still be shot for treason?
Pavel, I live in the people’s republic of California which considers itself a sanctuary state. A few years ago the voters passed an initiative overwhelmingly to speed up the death penalties. Our new leader governor Newsome has put a stop to capital punishment. Even in the good olds days when we were killing people we never did it with guns. In California we had a gas chamber and an electric chair.
Fellow Comrade Toucan Sam, I also live in the PRC (People’s Republic of Canada) under the leadership of Justin “T” Castro. The last civilian execution in the PRC was in 1962 by hanging, abolished in 1972 and our military had execution by firing squad on the books until 1998.
> When will the people responsible for outsourcing US manufacturing be lined up against a brick wall and shot for treason?
You mean Nixon? He is dead already.
Nixon/Kissinger opened some trade but it was Clinton’s johnson that gave Gingrich & co the opening to squeeze Clinton into blowing trade with China wide open. I remember my telecom equipment company executives soiling their shorts when they were allowed to access the Chinese market and they agreed to all sorts of crazy terms by the Chinese. To sell our products they demanded all R&D for those lines happen in China and we would have to train their people. Back home thousands were laid off since development moved overseas. Sad thing was the Chinese only paid up a decade later and a fraction of what they owed. So if anyone is lined up and shot maybe it should be US company executives. Among all the current talk of IP theft etc these days, no one mentions the role our corporations played in all that.
Pavel,
“When will the people responsible for outsourcing US manufacturing be lined up against a brick wall and shot for treason?”
Answer: Never.
In fact, whether vaccine is found or not, it’ll be business as usual but even more so very soon. The local Pravda (the NYT) is back to its usual business of sowing racial hatred and divisiveness:
The Way We Ration Ventilators Is Biased
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/opinion/covid-ventilator-rationing-blacks.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
From the article: “Baseline health is far worse among lower-income, uninsured, disabled and particular racial and ethnic groups. Life expectancy likewise differs across groups”
The commissar who wrote the article was apparently unaware, or careful not to be caught lying outright, that mortality in general is lower amongst Latinos in comparison to non-Hispanic Whites.
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”
Bidet instead of toilet paper.
We just moved into our permanent cottage after losing our “happily ever after” home to a Cat 5 hurricane in October 2018 and moving among rescues and rentals ever since. T-Mobile wireless has been rock solid, including the internet hotspot I’m on right now. Any survival plan should include bulletproof wireless service. Verizon was totally down for weeks, and of course they had the first responder/relief agencies, who had to buy GSM (AT&T or T-Mobile) burners. Verizon is rushing “5G” to these boonies, trying to restore a tattered reputation.
We are scheduled for AT&T fiber install on April 21, and much as I dread AT&T, snappy internet and Netflix would be nice.
T-Mobile has a sketchy reputation too but our experience has been splendid. They offer a wireless internet plan in some areas, but not here. If it becomes available, we will certainly support it.
You need a supply of avgas to power the SR-20.
The airports are all up and running and the FBOs are getting bail-outs (just talked to a friend who owns one), same as any other continuing business.
Perhaps more relevant… where can one go? (We had been flying to KPVC and then walking to the (deserted) beach. But the airport coincidentally scheduled construction for the month of April. Most airports aren’t walking distance to anything other than a restaurant (nearly all closed). By the time you get to general aviation age, most of your friends will be at an age where they’re at high risk of COVID-19 and won’t want to leave their bunkers to meet.)
Another vote for toilet paper, it is versatile and useful for other purposes. As for shelter accommodations, give me “dry” and I’ll forego “large”. Beans in any form, and the ubiquitous white plastic bucket (it’s a clothes washer, a flood bailer, a stool, a potable water “pump”, a suitcase of sorts).
Every babushka knows to stockpile salt, matches and gun ammunition in a cabin in the woods, as far away from people wonted to prosperity as possible. When shit strikes, you won’t be able to get there, anyway, as the civilization ends unexpectedly.
At this point your best bet is to look like a hobo, and to learn to never trust, fear, or ask/beg. I.e. assume behavior of a thief-in-law. It’s not easy after a certain age, though, just like basketball or ping pong.
If the next flu is as bad as the current one looks now (it’s not over yet), with respectfully quarantined precariat and open Costco, then there should be an IaaS startup, offloading your garage contents to a cloud storage in the vicinity, and providing you with a ML trained shopping list.
I found I didn’t need a camera on my desktop computer. There are apps (I used Irian) that will let your desktop use your phone as a camera. I still ended up using my laptop for Zoom, but not because the desktop didn’t have a camera.
Q: “G C: Why do we need to stockpile food? There was never a time during this plague when food ran out at the supermarkets and Costco. ”
If the case fatality rate of the next superbug is a little higher, say 10%, the fragile supply chains will break all over the place. The trucker who decides it’s not worth his life to bring the food from the farm, the farmer who can’t work, because he’s sick or there’s no diesel because the truck didn’t come from the refinery.
This is a very important point, and can apply to any major disaster, not just the corona plague. The fragile food supply chain is a big issue, especially when some parts of the country depend on food supply from very far away. If there is any lessons learned, it should be the high value of local food supply chains. Lot easier to transport food across town, then from across the country. Every city should make sure that it can source its own basic food requirements within 100 km.
Autonomous or tele-operated trucks should hopefully solve the driver shortage problem.
Zinc lonzeges
Vitamin C pills
Extra stash of prescription meds
Hydrogen peroxide
Bottled water
Oxygen compressor
Cash and silver coins
Full hazmat suits (for airborne Ebola)
> Oxygen compressor
You mean oxygen concentrator? Anyway, I got one, but it turns out there are tricky to use: you can overdose oxygen relatively easily and dangerously slow down breath and increase CO2 concentration. So at the very least you also need continuous O2 meter. You might also consider getting CPAP machine to pump O2 from concentrator and thus build full system. On a bright sight if you need to fill O2 bottles for some reason, you can use concentrator for this. 🙂
SK: Throw in a copy of Critical Care for Dummies as well then?
Well, I married a doctor just in case. Apart from other benefits, makes it easy to stockpile antibiotics and buy oxygen concentrators.
A bit tangential to the post, but full story goes like this: I was slacking off doing sleep study for years. Finally this mess prompted me to research it more (since CPAPs are potentially useful for mild cases that don’t qualify for ventilator).
Turn out sleep studies are inconclusive for mild cases since most people are not sleeping well with bunch of wires attached and buzzing equipment around. Modern CPAPs are mostly self-adjusting and produce pretty detailed reports, so one of the easiest ways of actually improving sleep is getting CPAP machine and trying to use it and seeing if it helps. (I haven’t done this part yet). Apart of subjective factors one way of monitoring effectiveness of machine is its report, another way is continuous recording O2 pulse meter, which is useful tool with machine as well.
I got one from Amazon and I’m using it to monitor O2 during sleep. While results are open to interpretation, so far it shows that there is a problem, but it’s mild at best. So CPAP may actually not be that useful.
We got oxygen concentrator partially because of paranoia, and partially because of the huge number of elderly relatives. Since it looks like I need to try out CPAP anyway, once I’ll stop procrastinating and get one, we will coincidentally end up with full emergency kit.
SK –
In nonsmokers breathing is driven by high CO2, not low oxygen. It’s really only in long term smokers whose bodies get used to high CO2 all the time that have a problem with supplemental O2 decreasing their respiratory drive; their compensated bodies require lower oxygen to drive their breathing.
Your friendly neighborhood ER doc.
Prepare for a different war!
Ammunition.
Cigarettes.
Generator and gas.
Gas cooking stove.
Firewood.
Download a bunch of content and put it on offline media.
Alcohol – good for sterilizing and drinking.
Is there a mesh network in your area?
Apart from guns & ammo – food.
We were (and still are) perilously close this time for food supply chain disruption. All it takes few scared workers not to show up at night to unload truck and open grocery store once and we get widespread panic and shortage. You yourself wrote how liquor business has trouble staffing due to worker’s fear.
Anyway, apart from freezer in the garage, which you can fill up to capacity once there are indications of potential disruptions, buy Mountain House freeze-dry packs with 20 year shelf life.
15 gallons of gasoline in 3 metal jerry cans wouldn’t hurt either. For long-term storage you need non-ethanol gasoline, which being aviation enthusiast you probably can figure out how to get. For me it’s 30 minute drive to the nearest non-ethanol gas station.
Propane is storable essentially forever, so propane and propane stove to cook all the food you stockpiled and to disinfect water once initial supply runs out.
Also – some radios and solar power charger. I haven’t figured out what to get yet, but it’s on the list. Also dual fuel generator seems like a prudent option, but I have stationary natural gas generator, so it’s a bit hard to justify.
I second SK’s reco. for guns & ammo. although since you live in Massachusetts, you should be aware that the Baker administration (through Reichsleiter Healey) has closed all retail firearm stores and shooting ranges until at least May 4. I’m also assuming you possess the proper license, because if not, you’re going to have a very long wait to navigate that process and buy anything in MA: shooting ranges are closed and therefore you’re going to have a tough time enrolling in a live-fire safety class, which is a requirement for the license. If you already have a license but no firearm, your only remaining option is finding a willing seller to conduct a face-to-face FA-10 transaction.
In other words, the Baker administration has effectively eliminated the retail firearm business in Massachusetts and made it extremely difficult or impossible to become licensed.
There’s a lawsuit in progress:
https://www.northeastshooters.com/xen/threads/comm2a-saf-goal-and-fpc-file-against-baker-admin-on-shop-closures.386546/
When Baker initially promulgated the Essential Businesses list, gun retailers were allowed to remain open. It read:
“Workers supporting the operation of firearm or ammunition product manufacturers, retailers, importers, distributors and shooting ranges.”
By 2 PM on March 31st, that paragraph was altered, three words were deleted, and it now reads:
“Workers supporting the operation of firearm or ammunition product manufacturers, importers, and distributors…” thus closing retailers and also shooting ranges.
Please consider a “My Governor is an IDIOT” t-shirt from Triggered Freedom:
https://triggeredfreedom.com/collections/all-graphic-t-shirts/products/my-governor-is-an-idiot-all-states-mens-t-shirt
Well, we can’t expect to exercise all of our Constitutional rights during a government-declared crisis! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_assembly is gone in most states, right? Why not the Second Amendment as well?
@Philg: Even New Jersey hasn’t gone this far. Phil Murphy tried it, but reversed course when he was sued. This is pure, targeted harassment and rights abridgment, and has nothing to do with stopping the spread of COVID-19. You can very easily run a gun store that practices social distancing and brings in only one customer at a time. People take a number, you put a WiFi speaker outside, and call people in one at a time. Everyone who handles a firearm wears nitrile gloves. You can have customers call in advance and do curbside pickup of items like ammunition. Even the requisite NICS background check fingerprint scan on a gun purchase can be effectively sanitized between customers. If providing masks and gloves adds $10 to the purchase of a firearm, everyone I know would be happy to pay the extra money. As far as I know, Massachusetts is the first state to successfully use a public health crisis to defenestrate people’s 2nd Amendment rights. It must not stand and it won’t be forgotten.