Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Thursday, March 5. 2020

Coronavirus, paranoids, and preppers

Paranoids love to have a teensy bit of fact to appear to justify their habitual fearfulness, and preppers love having a reason to justify their prepping. I feel those people just find it exciting, but most people I talk to just joke about the hysteria.


The Rich Are Preparing for Coronavirus Differently. Concierge doctors, yachts, chartered planes and germ-free hideaways.


What a crazy world! If you ask me, a 6-month supply of peanut butter and jelly, and a bag of flour, ought to take care of it. Maybe 50 bags of chips, and how many cases of beer? Store Shelves Across The Country Are Emptying Fast


Really? 

Posted by The News Junkie in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 15:29 | Comments (16) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I don't do the prepping thing. I guess that I'll just have to hope for the best. But among serious preppers, they always have one of those bean sprouting kits.

[urlhttps://sproutpeople.org/sprout-kits/[/url]
#1 Ron Liebermann on 2020-03-05 15:49 (Reply)
"preppers love having a reason to justify their prepping. / and how many cases of beer?"

As a prepper, I have my own still. Do it that way and you're realllllllly ready. for SHTF or a good long weekend, dealers choice.

Oh and have the boat too in case things get proper stupid.
#2 old Canuck on 2020-03-05 15:50 (Reply)
In my area, the masks were the first to go, about a month ago. Checked Lowe's and Ace and they both invited me to come back when the next truck arrived, but when pressed they admitted that their orders had been on backorder for some time with no improvement to forecast. The Ace guy told me it was all being quietly diverted to Health Care workers.

Hand sanitizer has not been on the shelves for a few weeks now, same story, no line of sight on when it might return. Now, with the DIY formulas out there (isopropyl alcohol and Aloe Vera gel) the alcohol is mostly gone too. The odd straggler of 70% might be on the shelves, but 91% is hard to come by. I got some today by approaching the stockman after I spotted a couple of cartons on the bottom of his cart. Our local groceries are limiting the number of products related to COVID or flu-associated to 5 per purchase.

There's still plenty of beer.

The hospital tells me they have a 3-step protocol being followed by those coming to the facility, starting with a few questions at Check-in. It escalates depending upon the answers and of course, the direct observations.
#3 Aggie on 2020-03-05 16:40 (Reply)
I watched (and was part of) a run on my local pharmacy yesterday. I was in line to buy a bag of chips because I was hungry. Someone else evidently noticed that a box of hand sanitizer was behind the cashier (not put out yet). As I was still standing in line at least 30 to 40 people then materialized and were walking into the store in less than a minute, all wanting the hand sanitizer. The cashier brought out the manager who said purchases were limited to one per person until they ran out. People kept on coming in the store. Since I was already in line to buy my chips I could have gotten a hand sanitizer also as I bought my chips but I didn't, because I think the whole thing is just ridiculous. Unless you're using it constantly you are not going to get any real protection from hand sanitizer, and I'm not going to buy into the stupid panic.

How did so many people get there so quickly? I assume someone in the store must have texted it to someone else, and within seconds it was everywhere.
#4 Jim on 2020-03-05 17:59 (Reply)
Other than seeing one du mb as s in the grocery story today with a surgical mask, the stores in my town seem to be well stocked and I don't see people hoarding supplies. I'm sure the fools are out there, but our town is pretty conservative - not many people listen to the hysterical media on MSNBC and CNN - so maybe that has something to do with it. Either that or we've got a lot of retirees who either figure they won't outlive a large jar of mayonnaise or they've lived thru similar hysterias in the past and recognize bu ll sh it when they see it.

....and NO, I'm not telling you where I live because we don't want you coming here and having a hissy fit because we won't sell you all our TP.
#5 mike m on 2020-03-05 18:53 (Reply)
I'm calling BS on this article. In my area the supermarket and drug store shelves are still completely stocked.
#6 snopercod on 2020-03-05 19:16 (Reply)
Oh, the articles were from the NY Times and Zerohedge. That explains the fake news...
#6.1 snopercod on 2020-03-05 19:19 (Reply)
People who are REALLY wealthy can spend the equivalent of "pocket change" to prepare for TEOTWAWKI ("The End Of The World As We Know It") and not feel the pinch. It's the equivalent of disaster insurance for them.
#7 Kenneth Mitchell (Link) on 2020-03-05 19:46 (Reply)
I guess I’m the only one who routinely and seasonally cooks for the freezer. Applesauce in the fall; red sauce in the summer; plain old field tomatoes and corn when they are cheap in September. Fruit coffee cakes when blueberries and peaches are really ripe. Stocks bags and bags of frozen baby peas and butter when they are on sale at Shaw’s. Freezes my bags of rice, white, jasmine, basmati and mixed. And 10 lbs of this season’s pecans from my cousins in Mississippi.
But why are people buying water when most get their water from their town? What the heck?
#8 Annie on 2020-03-05 19:54 (Reply)
Not the only one and that's not prepping or hoarding.

It's normal living.

For us anyway.

Grow stuff when weather is suitable. freeze or can for when it's not.

Grow animals, butcher them and freeze it because .. food. Your families eat every day.
#8.1 fjord on 2020-03-06 08:56 (Reply)
It isn't paranoia if it's true. We do not know how bad it will get or how many people will die. We do know that our hospitals are not set up for or designed to handle a pandemic. If this get's bad, Wuhan bad, you will die at home without medical care. What they tell you on TV is intended to calm you and prevent you from panicking. You cannot prevent infection by wearing a mask and you cannot wash your hands often enough to prevent contamination that way.
#9 Anon on 2020-03-05 20:34 (Reply)
At WORST, the death rate for most people will be under a half-percent. We can't trust Chinese statistics, but South Korea has a good track record, and had a fairly severe outbreak.

Death rate for those under 30 years old: 0.0% The elderly fare much worse; 3-5%.

And all of the US fatalities have been over 70.
#9.1 Kenneth Mitchell (Link) on 2020-03-06 02:40 (Reply)
Nothing wrong with some light prepping, guided by experience. Every couple of years we San Antonios get a big influx of short-term evacuees from Gulf Coast hurricanes (Houston, Galveston, and Corpus Christi folks), and the stores start running short of bread, water, milk, and prepared foods. So there's my prep list, right there. Add some charcoal for the grill and a couple bottles of cocktail base, and I'm good to go.
#10 Mike Anderson (Link) on 2020-03-05 22:06 (Reply)
The photos of empty shelves were probably cherry picked.

Our local Wal-Mart always has gaps in the aisles where they haven't yet restocked.
#11 feeblemind on 2020-03-05 23:33 (Reply)
Our groceries are doing mostly fine too, plenty of produce, all the regular cooking supplies and canned goods, and traffic patterns appear to be normal.

But - at the supermarkets and at the chain pharmacies, ask or check about the key germ/virus fighting essentials: Disinfectants, disinfecting wipes, hand sanitizers, anti-bacterial hand soaps, bleach, rubbing alcohol, flu remedies. In my locality, the stores usually carry these products from multiple providers and also store generic brands. For most of the categories above, the shelves are completely bare. The other stocks in the rest of the stores are fine.

I have a big pantry with a chest freezer and typically could be OK for a month if I had to, aside from fresh veggies and dairy. So I'm not worried - just paying attention.
#11.1 Aggie on 2020-03-06 00:08 (Reply)
Recently, I saw a picture of media-tards taking a picture in a supermarket, they had emptied shelves and set items aside to take pics of empty shelves.

I guess there are no stock pictures of empty shelves anywhere.
#11.2 fjord on 2020-03-06 08:58 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.