How to Prepare for the Worst-Case Scenario

If you're concerned about how to prepare in case the coronavirus turns out to warrant a national or regional lockdown, here are some measures recommended by an infectious disease epidemiologist named Katy Talento at The Federalist.

She opens her column with a discussion of some of what the Trump administration has already done, noting that political correctness is a poor weapon in the fight against spread of a pathogen.

She then cautions us that a "lockdown" is a possibility:

If this virus starts spreading unabated the way it is in other countries right now, one of the likely interventions that civil authorities would consider is a regional or even national lockdown. In this scenario, citizens would be “invited” to stay at home long enough to wait out a few incubation periods of the disease—probably between two to six weeks.

Governments would likely use curfews and transportation restrictions to starve the virus of new hosts through isolating people in smaller groups, with little contact between the groups.

What does this mean for you? It means that you should prepare to be at home for at least a few weeks. Unlike in most natural disasters, we can expect to have power and water, but non-essential activities and other gathering places will be shut down, including schools, coffee shops, non-emergency health-care facilities, churches, and gyms.

So how should we prepare to be confined to our homes for several weeks?

Obviously, it’s good to have a solid month’s food supply. That should include a number of electrolyte-balancing drinks, canned or frozen fruit and vegetables, and other healthy food mixed in with the Cheetos, in order to maintain strong immune function.

Stock up on pet food, cat litter, and for apartment-dwellers, pet soilage pads. Having enough heavy-duty trash bags will be as essential as a plan for how and where you will store trash securely without having to leave your home.

First aid and medical supplies will be important, as health-care facilities could very well be the most dangerous place for the uninfected, not to mention the aggravation and delay you’ll face of needing to explain to law enforcement why you’re on the streets. Best to handle as much medical mayhem as you can on your own.

Speaking of mayhem, businesses and homeowners should double-check their security systems and stock up on their self-defense instruments of choice, including ammo and firearm maintenance supplies. Don’t forget to get some practice time in at the range before a quarantine is enacted, if it’s been a while. There will always be those who try to take advantage of the situation to commit crimes.

People dependent on prescription drugs or other medical supplies, such as diabetes test strips or oxygen tanks, should talk to their physicians about getting extra refills prescribed. Physician offices may be on answering service-only status during a quarantine. Go through the hassle now rather than later with insurers and pharmacies to get those refills in hand, even though such stockpiling may not normally be covered.

If you can afford to do so, don’t hesitate to pay out of pocket to get an extra couple months’ supply.

Families should think through who will take care of Aunt Susie’s dog if Aunt Susie is sick, who will cook for Grandpa if Grandma falls ill, or how childcare will be handled if parents are sick or have to live at their essential job for a month. Families with loved ones in hospice care or nursing homes should talk to those care providers now about whether their plans are adequate. Don’t be afraid to pester if you’re not reassured by what you hear at first.

Apartment dwellers might wonder how they can avoid transmission of a respiratory disease when they share a communal ventilation system. For those in temperate climates, close your vents, and seal them off with duct tape and plastic wrap (or trash bags). Open your windows for fresh air instead.

Those who need their HVAC systems, try to seal off as many vents as you can, if you can sacrifice the use of some rooms. You might also consider duct-taping filmy or lightweight fabric over the vent so air can get through but droplets that might be carrying the virus have a greater chance of being captured on the fabric.

These are all excellent suggestions, but Talento has more:

Parents, don’t forget to stock up on indoor-activity supplies like coloring books, audiobooks, videos, academic, and recreational games. Check out these ideas at your taxpayer-funded public broadcasting site. And get some toys for Fido, too—pent-up canine energy is its own form of natural disaster for your shoes or furniture!

Essential personnel such as certain government officials, health-care workers, first responders, and utility workers won’t be able to stay home. Start talking now to your employers about how a month’s worth of staff might be housed on-site at these workplaces during a quarantine.

This will minimize the chaos of all these folks commuting each day, requiring a massive permitting operation to allow them on the road, and risking many more contacts among them than would otherwise occur if they slept where they worked.

She has a bit more to say about the administration's handling of this so far - she's very supportive - and then she concludes with this:

In the meantime, as the saying goes, we should pray like it all depends on God and prepare like it all depends on us.

This all assumes, of course, that this virus turns out to be extremely deadly, but indications so far seem to indicate that it's a serious threat only to those with compromised immune systems - the elderly, diabetics, heavy smokers, etc. There are many people, apparently, who have the virus but experience only mild symptoms and do not show up on the CDC data sheets.

If that's true then the fatality rate for this disease is lower than has been projected, but as Talento suggests, it's wise to prepare now rather than wait until we discover that the virus is more virulent than we had thought.