Wuhan Virus – It’s Too Late!!!

wuhan (corona) virus If you wait for a crisis to prepare for a crisis, it’s too late. Here’s an example: Last Thursday (March 5), the county I live in announced the first presumptive case of Wuhan virus (a.k.a. coronavirus). ONE person out of about 460,000. My wife called me from Costco the next morning (she shops then because usually they’re slow then). The parking lot and store were jam packed. They were completely out of toilet paper. Bottled water, disinfectant wipes, and some other items were limited to 2 per customer. This was half an hour after they opened. I stopped by that afternoon on my way home from work. Bottled water, toilet paper, paper towels and rice were sold out. All because 0.00022% of my county’s population was presumably infected with coronavirus.

Wuhan Virus – It’s Too Late!!!

I know it’s going to spread. About 3-400,000 fly into our airport every month. We also get lots of tour buses and lots of people drive here from California. About 30,000,000 people get the flu every year. The measure used to determine how easily a virus spreads is known as the “basic reproduction number,” or R0 (pronounced R-nought). This is an estimate of the average number of people who catch the virus from a single infected person. The R0 for flu is 1.3 or so. The R0 for coronavirus is between 2 and 3. In other words, it’s around twice as infectious as the flu. So yes, it’s going to spread no matter what. So what am I doing? What can you do?

To be honest, I’m not really doing much. Obviously the best way to not get infected is to not be around people who are already infected. So I am social distancing. That’s easy for me since I’m not much of a people person anyway. I also make sure my kids wash their hands often, and especially before they eat – teenagers ya know… We’re also trying to limit our time in public places – shopping, eating out, etc. That’s pretty much it.

But what about food? Water? Toilet paper? Well, I already have that pretty well covered. I have about 3 months worth of food in the pantry. If I could talk my wife into it, we’d have more but a 3 month supply is a whole lot better than nothing. For water, I have 100 gallons in the garage and we have a Berkey that we use to filter all our water anyway. We don’t keep a lot of TP on hand but that can be worked around (hint: get The Humanure Handbook: Shit in a Nut Shell).

OK, what else?

Everything I mentioned so far is just common sense. Hopefully it’s something you’ve been doing too Besides keeping a food and water stock on hand, I work on building my immunity. Not just now, all the time. I take a multi vitamin every day, along with an extra vitamin C supplement and a few others that are related to specific health issues I have. I exercise daily – 3 days upper body, 3 days legs core and cardio, and 1 day (Sunday) off. Not because of the Wuhan virus, but because it makes me feel a lot better physically. I highly recommend it.

Instead of panicking over coronavirus, use it as an opportunity to take stock. Are your food and water supplies up to speed? Have you been slacking on your PT? The first round of public panic buying seems to be fading, but I have a feeling the next wave will be 10 times as bad. Use the lull to stock up on things you’re missing. Start exercising if you’re not doing it already. Keep your truck (car) full of gas and your powder dry. DON’T panic and don’t over react. Until next time…

Peace out,
porcupine

Related link(s):
Mountain Guerrilla on coronavirus