Posted on 02/04/2020 6:59:18 PM PST by BenLurkin
I’ll start with food, paper items and soap—enough for a couple of months. If you think you need three months’ worth of supplies, get those with a second trip. If you’re in an area where power outages are possible, get plenty of canned and dry foods. Oh, and flour, yeast, sugar and salt for making bread. That will help to keep us out of the stores. Baked bread doesn’t keep long.
If we stock up right now, stores can order and restock soon enough to avoid depriving others and restock again. *The overall benefit will be less panic traffic after virus arrival.*
Put much thought into details and make a list before going out for two months’ worth of food and supplies. That will help you to avoid needing any public restroom while out.
If you absolutely must go out after virus arrival,...
On handling things, above all, don’t touch your face. Don’t touch it at all. I was once prevented from touching my face for 13 weeks (Ft. Leonard Wood), so you can avoid it, too. When you really must touch your face, use a clean tissue. And wash hands before doing it to avoid contaminating the tissue before touching the face with it.
Get a box of exam gloves or a pair of chemical gloves, if you can. Otherwise, get plenty of hand cream (seals the pores). And of course, wash hands with soap and lukewarm water before putting the gloves on and after arriving home.
*Avoid public restrooms* by knowing what you’re going to get before going out and going before you leave your house.
If you must use a public restroom, wash the hands with soap and water! Soap and water make germs fall off of hands quickly (20 seconds). Use paper towels to dry. Air dryers are germ blowers. They blow live germs all over the place.
Hand sanitizer is not as good as thorough hand washing (for at least 20 seconds), but it’s better than nothing. Hand sanitizer makes germs fall off “slowly.” Don’t touch the face. But keep some hand sanitizer in the car, just in case.
If it were up to me, I would close all public restrooms during a serious epidemic with airborne and/or surface-born germs. The restrooms become germ bins, then employees who use them become vectors.
Oh, and avoid getting close to retail employees. They will have had contact with many customers, restrooms, etc. An epidemic would be a good time for all stores to be self-checkout only.
ATMs and Groceries. If you need access to either more than a week from now, then you haven’t prepped properly (not that you can’t go out in a week, just that you shouldn’t have to for necessities - but if that day does come when you’re afraid to go out, you better be stocked up!).
As to your question - try to think of everything you might need to get through about 3 months. What I do is count up all of the calories of food that I have, so for 2 people, that would meaning wanting about 400,000 calories available (if it were all rice, figure 250 lbs.). Obviously you’ll want other food, so maybe 150 lbs. of rice, plus 160,000 calories of other food (about 60 lbs. or so of red meat, with fat, for example).
As to the type of food, unlike other scenarios, I think we’ll likely have electrical power throughout, as that is such a key necessity...so any food that keeps long enough, even if it requires freezing. As unhealthy as they are, carbs (like rice) are the best bang, calorie-wise, for the buck.
Regarding other stuff - consider meds, first aid supplies, cleaning supplies (particularly alcohol, wipes, bleach). You still may find some respirators, but they’re getting rare now. Other stuff includes paper items, bags, etc. Anything you’re thinking of replacing because it’s broken, or may break soon - replace it now.
That’s what comes to mind for me.
“The virus can live on latex gloves... and you still have to open the mail. I’m probably one of the last people who pays my bills with checks... but I’m going to change that and have bills paid directly out of my account.”
Yea, I was worried about that. That’s where spraying of alcohol or a bleach mixture should work. I read that you can also do that to re-use surgical masks (providing they weren’t in a heavily infected environment, like a hospital or cruise ship).
After virus arrival in my area, my mail can wait in a dry spot away from human traffic in the house for about a day. But that’s just me. The mail can be fetched with gloves, a dry cloth or something that can go into a disposable bag for the wash or in the trash.
Don’t forget to remove gloves properly by pinching the inside of the cuff of each glove with finger and thumb, then pulling it off inside-out. Then wash hands. If arriving back home after going out, put gloves and clothes in a bag for the wash. Close and seal the bag. *Take a shower.*
it didn’t go to china, but it had a Chinese passenger who jumped on for a leg. 80yo man.
But not to worry. In the month the US has been trying to get China to tell the truth, they’ve filed a patent on Gilead’s experimental drug after Gilead penned an agreement and provided the drug for a study - just stealing it outright. But the icing on the cake is, in this same one month, as China holds its hand out to the world like a pauper begging for ‘supplies’, ‘six’ companies are now manufacturing test kits, and China has set up 30 labs capable of completing nucleic acid analysis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DetbeqReYMg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSS4j7XJd68
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