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Comment by James_Henry | Hacker News Reader

Here are some actual documents on preparing for an influenza pandemic that the CDC is repurposing to prepare people for the coronavirus because of the similarity to the spread of the flu.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/php/pandemic-prepa...

States will have their own influenza preparedness plans that they will probably be following for the coronavirus as well.

One helpful thing that they advise governors to advise individuals to do is to store up food and enough (but not more than enough) medications.

https://www.nga.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pandemic-Infl...

One thing to note is that a lot of the slowing down of disease spreading is going to be from the voluntary efforts of individuals. We should prepare ourselves and help prepare people around us to know what's up and what to do if you think you may be sick.

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> store up ... enough (but not more than enough) medications

I'm not clear how this would work in practice. In the US, between insurance and the DEA, patients get very little choice about how many meds are dispensed at which intervals. There are all kinds of constraints.

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.

If you try that with scheduled medications they just don’t believe you and put you on a list of “drug-seekers”

Thanks for posting these. I'm putting some time into preparing my family for any potential quarantine situations here in the US. These guides are aimed at policymakers and government officials. Have you, by chance, found any practical guides for what individuals can do to increase the resiliency of their households? I assume this is all very similar to having a well-stocked earthquake kit (which we do have), but I'm curious about any disease-specific preparations.

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.

A good overview food storage guide.

http://extensionpublications.unl.edu/assets/pdf/ec446.pdf

These storage guidelines are incredibly paranoid.

Milk does not go bad a week after opening. Eggs don't spoil after two to four weeks in the fridge. A bag of bacon in the freezer isn't going to end you because it sat there for three months. Fruit juice doesn't go bad in 3 days. Butter doesn't go bad after two weeks at room temperate, let alone in a fridge.

Agreed. Eggs can last 3 months outside a fridge, and yes, that includes eggs in the us.

> Eggs can last 3 months outside a fridge, and yes, that includes eggs in the us.

Commercially bought eggs in the US need to be refrigerated because they remove the outer antibiotic coating before sending them to stores.

Partly true. The washing process removes the natural coating, but this is replaced by a synthetic coating. GP is correct.

> because they remove the outer antibiotic coating before sending them to stores.

The coating is oil from the chicken, and they wash it and replace it with mineral oil, which works just as well.

I speak from experience: I have not refrigerated US bought eggs for around 10 years. Not a single problem.

If you keep them un-refrigerated for more than 2 months (which I did because there was a really good deal, so I bought a lot), the eggs are not fresh, the yolk falls apart easily. (So not great in certain recipes.)

However they are not spoiled or anything like that, and the taste is unchanged.

If eggs are oiled and refrigerated, they'll last more like 8 or 9 months. I think the oiling is an old maritime technique, but came across it wintering at South Pole.

Of course, 3 months is plenty for the present discussion.

That really does depend upon your definition of room tempreature. I'm pretty sure anything above about 30 degrees C will put pay to many food stuffs in fairly short order. Everybodies storage conditions differ, tempreature, humidity and light exposure all have an impact on how long foods will safely store.

The other element is how the item is handled. Traditional bacon stored in brine can last for months in most conditions however I would not attempt to store opened bacon for more than a week or so. Likewise if you have raw meat, it is all about what it has been exposed to that can make it dangerous. Cooked meat, if uncontaminated and cooked through can last for quiet a while and still be safe. Once contaminated it can become dangerous quiet quickly.

Do the N95 face masks that you can buy at the grocery even do anything to prevent the spread of coronavirus?

From what I understand n95 masks should work when used properly.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/respirator-use...

They certainly help people from touching their noses and mouthes, which we do all the time unconsciously and is a vector for transmission.

My understanding is that the main purpose of the mask is to prevent people who are already infected from coughing and sneezing particulate onto other people.

This is true, but it also prevents you from touching your own face.

That's a surgical mask

Not really, other than limiting spread from someone who is potentially infected and making it harder for someone to touch their face (virus on hands getting into body via eyes/nose).

N95 masks will also limit the spread from someone who is actually infected, too. So the masks will, when used correctly help limit all spread and I am not sure why you say "not really".

But I should add, the CDC only recommends face masks for the infected and limits recommendation of N95 respirators to healthcare providers and those in workplace settings.

People generally aren’t going to use them correctly, aren’t going to change them frequently enough, are likely to touch their face frequently if not used to the mask, and aren’t nearly as concerned about infecting others so much as protecting themselves.

Should you go buy some? Probably jot

No, they do almost nothing once they become moist.

N95 masks are complicated to fit properly. For it to work you need a proper seal. The CDC says there is no general sizing guideline and recommends that the fit be tested yearly. I'm unsure how to go about doing this as an inexperienced individual.

my take on this is that those masks are probably useless, and even if they were useful, most members of the public will not utilize them correctly.

so, i advise people to leave the face masks of all types for utilization by our healthcare workers, as there will soon be a shortage and as a member of the public you should mostly be sitting at home rather than wandering around areas with other people anyway.

The CDC is telling people to use face masks (not necessarily n95 or p100 respirators) when ill or around those that are ill.

Without getting to far into it, not really.

Theoretically they can... But practically there are so many routes to failure, the average person cannot use it.

If you were the guy with impeccable lab technique... Maybe.

This isn't true. Someone with general intelligence can figure out how to use one of these things correctly, and I think that people who care to figure it out will do exactly that.

This proves not to be the case. Even intelligent people who are not used to wearing a mask will find that they regularly compromise the masks efficacy.

If worn by infected people it can reduce the spread, but if this is the case the infected person should not be around others anyway.

I'm not knowledgeable about the efficacy of the masks themselves, but I suspect there's a forest-for-the-trees issue, here. There are at least a few ways to think about whether masks (broadly, or any specific mask) "work"...

- Whether wearing a mask makes it less likely someone will pick up an infection in constant conditions (direct mask efficacy, reduced touching, etc.)

- Whether wearing a mask makes it less likely someone will transmit an infection in constant conditions.

- Whether wearing a mask leads infected people to spend more time around others.

- Whether wearing a mask leads uninfected people to spend more time around others.

- Whether the way masks end up getting allocated in the event of a shortage promotes or inhibits spread at population scale (for example, if masks ended up overallocated towards people who're so concerned that they stay home anyways and away from people who don't have the ability to).

Good questions. You remind me of some of the arguments against wearing a helmet on a bike. In particular, real studies show that automobile drivers are more careful in the presence of bikers without helmets - that is, if you're wearing a helmet, drivers are more careless around you.

Someone texting, driving drunk, or not paying attention is still gonna hurt you more without a helment though.

And sometimes you just fall on your own as well. Out of the few times I’ve met the ground while biking, I’d estimate roughly half to be because I lost balance after hitting a pothole I didn’t see or ice/snow/rain making my bicycle slide. I was glad to have a helmet in these cases.

I'm not making an argument against helmets, partly because I don't know if that effect is large enough to overcome the additional safety of the helmet. I'm just trying to illustrate that sometimes there are non-obvious offsetting effects.

Apart from keeping you from touching your face, they raise the alarm on those that see you, so they tend to keep their distance.

https://sentido-labs.com/es/biblioteca/coronavirus-2020-02-L...

(Text and video subtitles are in Spanish, but sound is the original English)

> 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.

What is a "normal kit"?

Typo! Should have been “normal emergency kit”

Ah. That's much clearer. Thank you.

There is a pretty good Coronavirus prep guide here:

https://theprepared.com/wuhan-coronavirus/

The key here in any pandemic is to make sure you reduce the chances of being infected. That works better than any surgical masks, N95 respirators, etc.

In essence, minimize or eliminate social contacts like hugs, hand shakes, kisses or touching anyone during this period. If you need to do so, remember to not touch your face, nose or eyes, and wash or sterilize your hands immediately after that. Stay away from public places with large amounts of people or confined areas. Your face is sacred, remember not to touch your face, eyes or nose when you're outside, or else wear a surgical or N95 mask (if you can find one), which helps in enforcing the above. Wash your hands for at least 20-30 seconds when you return home. Do not touch things like lift buttons with your fingers. Use a key, pen, elbows or knuckles (not so ideal but it's better than using fingers). If you're travelling in a car or cab, request the driver to wind down the windows. Stock up on medicine, and avoid visiting hospitals unless required.

> CDC is repurposing to prepare people for the coronavirus because of the similarity to the spread of the flu.

this is the recurrent theme in Taleb's Black Swan book and his later Antifragile. e.g. Preparing for the next big catastrophic event based on the experience from the last big event, is the reason he gives on why we can never escape Black Swans

What are the chances that residential electricity, gas or water get shut off as a result of an outbreak in North America? I live in a mid-sized town and we have enough dry beans and cereals to last a few months, but without hot water it would be a week at most.

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.

Just to add a bit, don't forget supplies for pets too.

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

While I don't expect the power to shut off from this, I want to point out that the flu virus doesn't directly destroy heart and kidney cells as COVID-19 does in some of the patients.

I cannot believe people are still saying this. It's literally 1-2 orders of magnitude more deadly than the flu, and 5% of the survivors walk away with permanent lung damage.

Where did you see that? I have not seen anything like that reported and I feel like that would be pretty important information https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/as-coronavirus-spreads-m...

They say in the article that you linked that it looks like 20% of cases are severe and that the mortality rate is around 3% (though that is probably high because we are still early on in the epidemic). Last flu season around 1.4% of symptomatic cases ended up in the hospital and less than .1% of symptomatic cases ended with death. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html

As for the 5% permanent lung damage figure, ARDS is found in around 20% of cases with mechanical ventilation for around 12.3% (https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus-disease-2019-c...)

Survivors of ARDS often have decreased quality of life including lung damage and cognitive issues. I wasn't able to find percentages of these issues in covid-19-related ARDS survivors though.

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

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

No, most beans are toxic if not cooked. Some, such as kidney beans, become more toxic if cooked at low temperatures.

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.

Just a reminder to people living in California that — viruses aside — it’s generally a good idea to be prepared to lose power for stretches.

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.

‘Mark Jurey's penny stove‘ oh lord! If the virus doesn’t get you the fire you create in your house with this surely will. Not for nothing, seriously do not do this in the house, on top of your non-functioning whatever stove. Maybe in the sink? Or better outside like the backpacking stove it is meant to be used as.

I actually have one of these I made from Guinness and soda can. It has absolutely no safety measure to prevent spilling the fuel. Tip that little can over on the top of a regular stove and you have a fire inside your stove. Ieeee

My electric stove is by necessity fireproof, as is my girlfriend's gas stove. If you have a combustible stove (!?) then the sink is a better idea, like you say. Or possibly the bathtub. Or the back yard. This is less of a concern for me because my house is not made from combustible materials.

I have in fact had a raging alcohol fire on top of another gas stove due to spilled fuel (for reasons much more stupid than cooking over a camping stove in my kitchen). Things stored above the stove started to burn (more stupidity). But because my stupidity didn't extend to using something like gasoline or lighter fluid, a cup of water instantly extinguished the blaze. Now I have an ammonium phosphate fire extinguisher in my kitchen. You should too.

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.

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