Organisation
How prepared have you been for this COVID-19 pandemic? Were you caught flat-footed, with bare pantry shelves? Or were you ready with your N95 masks, gallons of hand sanitizer, and a year's worth of MREs? In most respects, this global crisis is much less severe than other bad things like an ELE (Extinction Level Event) meteor strike, or nuclear war with the accompanying nuclear winter that would follow. As such, "preparedness" really has a different reality in this situation - you probably don't need to be able to mill your own flour, or start growing your own veggies to survive this. Getting through this is going to require minimizing contact with others and practicing extremely good hygiene - which is why we're in this Social Distancing mode. In retrospect, I did not have this on my list of things that I would need to be prepared for in a crisis situation - i.e. do we have enough supplies to quarantine for two weeks?
We're about two weeks into our own government-requested, self-imposed isolation. Neither of us are sick, nor have we been in contact with any confirmed cases, but we are doing our best to minimize the spread within our circle of family and friends, and in our community. I don't think we are "preppers", but we have some level of emergency preparedness that probably exceeds the average person. For example,
we had created our own emergency kits for use in case of other disasters, such as earthquake, tsunami, etc. And because we have a separate, unused basement suite, we typically have a fair bit of non-perishables and frozen food stored down there, as well as supplies of paper towels, Kleenex, toilet paper, etc. Admittedly, some of these things are really required for disasters worse than this pandemic, where things like vacating our home, and/or leaving the area are required. e.g. "shelter in place" is certainly a lot different than the folks that had to vacate quickly due to flood, or worse, in a matter of minutes because of an approaching wildfire.
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| Costco lineup! |
So when I saw this coming, I think we were somewhat prepared for the "stay home" order that I knew was imminent, but had yet to come. However, due to an unplanned trip to see my elderly parents, I was unable to take the last few steps to stock up on the few items that we had not recently replenished (no, not toilet paper). As such, when I got back and needed to get some dog food at Costco, I was faced with the horde of people frantically trying to get their hands on toilet paper and hand sanitizer. This was my first real experience with what happens when the media whips people into a frenzy, and rational thinking quickly gets pushed aside. Grocery stores too, were getting cleaned out, and in less than a week, they were imposing limits on most products, and enforcing social distancing measures.
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| Ketchup supply dwindling |
We are doing well from a supply perspective; there are a few things that we are running low on now (milk, ketchup, fruit, etc.), but they'll get added to the grocery list, and we'll be able to get them next week. But while I was out cleaning the garage (what else does one do while staying home?), I noticed that one of my emergency bags was growing mould on the bottom! Upon closer inspection, it turns out that a can of peaches failed, causing the mess on one side of the bag - yuck! A quick Google informed me that while canned goods normally can last years, certain products can cause the cans to swell and fail before you end up using them. As such, I'm going to start eating up these canned items, and will eventually replace them with new ones once this pandemic passes.
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| Reasonable success at Walmart |
How have we done so far then? If this were the zombie apocalypse, I'd say we'd have scored 6/10. We didn't have adequate supply of key items that would have augmented our 'grab-n-go' bags, one kit was a mess, and drinking water had not been refreshed recently. But with this stay at home order, it's much different - there's no issue with water, electricity, gas and the all-important internet. So rating our preparedness is a bit different, as the things that I feel are important revolve more around how many times you need to go out to get items that are running low/critical. We could have done better at keeping our non-perishables stocked, and when the infected cases started to rise, I should have gone out to re-supply earlier. We have N95 masks in our emergency kits, but we haven't used them (yet). We had disinfecting wipes on hand, but our bottles of sanitizer were almost empty, and required re-filling. You can't do much with respect to perishables like fruit and veggies, but we could have had some more canned or frozen ones on hand. My assessment? Based on our current supply situation, I'd say we're at a 9/10, but two weeks ago, we would have only been 7/10. I think 10/10 would have been a lofty goal, and really, not a practical one, as you'd have to have things like jugs of milk in your freezer, and a fully-stocked root cellar.
How prepared have you been for this COVID-19 pandemic? Were you caught flat-footed, with bare pantry shelves? Or were you ready with your N95 masks, gallons of hand sanitizer, and a year's worth of MREs? In most respects, this global crisis is much less severe than other bad things like an ELE (Extinction Level Event) meteor strike, or nuclear war with the accompanying nuclear winter that would follow. As such, "preparedness" really has a different reality in this situation - you probably don't need to be able to mill your own flour, or start growing your own veggies to survive this. Getting through this is going to require minimizing contact with others and practicing extremely good hygiene - which is why we're in this Social Distancing mode. In retrospect, I did not have this on my list of things that I would need to be prepared for in a crisis situation - i.e. do we have enough supplies to quarantine for two weeks?
