CDC outlines what closing schools, businesses would look like in US pandemic

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.

> 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.

- Wash your hands.

- 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.

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.

Extremely low IMO. From what I have read it's like a stronger version of the flu.

Can you make them in cold water, just takes longer? Not sure.

Or heat them in the sun? Sun tea beans??

Not worth considering.

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.

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.

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.

I tell my doctor that I lost my meds at a hotel and have them prescribe me another set.

Are you US based? Care to say what city?

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?

I assume that they're commonly used by remote workers/teams.

In simplest terms, tools that allow you to be remote (aka stay home) and still be mostly effective are immensely valuable.

Remote working is most likely going to get popular as a way to limit spread of the virus.

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.

Or maybe... they are more equipped than anyone else and are taking the proper, measured actions?

Just checking but what concrete alternatives would you recommend to international organizations, imperfect though they may be?

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.

> 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.

Pushback has begun against legal mandates for helicopter parenting in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-range_parenting#Legal_sta...

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

Preparing to stay at home is reasonable. Expecting for no stores to be open isn't - even in Wuhan, stores have been open and selling essential goods.

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.

Good luck.

Speaking of what you characterized as being paranoid...

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.

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.

Because there is an ongoing disaster?

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.

Actually, it's not as bad as you think.

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.

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.

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)

Are problems with water supplies foreseen?

This isn't some natural disaster where infrastructure is ruined, just people can't go out much.

Bottled water isn't necessary; this isn't a situation where mother nature will render infrastructure damaged-to-nonexistent.

so i need 24 cases of coke and 12 gallons of rum.

i can do that!

It's already happening in Italy, in places.

Yeah, I'm not building a bunker or anything. I just wanted to stock up of medicine/water/food in case there was a rush.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

It's certainly some Crichton-level scientific and political expertise on display.

> survivors have a 45% risk of pulmonary fibrosis

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.

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.

Apologies, I’m not following what you’re saying with regard to death vs. quarantine.

> 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.