I would assume that you will have basic utilities without interruption -- water, electricity. Supply chains could, theoretically, have disruptions as the disease runs through the world. I am not saying they will; just that they can. If it happens the affect on you and yours of not having extra is extremely significant. That's enough of a reason to buy what you can.
You cannot go back and time, but after things settle down (they will) look at your budget and what it takes to have a couple of weeks extra of necessary items. It's not super expensive to buy rice and beans if you are on a budget, then rotate your supply when the rice starts to get old. If you have more money you can get something with less monotonous flavor: canned food, dehydrated, freeze dried, whatever. You may need it twice in your life, but when you do, it will be the wisest thing you have every done.
This is very likely to overwhelm not just medical infrastructure, but shut down supply chains for basic necessities for months. If the pandemic hits, most businesses will shutter, just like in China. It is prudent to stock up now for 1-2 months of cheap, non- perishable foods like rice and beans (complete protein together) at a minimum. There's just no excuse not to now if you make a tech salary - a couple hundred dollars and you have an emergency stash which is good for years.
This isn't just about personal protection - the whole community and nation can expect better outcomes of we stagger preparations, lessening the chance and impact of everyone running to the store at the same time. There is no question now that this is an unprecedented event, now is the time to prepare to mitigate risk.
Even in normal times you always need a month supply of everything. During pandemic or any other major crisis event it's probably best to keep 3 months supply of everything. That's not panic buying. That's planning for your and your dependants safety and wellbeing. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Hopefully you've stumbled across the fact that one of the recent low-level simmering news stories is more supply line issues. So it'd probably be best to have a week or two of daily necessities handy, like during the pandemic, just in case.
Best food prep isn't just to buy "cans of stuff", but to buy things you eat anyhow that happens to be preservable. That way, rather than blowing a lot of money on stuff you may never use, you're merely forward-loading some food spending. The ideal is to get yourself into the habit of using that stuff on a relatively regular basis, but replacing it as you use it rather than when you run out, thus keeping a buffer. In particular, you want to fight the idea that "this is my food reserve and I shouldn't touch it", because that's how you get old, useless reserves when you need them. You want to use them, you just also want to replenish them as you go, then you always have things usable if necessary. Don't forget to use it as a queue, first-in-first-out, despite the fact the physical world tends to make a stack more natural by just putting the new stuff you just bought in front.
This is a good idea for the coronavirus, sure, but more importantly, it's a good idea anyhow. Society and civilization in general are more resilient against all kinds of issues if people aren't generally starving from a single burp in the distribution networks. The coronavirus may turn out to be as much of a nothingburger for the US as SARS was, but something is going to happen somewhere to somebody (who may be you) for which reserves will be very useful.
You probably can't prep for the total collapse of civilization and even those who think they have probably haven't. But you can and should prep for interruptions and extended outages of various bits of civilization, because they do still happen. Just this last summer, in an area with generally good power reliability, we had a very large, very powerful windstorm come through and cut the power lines in literally several hundred places in the area, and dropped a tree on our local neighborhood transformer. I was without power for 5 days. But it was really just an annoyance... we were pretty much ready for it.
For coronavirus particularly, I think food and any other supplies you may need (medicines, animal food) is the main focus. I wouldn't expect to lose power or water. (Water is the worst. I've got some backup plans against that if I need to, but they won't necessarily be a lot of fun...) The worst one for us would be some of the prescription medicines we have that they won't really let us get too far in advance. (For my family, none of them are life threatening, but could be a problem.)
Preparation and panic are not the same. Do not expect to rely on conveniences like deliveries, they are merely conveniences and can stop.
It is very possible to run out access to necessities. I don't believe food itself will be in any significant shortage, but you might not get to it.
If you fall sick, you'll need to self-isolate and not leave the house for several weeks. So you need to be ready to do so.
Even if you remain healthy, access to supermarkets may have restrictions (see Italy today). While you can get food, you might need to line up for a few hours, increasing your exposure. Best to have a few weeks of food at home for when your area is in this stage.
The alternative to preparation is to wait until you need to panic. Not recommended.
I hope this serves as a wake-up call for a lot more people to spend a modest amount of their income saving for a rainy day when this is all over. And not just in terms of cash, but in terms of enough staples and essentials for a few weeks of weeks of interrupted supply chains, a go-bag in case your residence needs to be evacuated suddenly, the ability to teach your own kids stuff. These sound paranoid to some. It's a burden for others. But look where we are right now. And as possible apocalyptic events go, this is minor.
The desperation and helplessness I hear from people after literally days of being affected by other people's panic and by public health orders is completely avoidable. It doesn't matter where you live, natural disasters, pandemics, job loss, closures of basic services and other not-THAT-impossible events are a thing. It doesn't even have to be real. If a handful of people THINK there will be a TP shortage, there will be. Things like hygiene supplies, rice, etc. won't go to waste if the world doesn't end. You'll use them eventually. Just buffer a little.
You many run out of things temporarily until more deliveries arrive and they stack the shelves. There will be no long term shortages.
It's a good idea to buy and store some durable supplies because you may need to self quarantine for few weeks. It's also a good idea to shop less frequently and buy more at once to avoid getting infection. It's unfortunate that everyone decides to do it at the same time.
'I need to do something to protect my family' is very core need under threat. When there is little you can do, you take little more toilet paper so that you have done something. It's both silly and very human.
Refill your medication(s), that's the biggest one. India produces a lot of drugs and if they get infected, we will see shortage. China also produces a lot of the base chemicals used in medication, so this is worry some. If you have chronic conditions, you really don't want to be without.
Soap and sanitizer. Mostly soap. Soap is equally effective as sanitizer in washing hands, etc. Soap is also much cheaper and more available. If the local region goes into lock down, you're not going out much so soap will work well.
Get one to two weeks of food and supplies in case. There isn't going to be a global shortage, but we may see short term runs on supplies. Include stuff like tooth brush, mouth wash, and etc. For my wife I also stocked up on a larger supplies of feminine hygiene products.
Masks. I got 20 per family member in our local area. For when you need to go out and restock food. Also learn how to properly use the mask.
I think there is a difference between a famine and a virus pandemic. We don't have a shortage of food (at least not yet in the UK). It may get there over time if more people get ill and food and basic supplies get affected as a result. Gradually buying food and buying a bit of a buffer is possibly okay. But buying an entire trolly of toilet papers (I saw a woman buying 20 large packets of toilet papers today, enough to last 2 people 2 months I'd say) is possibly putting unnecessary strains on supermarkets and the supply chain in general. I spoke to the managers at my local supermarket today and asked them if they can place a threshold on certain essential items (for example if you buy more than 3 packets of toilet papers in one go, you have to pay a premium for the 4th packet) - that way people will really think about whether they truly need everything they are buying and possibly think twice before unnecessarily panic buying. It is important to think about how our actions will impact others as well I think.
Call it tragedy of the commons, call it whatever you like; your not buying stuff now isn't going to prevent a run later.
Socially, you're probably still better off buying sooner rather than later, because that means the system has more time to restock and ship things around for people later. If you're part of the end pile up, you're another stresser at the worst time.
As evidence of this... the ideal time to stock up with emergency supplies was months or even a couple of years ago, when it would bother nobody. I've buffed up some supplies a bit, but I wasn't starting from scratch because I've been keeping stuff on hand for a while now. Giving the system months or years of headstart is better than weeks, but weeks or even a single week is better than nothing.
We stocked up to one month of supplies in January '20 due to pandemic fears. At the time we were concerned that we wouldn't want to go to a grocery store or that there would be a run on the markets. Our stores are currently at about 50% now. I intend to go up to 3 months of stores in the next couple weeks.
My main concern is grain and fertilizer. I expect food price spikes and shortages. I don't expect shortages in the sense of starvation risk, more like - they won't have the brands or types of food we're used to. The stores are mainly protection for if goes worse than I expect.
Regarding nuclear, I've looked at what installing a bomb shelter would cost, but it's a nonstarter with my wife. Instead, we've just decided on where we'll go and what we'll do if we get the warning on our phones. Luckily, I still think nuclear exchange is highly unlikely.
Since I hadn't lived thru anything that threatened my society, I never believed in stocking up on non-perishables.
However, the fact that I'm living thru a potential pandemic convinces me that we as a race aren't nearly as resilient as our modern amenities and high QoL suggest.
I don't get tired of beans and rice, but I do get tired of keeping a significant volume of beans and rice in my tiny apartment kitchen. I already barely have room as it is without a box of emergency supplies. For day-to-day quality of life I have to just hope that my normal supply of food and the American supply chain will back me up until I'm able to get a house.
> It is prudent to stock up now for 1-2 months of cheap, non- perishable foods like rice and beans (complete protein together) at a minimum.
Despite the rest of your post being overly alarmist this is a good recommendation. You should have extra staple food at all times. The cost is minimal, you can keep extra of foods you'd eat anyway, and the benefit in an unlikely supply chain disruption could be significant.
I can comment on a couple unexpected shortages we've seen in Asia: toilet paper, due to panic buying, and hand sanitizer.
There are also some concerns about medicines unrelated to the virus because many meds are produced in China and the supply chain here is all screwed up. So some might consider getting medicine refills for 30 days (or however long your insurance will let you) in advance. You also might not want to have to go wait in line at a pharmacy during a pandemic.
In terms of work: it may make sense to start thinking about what kind of work can be done efficiently remotely vs. on-site.
You also may want to think about finances in case the world sees a significant economic contraction. If lots of countries replicate what has happened in China, the world economy will be highly disrupted for at least a couple months.
Correct—it's doable, it just takes more material and planning than "buy bag of rice, stick bag in dry place in basement". Do that, you'll be sad when you try to use it in a year or three.
The alternative is maintaining a stock but constantly drawing it down & replenishing it, but it gets difficult to maintain a substantial reserve that way, unless you already eat your "apocalypse" diet most of the time, so go through a lot of the same things you've got in storage even during normal times—say, if you already eat rice & beans 5+ dinners a week. You're capped by the rate at which you go through those things in non-emergency times. Plus it takes some planning and ongoing monitoring/inventorying, which is a non-zero amount of work.
> After reading this article, I want to stock up on more food for myself and my five dependents.
You should always have some amount of food reserves. Space allowing, at least a few days of food. Canned and dry goods with long shelf lives - eat the oldest of this first during regular usage and refresh the stock so you don't end up with 5 year old canned goods.
> Is this panic buying?
A little, yes. There's not much risk of long-term food insecurity in the first world (at least not in the US). There are occasionally disasters that affect us short term - think hurricanes, floods, electricity outages, earthquakes, winter storms in Texas. I'd advise being able to get through those.
> Is it OK? Does it hurt other people?
It can hurt others. At the beginning of the pandemic there was a lot of panic buying. Part of that was an overreaction, part profiteerism, part of it was the world being unready to pivot to consumer goods (like with toilet paper). Do it gradually. Don't go out and buy out a canned goods section at your local supermarket.
You cannot go back and time, but after things settle down (they will) look at your budget and what it takes to have a couple of weeks extra of necessary items. It's not super expensive to buy rice and beans if you are on a budget, then rotate your supply when the rice starts to get old. If you have more money you can get something with less monotonous flavor: canned food, dehydrated, freeze dried, whatever. You may need it twice in your life, but when you do, it will be the wisest thing you have every done.
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