When is it time to panic

I live like a dog and do not get sick very often , and can not remember the last time I was so sick I could not get out of bed , maybe never !

But if I worked at a place that had 1000s of people were close to me everyday I might not be so lucky , 

Do the basics , stay strong , as the weak who get Corona get very sick , sleep enough , eat decent food , 

wash your hands often and do not touch your face , eyes , mouth , or pick your nose !

At least thats what all the say to do........

Now we are having a swap meet / show Saturday with 1000-2000 people there , do I wear a N95 mask ?

While we don't know exactly how this one compares to the flu in terms of how quickly it spreads or how lethal it would be in a nation with adequate health care infrastructure, it seems to be a similar sort of germ in terms of how it is transmitted, what symptoms it has, and how it is treated, and should call for the same preparation except that there currently isn't a vaccine. Pete Gossett seems to have summed things up pretty well. Might as well also keep some chicken soup ingredients in your stock of emergency supplies.

frenchyd said:

In reply to z31maniac :

The flu is far more common, slightly less lethal. I have 529 walking Petri dishes climb on my bus every day. 
While I have both flu shots as a matter of some measure of self defense, I don't worry too much.  In the 6 years I've been a school bus driver I haven't caught the flu yet and last year didn't even have a cold.  ( this year I've caught two but haven't missed a day of work). 

The flu at least last year had a 0.02% lethalty , ths one has 2.1%. Now it almost always kills people on the ends of the specturm. IE the very old and the very young. No idea what the lethality of the flu is in that region of china though so it could be healthcare related.  

Most current data shows that you need to be within ~4 feet of an infected person to have a very low chance of catching it. There are already known antivirals that stop this version of the flu and there are already vaccines in dev/prodution. Remember they make a new flu vaccine ever year for a different flu clade. They are good at this. 

This is not medical advice. 

Personally I keep medical arisol masks in the bug out bag along with hand sanatizer and we have about three weeks of canned food and beans and rice at home and about 5K rounds of 5.56 for the rifles. It will never get that far IMO. 

I might be underplaying this. I live with an ICU nurse who has been through all the fad flu epidemics in the last 30 years. Not to mention the day to day bugs and germs that she could bring home. So far we seem to stay healthy. I take my pandemic panic cues from her, and so far, the Kungflu has not set her alarms off.

If I had to prep, it would be to stock up on some of the infant focused electrolyte drinks. If you get sick I imagine solid food will be the last thing on your mind for a while and electrolyte balance is a good thing. Water should keep coming out of the taps for the foreseeable future so that would not be #1 on the list.

Despite the above, and even knowing that they have better health care than NA, I have to admit that for some reason having a daughter in Korea weights on my mind as of late.

I just talked with the Nurse who lives across the street , she works at the County Hospital and so far they have had nothing there and did not seem too concerned that they were  going to have a problem , 

Like always its just one persons opinion ,  and things can change , 

Panic now, get it over with.  Then if anything bad does happen, you're too burned out to be able to not think clearly.

Im told alcohol kills it. 

Ok, I'll drink more whiskey. 

Due to the quarantine Wuhan tinder has been lit. Just remember to wrap it. 

Keith Tanner said:

In a case like this, you can also control your exposure to some extent. Stay out of crowds. Wash your hands. Do not pet the monkeys. All the stuff your mom told you.

Wait, you are not supposed to pet the monkeys?  I thought it was bats.

I have E36 M3 luck and an auto-immune disease. I've been prepared for death for a long time. Not concerned.

So lets use the statistics at the time of writing this, from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ that would be 2,699 deaths attributed to COVID-19 globally.

Now lets compare that with the average number of deaths directly attributable to all types of influenza in a typical year. For 2016 from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr67/nvsr67_05_tables.pdf in Table I–12 Influenza (J09–J11) was broken out separate from Pneumonia so it lets us see that influenza caused 2,905 deaths that year in the USA alone.

Which leads me to consider that so far this year has certainly been a bad year for COVID-19 related deaths but not yet significantly more than influenza killed in previous years in just the USA.

The thing we're all wondering in the back of our minds is:

when does the virus hit our shores in the harbor freight supply chain?

Patrick said:

The thing we're all wondering in the back of our minds is:

 

when does the virus hit our shores in the harbor freight supply chain?

Does flu-tang survive cosmoline?

The cat's out of the bag and I don't think it's going back in.

My plan:  Keep my immune system up with good habits (yeah, wish me luck on that...), get as much sun as possible once it warms up a bit and keep taking vitamin D3.  My doc told me everyone living in a winter climate was D3 deficient which is important for immune function and when he tested me, I was too so I started taking daily D3.  Used to catch whatever was going around, now I rarely do.  Stress pulls your immune system down, laughter helps it. 

I'm starting to hear stories of supply chain disruption in manufacturing and I don't think the economic effects have hit yet.  In time we'll see what the real effects will be.  I'm going to hold off on buying back into the stock market for a while, keeping in mind that trying to time the stock market is like trying to catch a falling knife.

Patrick said:

The thing we're all wondering in the back of our minds is:

 

when does the virus hit our shores in the harbor freight supply chain?

Last I read was something like a 1 week lifespan in lab conditions on a previously cleaned surface.

Stop watching shows with Contagion in the title, that'll help.

NOHOME said:

I might be underplaying this. I live with an ICU nurse who has been through all the fad flu epidemics in the last 30 years. Not to mention the day to day bugs and germs that she could bring home. So far we seem to stay healthy. I take my pandemic panic cues from her, and so far, the Kungflu has not set her alarms off.

To be fair...nobody sees the contagion when it's in front of them, only in hindsight...that's how it gets out-of-control.

Works as a plot device in movies. And has a reasonable analog IRL regarding trends, fads, policies, regulations, elections, etc.

Art imitating life: MIB 3, "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it! 1,500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe."

In reply to Gingerbeardman :

That was the first MiB.

I'm done panicking. Y2K was going to plunge us back into the Stone Age, I'm still supposed to be worried about terrorists, SARS and Swine Flu were  supposed to wipe us out when I worked in Flushing, Queens. I'm far more likely to be done in by my own anxiety than any virus.  If some kind of apocalyptic outbreak comes I'd happily go out early rather than live in some kind of Mad Max free for all, at this point that sounds exhausting and I don't have that much ambition left. 

In reply to Wally :

I'm a practical sort of person.Since the virus seems to affect middle age 30-50 males mostly.  I'm relatively comfortable with the risks involved. Nearly 8 billion people in the world,  less than 3000 dead. I stand a far greater chance of winning the lottery than dying from the Coronavirus.  
The flu on the other hand attacks the old and the young the worst. And I'm definitely on the old side. Plus it's far more common. 

captdownshift said:

Due to the quarantine Wuhan tinder has been lit. Just remember to wrap it. 

GRM never disappoints!

Gingerbeardman said:

To be fair...nobody sees the contagion when it's in front of them, only in hindsight...that's how it gets out-of-control.

Works as a plot device in movies. And has a reasonable analog IRL regarding trends, fads, policies, regulations, elections, etc.

Art imitating life: MIB 3, "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it! 1,500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe."

Some folks still believe the Earth is the center of the universe... those folks also tend to get worked up by media sensationalism such as this.  Modern media exists only to sell advertising, it does not exist to actually educate the people with clear and rational information. 

In reply to Wally :

To be fair, Y2K was a serious problem, the reason it didn't hurt anything was because of a huge expenditure of man hours.

Like most problems that get overcome.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

That's why I was never concerned about Y2K - it was a problem easily fixed by throwing money at it.  America is really good at fixing those kinds of problems.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

They were all serious problems, I just can't keep panicking about them.