Quote Originally Posted by puzzld View Post
This is one of the things that gives me nightmares. <snip> But what about the folks in your position? The self employed, the part timers, the ones with no leave or insurance? Apparently many cases are mild a little fever, a cough. You going to tell me people are going to trot down to the ER and pay for a test out of pocket? Gonna self quarantine just in case? No. They're gonna keep soldiering on and infect everyone at the early bird special...

As badly as Ron Regan botched the AIDS crises (and he did botch it) it's a hard disease to catch, you've got to share bodily fluids... But this is much easier to spread with casual or no contact.
Honestly, I'm really not worried about COVID19 - I'm worried about the overreaction to it. Our fanatically detailed preparations are directly related to geography and career choice (old habits and all that), not from any fear of a viral apocalypse. That said, I'm a huge proponent of personal preparedness plans for any emergency and heartily endorse the suggestions here. When chaos ensues, the only person you can really depend on is yourself, so you better have a plan (however simple) to do it.

I'm immunocompromised, so me + any virus = whether it's Corona, the flu, or "The 24 hr Bug." COVID19 is just another cootie I have to avoid, and I avoid cooties like, well.... like that other famous pandemic, The Plague.

I'm also old enough to have worked (at the federal level) on the government's response to SARS/H1N1/MERS/Avian/Swine/[insert latest pan(dem)ic here]. So while the general public might feel unprepared and vulnerable, I find comfort in knowing that every level of our government (fed/state/local), along with the medical/business communities, have been thinking about this for decades. There are Plans - tens of thousands of pages of plans that have been written, coordinated, exercised, executed, and rewritten to incorporate lessons learned. As we speak, thousands of people are operationalizing those plans. Are they fool-proof? Absolutely not. Will people die? Probably, there are no absolutes as evidenced by our inability to prevent an estimated 30k+ influenza deaths a year. But every year our emergency management capabilities evolve and increase with advances in science/medicine/technology. We've learned so much and we've come so far. I feel a helluva lot better about the government's ability to provide critical services for COVID19 in 2020, than I did about SARS in 2002 or H1N1 in 2009. I don't anticipate supply shortages much worse than hurricane/blizzard season - mostly caused by hoarding, not actual need.

I should add that it might not be readily apparent that your community/school/health dept/hospital is operationalizing their plan, even if you work there yourself. Plans aren't only executed by people in HazMat suits. Emergency response consists of detailed action sets that address escalating and triggering events from the mundane to the dramatic. Something as seemingly random as awareness campaigns, Travel Warnings, or "10 Things You Should Know About COVID19" blog posts on a hospital's website, are evidence of plan execution. Don't think for a minute that it's 'all they're doing.' Everybody has a role, some roles are more visible than others.

My Advice: Keep Calm, Wash Your Hands, Prepare for Annoying Disruptions