Learning From The Coronavirus Situation

willtill said:

Hot sauce. Do you have hot sauce?

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Hillary has some in her pocketbook!

I'm starting to understand what happened in the Balkans and why some people would want to live where the government troops are in control and why others would prefer to live where a local militia be running things.

Even with just the potential of this, its easier to understand it than watching it from the other side of the world.

This weekend, I talked with people in a community that were looking for legal ways to restrict those who live outside of the community from coming in for non-essential activities. If things get worse, they may not worry about the legalities; but that particular community has always lived and thought that way. Years ago when I lived in the main street area of that community, while having positive contact with their LEO's they told me when they were hired they were told that there were some laws they were expected to enforce and others they were expected to ignore according to community standards and expectations.

Nnztg8r said:

Not always easy to put hookers and blow on the AMEX card...

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exactly.

fidelity said:

I'm also concerned about the long-term mental health of some after we get this virus under control (maybe with an assist from the seasonal change).

Second, in our lifetime, the only collective event that was maybe comparable is 9/11. We all will remember this one and be affected by it. Moreover people are being forced to isolate themselves from others. Interacting with other humans on a daily basis can be frustrating at times but it's also stabilizing for many. Some might have social media or a web forum as an escape, but being at home other than for walks, and interacting less with society may create issues for some (combined with the whole stress of whether one might get infected, what the outcome will be, etc). There are videos folks in Italy made, pretending they time traveled and could talk to themselves 14 days earlier, to warn them what to expect. They were grim in what they told their earlier selves. You could see the toll on their faces.

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Mrs PJS and I talked about this too. One of the reasons we still live here is our connection to family and friends. We are very social; the good thing is we live in a condo building in a tight knit neighborhood. But we really miss seeing our friends, even after just a couple of weeks. We did a virtual happy hour via webinar on Saturday. But physical contact is important to humans - we need to hug. Couple that with immense stress over economics, and I hope this part doesn't last very long.

PJS said:

Mrs PJS and I talked about this too. One of the reasons we still live here is our connection to family and friends. We are very social; the good thing is we live in a condo building in a tight knit neighborhood. But we really miss seeing our friends, even after just a couple of weeks. We did a virtual happy hour via webinar on Saturday. But physical contact is important to humans - we need to hug. Couple that with immense stress over economics, and I hope this part doesn't last very long.

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Except for the autistics among us. They just need to be close enough for eye contact for that blank stare look.

Nnztg8r said:

Not always easy to put hookers and blow on the AMEX card...

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Ahem...

Portland strip club forced to close, so dancers now do delivery

https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavi...rced-to-close-so-dancers-now-do-delivery.html

adit said:

Ahem...

Portland strip club forced to close, so dancers now do delivery

https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavi...rced-to-close-so-dancers-now-do-delivery.html

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It's almost as if when the yoke of government regulation is lifted, that the free market can adapt to adverse conditions more nimbly than the force of regulation can.

Very interesting.

6-Pack said:

I don’t know about all of you, but I always feel like there’s always room to improve or become more efficient with how I do things. The Coronavirus situation got me thinking: we’ve been doing supply/grocery store runs since late January and a final one last week and we should’ve gotten everything in one trip back in late January when I had a feeling that this thing could become big.

I’m creating a list of everything I did and should’ve done, such as checking OTC medications, fish antibiotics for the goldfish, filling gas/propane tanks, etc... Aside from purchasing provisions, there’s also a decent amount of time at night taking inventory of what exactly we have already.

Another example, I always knew that if SHTF the first thing I would need to do is put Stabil in the car gas tanks to preserve the fuel. Of course I only had a small bottle of Stabil for the lawn equipment, so back to the store I went. It’s trips like this I am trying to avoid, so I thought a list would be helpful.

If this ever happens again, I’ll be able to check off everything in an orderly fashion instead of “I forgot frozen juice concentrate for the kids (because we never use concentrate), and I might as well get some frozen vegetables while I’m at it.” We should’ve picked these up on our first food run.

What all are you doing to learn from this event? Is there anything you would’ve done differently to prepare for Coronavirus?

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Understandable. I mostly just ordered it online. Probably cost me $100-200 more in the end than buying stuff from my local stores, but when I could that avoids me needing to be walking around a store.

I did need to run to a few local stores to get stuff I just could not online. Like fencing, posts and lots of chicken feed. The former to protect the orchard we are putting in from deer (2x6-in-one peach/apricot trees, 4 apple trees, 1 plum a plumcot, 2 peach trees and an almond. Plus will be growing 4 grape vines along the fence (on the inside). made a home depot run a couple of weeks ago to stock up on building supplies so I can continue to work on finishing my basement for at least another few weeks before I run out of materials (just finishing framing and insulating the last of the exterior walls and got enough materials to frame out a couple of the interior rooms as well as enough to do all of the electrical and lighting).

Plenty of other stuff as you found of things like "hmmm, I need stabil. Oh, almost out of bar oil. Gee, I only have a pair of gas cans. A couple more 5-gallon cans would be good. Oh and no oil for the generator".

So we've had a sizeable pile of packages by our door most evenings when its time to move them all in to the garage to quarantine them for 3 days. Very few of them are things where we NEED THEM NOW if the world stopped working later that day. But plenty of stuff we need longer term (like I ordered more calcite for my acid neutralizer rather than going to the plumbing supply store. Cost me $80 more, but it is calcite for about another 18 months for my system and it'll need filing by the end of the summer). Or if any kind of total screeching halt shut down lasts more than a couple/few weeks. We could manage basic survival with what I stocked up on and prepped back in January when I saw the writing on the wall. But as it got more real, always noticing things we needed (brother-in-law helping with that).

Maybe the only things I really needed and didn't have is flour in bulk and baking powder in bulk. Brother-in-law picked up 4#s of baking powder for us, but he struck out on flour. Only have 12#s left. But TONs of other food. Just might run out of pancake and bread making stuff after a couple of weeks. He may be able to get us a 50# sack of flour next week. Maybe.

I've been making a list as well. For if there is ever a possible next time, also stuff to do better about keeping on hand if we use it up and lastly its a good memory jogger for "oh, I realized X isn't on the list".

PJS said:

Mrs PJS and I talked about this too. One of the reasons we still live here is our connection to family and friends. We are very social; the good thing is we live in a condo building in a tight knit neighborhood. But we really miss seeing our friends, even after just a couple of weeks. We did a virtual happy hour via webinar on Saturday. But physical contact is important to humans - we need to hug. Couple that with immense stress over economics, and I hope this part doesn't last very long.

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I was thinking just last night I am SO glad I don't live anywhere like an apartment, condo building or in a city. Where I live I can at least easily get out and walk around my 4.4 acres. Enjoy the woods and creek, etc. No worries about having to carefully disinfect my hands just leaving my place of living or literally or figuratively bumping in to people in the streets.

Some places effectively locked people in their residences for weeks. I can't see them here telling people they cannot even leave their house. But they might say they can't "go out" off their properties unless they are going to a hospital or grocery store in a few weeks.

Heck, NYC they still have playgrounds open (oh god, really!?! Talk about a disease vector). They are talking closing down two streets at a time and allowing people outside for an hour to move around and get exercise while being monitored for proper social distancing. IE literally shutting people in their places of residence without being let out. Cities might have to go to that extreme, but more rural areas won't need nearly the same level of close confinement because the population density and level of ability to accidently interact with people or surfaces people have touched is massively lower than when you have 10x, 100x or 1000x the same number of people per square mile.

Watching Tucker Carlson on FNC. He just finished a segment on US entities sending medical supplies in short supply overseas in this time of crisis. Several American entities, such as the ultra liberal USAID, have sent multiple shipments of critical medical equipment, such as masks, gloves, gowns, and even ventilators, not to American areas in short supply such as New York, New Orleans, Seattle, or Los Angeles, but overseas to countries such as Tirjerkstan! What the Hell happened to America First? Unbelievably, they shipped 18 tons of critical medical equipment and supplies to China, FREEKING CHINA, who is responsible for this whole mess. Has the whole world gone mad? Drain the damn swamp!

This has been an eye opening event. I always thought in the back of my mind something may cause SHTF type event. I even thought that a pandemic would be the one thing that would cause it. Unfortunately, I never overtly prepped, but did some minor prepping. We always do “big” shopping trips monthly. This includes the bulk purchases at BJs. I will be ok on TP and paper towels for another couple weeks, but then I will have to venture out and hope I get lucky finding some. We always have stocked pantries. My wife will always question me when I come home with ten boxes of pasta when we already have ten boxes on hand. I tell her it was on sale for 88 cents a box, better to stock up now.

The only thing I can really say I NEED to do is stock up on some food for my extra picky son. I have always said I need to can some hot dogs to have on hand. Now I need to act on those thoughts. Guess I need to buy a pressure canner and learn how to use it.

Just when I thought I couldn't hate people more than I do, I can.

cap6888 said:

This has been an eye opening event. I always thought in the back of my mind something may cause SHTF type event. I even thought that a pandemic would be the one thing that would cause it. Unfortunately, I never overtly prepped, but did some minor prepping. We always do “big” shopping trips monthly. This includes the bulk purchases at BJs. I will be ok on TP and paper towels for another couple weeks, but then I will have to venture out and hope I get lucky finding some. We always have stocked pantries. My wife will always question me when I come home with ten boxes of pasta when we already have ten boxes on hand. I tell her it was on sale for 88 cents a box, better to stock up now.

The only thing I can really say I NEED to do is stock up on some food for my extra picky son. I have always said I need to can some hot dogs to have on hand. Now I need to act on those thoughts. Guess I need to buy a pressure canner and learn how to use it.

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My kids aren't super picky, but they have been getting better. It helps they are all old enough to understand to some degree that magnitude of the issue. Which doesn't mean I don't get a temper tantrum occasionally because we are rationing desserts or we run out of something. But on the whole they are adjusting.

I did some prepping awhile back, mostly for the most urgent needs I figured would not be available and we tend to buy in bulk, so I've never been big on stocking up beyond not letting us get super low on stuff.

I should have done more. But at least I read the writing on the wall back in January and started taking steps. Recently spent all the money on groceries yesterday picking up prescriptions my wife needed to not be dead (or at least not be at serious risk of being dead. She has severe asthma that can and will land her in urgent care or a hospital if not treated). Had plenty and yes I know they aren't being closed down, but as things get even worse, I don't want to have to go out anywhere if I can help it.

Reduce the disease vector exposure. We signed up for a couple grocery delivery services, just in time for both as they now have extensive wait lists. But it is still limited in what we can get. One is a fresh produce service and one is diary and bread delivery. Even without that, we have sufficient stuff for a couple of months before we'd be scraping the bottom of the barrels (well, not literal barrels). I've got about 300lbs of brewing grains on hand and we could make a lot of bread out of that if needed... (or beer. Haven't been doing much home brewing the last year and a half between moving, major renovations and a lot of other stuff like that getting in the way of my hobby). I am brewing up 5 gallons of stout later this week finally.

But it was more other holes I realized. Like never had a security system of any kind. Finally got serious about figuring that out (I don't want a service).

So picked up some door contact sensors and some smart outlets to work with homekit (since my wife and I have a bunch of apple products. Though I hate iMacs, I use a windows desktop and laptop). Doesn't solve everything as my house has a lot of glass sliders and French doors and tons of windows. But at least the doors now have alarms. I am working up some motion sensors also. Seems to all be working well. Also installing a driveway alarm (probably today). My driveway is really long. You can sure walk on to the property, but its over 150yds long.

Some other things like I don't have spare chains for my chainsaws. Didn't have enough bar oil. Only had a 2 gallon and a 5 gallon gas can for the power tools, mower and generator. I have 4x5 gallon and the 2 gallon now and filled with some stabil.

Needed to expand the garden (had already planned to for this season). Needed to cut down some trees to give the garden more sun. Put in trees for an orchard, etc.

Some was planned and we were going to do anyway. Some was stuff we didn't realize until we were in to this.

I live in a semi rural county in the Texas Hill Country and unfortunately the beauty and attractiveness has caused a boom in new residents flooding in during the past decade. The county is currently the second fastest growing county in the US. When I moved here over twenty years ago the community was a sleepy, pastoral refuge with a local volunteer fire department, contract post office, single elementary school, one bank, little traffic, no stop lights, and groceries were purchased at the local convenience store/gas station. Today the fire department is full time professionals with five fire stations, (and two more under construction), new USPS post office, two elementary schools, two middle schools, two high schools, three banks, commuter traffic, multiple traffic lights, a large chain grocery store, four dollar stores, a chain hardware store and high property taxes. And my community represents less than a quarter of the county in terms of land space. One big change is the increase in crime. Twenty years ago we had no crime in the community. We could leave our doors unlocked, keys in the car, and there were no break in's. With the increase in population came the crime. Residents have had to increase fencing, add burglar alarms, Ring video doorbells, and outdoor lighting. There was a marked increase in home and vehicle burglaries when the latest high school opened. I guess the points of this are that everything changes over time and the denser the population, the more available the conveniences and higher the crime. There is an alarming trend of people from large urban areas and from liberal states moving in and bringing their big city liberal views with them. Texas, a longstanding politically Red State is rapidly turning Purple and is projected to become Blue within the next decade. With 41 votes in the electoral college,Texas will have a profound influence on the shape of the national political scene when that inevatably occurs. These are not new characteristics of society, just a stark reality of today.

Man, apologize in advance. I've got too much time on my hands tonight, and I can be stupid wordy.

Lessons learned, and questions unanswered:

• It is not a secure feeling living in a row home. I don't want my neighbours too close. I don't want them knowing all my business. My options become somewhat limited. Security is uncertain. I need land.
  
• It's time to man up. Actually, way past time. Just because the wife doesn't think it is necessary to stack things deep in times of plenty, and actually gets angry when I've purchased extra, it doesn't mean it isn't necessary. Fill that pantry!
  
• I should have bought more guns and ammo when the prices were cheap. Wife said no. I should have asked forgiveness rather than permission. It's probably better to have a fight about it now, then not have them when necessary.
  
• I always thought it would be a good idea to have a bug out/vacation property in WV or PA. But from the stories I'm hearing it looks like locals don't always appreciate the part timers in times of trouble. There is a real possibility that just having the out of state property isn't enough. Perhaps buying some property further afield in-state would be better, though I suspect the full-time locals wouldn't necessarily be that welcoming even then. Best would be to just live in the right place to begin with; but the good paying jobs seem to be in the wrong place. <sigh>
  
• I have a sailboat and always figured if worse came to worst I could just sail away. But, the state fairly quickly stopped "recreational" boating on the Chesapeake. I don't know if it is being enforced (yet); but as a bug out vehicle, that is a complication that I hadn't fully thought about. Where would I go? In the case of a pandemic I'm really not sure. I guess I could hang out in the Intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ or doldrums) for a few months?
  
• I wonder if I should have enough plywood to board up the lower level windows of my row house. If this really stretches out (or, if not this one, the next big event), will there be a need to defend against mobs? If so, securing the first floor, and defending from the second floor seems advantageous.

Some things I did right:

• I recognized that the excrement was rapidly approaching the air moving device fairly early. I hit the stores early, and spent a lot stocking up. My wife thought I was over-reacting. I did it anyway. If things get bad, we can hole up for several months. We have enough food. We have enough toilet paper. And we even have enough hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies for awhile. Wife is happy now.
  
• While I don't have as big an armory as I'd like, I'm far from unarmed. Assuming this doesn't go all Mad Max on us I should have more than enough ammo to handle unpleasantness now, and to keep practising when things return more or less to normal even if ammo supplies remain scarce and expensive for awhile.
  
• I have no debt and a reasonable cash reserve.

The future:

• I hate to profit on the greater misfortune of others; but I am kind of expecting home prices to drop noticeably in the near future. I will hopefully be in a good position to buy some place a little less vulnerable than where I am now.
• I prepared OK for this event, assuming we get out of it in a reasonable amount of time; but I did it mostly at the last minute. Next time I will be ready before hand.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

• Someone mentioned above that they want more cash. I am a strong believer in keeping a healthy supply of cash at home. Not because I'm afraid of the banks folding or the FDIC going insolvent. Not because I think it is likely we will need it for this event. But because anything can happen in the future. This time it's a virus. Next time we could take a big infrastructure hit. If the internet goes down, credit cards and atm cards aren't too useful. I've been to plenty of stores where that went cash only when they were having technical problems. Imagine a whole city, or state, or country or world going cash only. Cash is king then! Well, at least until it's not. It also opens up the option of making some emergency person to person purchases. Or giving some flexibility if there is a reason to drop off the grid for awhile.
  
• I've heard mentioned several times something along the lines of "if this event turns into SHTF..." Well, while we haven't gone full Mad Max, given that the world is on freakin' lockdown, businesses are closed, people are dying, civil rights are being suspended, the economy is crashing and burning, and if things don't settle down soonish the future is looking to be pretty bleak for awhile, I'm willing to make the call. The shit has already hit the fan. The only questions are how much shit, and how far is it going to be blown.
  
• Friends and family may think you're a nut job; but it's better to be over prepared than under prepared. Actually, I'm guessing that those friends and family might be re-evaluating their opinions right about now.

Routinely Check on you what you have. I recently made the mistake of thinking i had something therefore i passed it up.

Need more precious metals. Can't barter all the 22 accumulated from the past 'shortage.'

Create a bug out tool box.

Get slings on the rest of the rifles and shotguns.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

Isopropyl alcohol my typical antiseptics are hydrogen peroxide and iodine, I didnt realize how flexible IA was.

I have built up stock of essentials, including prescription medication, automotive consumables (dealer & aftermarket fluids, dealer parts) and groceries. Going forward I will continue to build up a small amount of excess the next time something like this rears its ugly head.
Ammo? I took care of that a long time ago. ;D

EDIT: As this situation gained gravity I brought my vehicle's maintenance up-to-date; if I couldn't confirm when the original owner did it I took care of it myself (replaced coolant, flushed brake fluid & P/S fluid). I have also stood up my outdoor antenna setup, enabling off-the-grid reception of television, FM broadcast and Weather Radio signals. At some point I want to acquire an extra VHF antenna and ribbon cable to enable 2-meter and 70-centimeter amateur communications in a shelter-in-place situation.

I did the same thing with vehicle maintenance. You never know when you may have to leave and the last thing you want is an unreliable vehicle.

If anyone preps for the SHTF, consider this a trial run, or learning experience. I had some stuff stashed, foodwise and supplies the wife didn't know about. She kinda panicked when people started rushing the stores. Not me so much. I have a medical supply kit with basics, which is good because doctors are busy right now, and don't need or want to see us. I have some contingencies for a temporary power loss. I have stuff for trade/barter. I have a water source nearby as well as some stuff for helping to make it drinkable.

I am kinda looking at my plan to see where my weaknesses are should things go from bad, to worse. Since getting some new neighbors in the neighborhood, home security has definitely taken top priority. I took some notes from Selco's experience in the Balkans about small stuff to trade, keeping a low profile, at least in my neighborhood. Keeping stuff to trade. Also remember the guy who blogged about the Argentinean collapse. Security, security, security.

My wife has never been into prepping, and I am not hardcore, but she has definitely opened up to the idea. I mean, I am not buying a missile silo, but beefing up the house defenses is a small step. Having extra food, tools, utensils, clothing, spare parts for things, extra fuel, etc. I am going to sit down and look at areas where we are weaker, and areas we excel in to the point we could assist neighbors. A little goodwill could go a long way with allies locally.