I would like to talk about a level headed approach to coronavirus preparations. We have the ostriches with their heads buried in the sand on one extreme and the profiteering fear-mongers on the other with not a lot of voices in the common sense middle.
Coronavirus emergency preparedness kit
We live in California were earthquakes are a fact of life and citizens here need to always be prepared for the big one. Coronavirus preparations are not any different so we really don’t have to do anything, our earthquake kit is fine. If you don’t have an emergency kit at home, then make one. Don’t forget food for your pets!
Lets talk about why you should have a month of food for coronavirus preps. Its not because food supplies will disappear from supermarket shelves, its that when coronavirus hits USA, you will want to minimize person/person contact by avoiding public places like supermarkets as much as possible. When most people make emergency preparations, they run to the store and buy a bunch of canned food. Two problems with this, first, its expensive, it weighs a ton, and third, people drastically underestimate the amount of food a person needs for a month. Its simple science here. An average adult will need 2500 calories a day or 75,000 calories for a month. A good estimate for dry goods like pasta, flour, sugar, dry rice, and dry beans is 3500 calories per kilogram. Do the math and that means 21kg (50lbs) of dry goods per person-month.
Back to uselessness of the canned foods most people buy, lets take soup as an example. A 1.2 pound can of soup has 230 calories. For a months supply of calories you would need 325 cans or 400 pounds worth of canned food.
When you stock up, please don’t waste the food. What we do in my family is every December 1st we donate all our dry goods to the local food bank and replenish with a fresh supply so that none of the food ever goes to waste.
How to avoid catching coronavirus
The best knowledge to date is that coronavirus is spread like any other virus which is by touching and infected surface then touching a mucous membrane or by having an infected person sneeze in your face. The average person touches their face 16 times per hour so wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands! Coronavirus is NOT carried by the wind so wearing a mask out in public is a waste of a mask. Masks are needed for medical professionals who are working in close range with sneezing sick people.
This is important so I am going to say it again. If nobody touched their faces and stayed 6′ away from all other people, then nobody would get coronavirus. The problem is that the average person touches their face 16 times an hour. Wash your hands and don’t touch your face!
Most likely place to catch coronavirus – the gym.
I do not have any research backing this up, its just my opinion. The most dangerous place for coronavirus transmission for most of my viewers will be the gym. The reason is that huge number of people transit every hour AND everyone touches and sneezes on everything. Consider working out at home instead of going to the gym. If you DO go to the gym, take precautions to prevent this. Here is my suggestion. Get an old dirty pair of leather gardening gloves, the kind you would never want to touch your face with and take them to the gym in a ziplock bag. Put them on to workout. When you are done, put them back in the bag and wash your hands with warm soapy water for 30 seconds.
Coronavirus is no big deal you say?
Many will say I am over-reacting and that its not even worth the bother of making an emergency preparedness kit. If this is you, let me ask you this, would you:
- Remove the seat belts and air bags from your car?
- Get rid of your fire insurance?
- Get rid of your motorcycle helmet?
- Skip the tetanus shot?
- Skip the earthquake preparedness kit?
The above are all things we “waste money” on that statistically, we will never need. Why do we do them anyway? Because for a very low cost we can prevent a potentially life ending tragedy. Same for coronavirus. Making a emergency preparedness kit will cost you $0.00 as long as you rotate your stock yearly and use it so that none of it spoils and there is an admittedly very small chance it could save your life. Thats what insurance is, a tiny amount of effort or money that can have a very huge benefit should disaster strike.
How much water do you need for a possible coronavirus emergency?
In my opinion, everyone should have at least 3 days worth of drinking water in their house at all times but I don’t think any more water is required should coronavirus have an outbreak in the USA. People are not thinking a lot about this situation and how it differs from an impending earthquake or hurricane. With an earthquake or hurricane, water is one of the most important things because an earthquake will snap water mains and a hurricane will allow sewage to get into the water supply. With a potential virus outbreak, water is not a problem. There is no reason to believe at all that the water will stop flowing thru the taps or that it will be contaminated in any way.
I shopped Friday the 28th of February to top off our supplies and peoples carts at Costco were huge and the lines very long. The funny thing is what people were buying. Most people at costco were hoarding the bottled beverages, paper products, and other products that seemed really useless to me. I did not see one cart with 25lb sacks of rice or beans. Think about what it is you are guarding against and what you need rather than blindly stuffing your shopping cart!
Remember too that you can do online shopping with a service like Amazon Prime for your dry goods and Amazon Fresh for your groceries.
Thats it, get those emergency kits together, keep calm, and we will get thru this.