The Doomsday Prepper thread

[friendship]

Appropriate name for a bourbon

[01010111]

This thread hits a little close to home. For the past nine days I’ve been in self quarantine to avoid the virus.

It’s frustrating trying to stock up on stuff in Korea because they don’t really do the dry goods, bulk goods, or canned goods like they do in the US. Canned meat is everywhere, but canned veggies or soups don’t exist outside of specialty shops. You can get all the rice and ramen you want, but because they don’t like salt or preservatives the ramen will expire in a few months.

So, I have a water filter and enough imported cereal, canned meat, and ramen to last for a few months (I really wish I could find powdered milk here). Hopefully it calms down here after then. I doubt this’ll be over internationally for another year, though...

[Dowi]

So, this Virus-thing is becoming more and more annoying.
Hospitals are having the hardest times trying to deal with all the infected people with respiratory issues and at the same time with the "normal" patients.
Yesterday our area (actually almost the 3/4 of north Italy) has been declared "red zone", so any kind of movement outside of the area is forbidden, and also moving inside the area is allowed only for working reasons or emergencies. All kinds of events in all the country (concerts, happenings, museums, showrooms, movies, theathers etc etc) have been canceled, schools, universities etc are closed until april 3rd, same with bars and restaurants (they're allowed to be open only until 6pm and they have to guarantee at least 1mt between two people).

I'm curious to know how are you/your countries dealing with this?

Besides all the fears and the anxieties, to live a situation like this is totally unexpected, and it certainly is interesting to see how western society - more in general first-world countries - are reacting to a spreading virus, when usually this kind of epidemies happen "far from our sight", and we get the feeling of what's happening only through the distance of journalism and reportages, while this time we are forced to be face to face with it (and i'm saying it with all the negative implications of our usual selfishness).

So, I have a water filter and enough imported cereal, canned meat, and ramen to last for a few months (I really wish I could find powdered milk here). Hopefully it calms down here after then. I doubt this’ll be over internationally for another year, though...

Sadly I think you could be right, maybe not a year but some months for sure.

[Gone Fission]

I'm curious to know how are you/your countries dealing with this?

Me, washing my hands more gratuitously, but still working in the office and shopping in store and commuting in mass transit. Awaiting office telework plans to work through closures when they arise. Worried a bit about my parents in their senior community.

The official response here is to ignore or minimize science and experts, apply a bronzer-stained glob of wishful thinking, and hope it all goes away in a week, two tops. Saying it’s contained repeatedly is not an effective magic spell. If anything, the spell is more likely to have the opposite effect.

Given the ridiculously low level of testing in the US, one hopes someone watches where the death tolls will be hiding in the stats—call it flu, natural causes, etc.

Not to get panicked, but this is shit to take seriously because taking it seriously can help at the margins, and on the scale of a large nation, the margins is a lot of people.

[Achtane]

Pour one out for all the poor bastards working retail.
The official US policy is "everything is fine, go back to work".

[D.o.S.]

So, this Virus-thing is becoming more and more annoying.
Hospitals are having the hardest times trying to deal with all the infected people with respiratory issues and at the same time with the "normal" patients.
Yesterday our area (actually almost the 3/4 of north Italy) has been declared "red zone", so any kind of movement outside of the area is forbidden, and also moving inside the area is allowed only for working reasons or emergencies. All kinds of events in all the country (concerts, happenings, museums, showrooms, movies, theathers etc etc) have been canceled, schools, universities etc are closed until april 3rd, same with bars and restaurants (they're allowed to be open only until 6pm and they have to guarantee at least 1mt between two people).

I'm curious to know how are you/your countries dealing with this?

Besides all the fears and the anxieties, to live a situation like this is totally unexpected, and it certainly is interesting to see how western society - more in general first-world countries - are reacting to a spreading virus, when usually this kind of epidemies happen "far from our sight", and we get the feeling of what's happening only through the distance of journalism and reportages, while this time we are forced to be face to face with it (and i'm saying it with all the negative implications of our usual selfishness).

So, I have a water filter and enough imported cereal, canned meat, and ramen to last for a few months (I really wish I could find powdered milk here). Hopefully it calms down here after then. I doubt this’ll be over internationally for another year, though...

Sadly I think you could be right, maybe not a year but some months for sure.

Business as usual in the big smoke. More facemasks out in public and more public appeals to wash your hands & generally be clean, but that's basically it.

[Paul_C]

I've ordered one of these:

[Blackened Soul]

Maybe it's time to dig a bunker and fill it with vegan span and TP?
Stock market is dumping and we are on the verge of a new plague [the newest corporate overlords made us all sign a statement saying we would and not get the virus today... and told to wash our hands, not lick doorknobs, wipe everything in the office with clorox wipes.. no I am not joking] Apparently the Puget Sound is ground zero and we are all going to die...

[Dowi]

Only positive effect so far is that due to the transport/movement limitations the air quality in our area has never been so good in months.

[Gone Fission]

My office has flipped to liberal telework and leave policies for at least the next couple weeks. This sort of thinking seems to rely on the idea that individuals will all evaluate risk effectively and this will aggregate to good results. Color me skeptical. This seems like a prime instance for aggregate risk to constrain individual freedom of action because going the other way easily lapses into the really bad and potentially avoidable (or at least more easily mitigated).

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

Preparing myself existentially for whatever is to come. Does one try to flee? To cower in isolation? To hunker down and try to help a neighbour?

[jrfox92]

Meh, pandemics are overrated - ebola, SARS, and MERS have all come and gone without crashing civilization.

I mean, SARS only had a little over 8,000 cases during a period of 9 months, meanwhile covid-19 is well over 100,000 in just 3.

[Lurker13]

Meh, pandemics are overrated - ebola, SARS, and MERS have all come and gone without crashing civilization.

I mean, SARS only had a little over 8,000 cases during a period of 9 months, meanwhile covid-19 is well over 100,000 in just 3.

You're right, and that's why I put up my second post:

Meh, pandemics are overrated . . .

Actually, from looking at the numbers, this one might not be overrated. This is getting genuinely worrisome.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/coronavirus

Here is a link to a website that is tracking the statistics. https://covid19info.live/ The encouraging news is that 60.3% of those infected have already recovered (assuming you can trust the numbers coming out of authoritarian countries like China and Iran). I too have vulnerable people in my family, so the highly infectious nature is worrisome.

Also, my 15-year-old son has been sick with a fever for a couple of days, but no other symptoms. I've quarantined him in my apartment, and now I'm feeling dizzy.

NY's two public college and university systems, City University of New York and State University of New York, have cancelled on-campus class meetings. We are taking a week off to spin up on distance education so we can complete the semester online.

[jrfox92]

Oh, I thought that was someone else's response.

I'm fortunate that I tend to only go out to get groceries or ship stuff, but now I'm gonna have to postpone doctor's visits for my dad since he got out of the hospital just a couple of weeks ago.
Curiously, I already have respirators at home, but I wish I'd had the foresight to buy biological filters a couple of months ago.

[Lurker13]

For comparison with the flu:

CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza (Table 1).

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html