Anyone stockpiling food?

[Minnesota!]

I'd like to go back and see what the threads looked like for when the swine flu, bird flu, etc. were overhyped by the media.

No. We are not stocking up on anything

 

[superme80]

We are. We are in California, and a case appeared about 2 hours from us. Nothing major, but I stocked up on paper products, toiletries, and baking supplies. We still have water left over from the major power outage in October, so no need to stock up on water. We are also dealing with a family issue, so I also stocked up in case we don't have time to shop.

 

[quandrea]

I don't understand the math of only needing 14 days of a Coronavirus stockpile. Say your area gets hit with an actual diagnosed case. So everyone bunkers down for 14 days, eating though their 14 day stockpile. But, it can take 14 days for symptoms to show up. On Day 13, your neighbor across the street and one down the block are diagnosed with Coronavirus.

What are you supposed to do? Technically, you will be out of food in the next day (or two.) Along with everyone else in the area. You WILL have to go out and try to find more food. (And possibly expose people to Corona virus as you've had contact with the neighbor across the street.) After the first case was confirmed, all food within a 50 mile radius was already wiped out of the stores. When the latter 2 cases are confirmed, add on another 50+ mile radius.

Why were we told to only stockpile for 2 weeks?

And I don't get telling us to stockpile water. If we don't normally buy bottled water, tap water is not going to get infected.

Two weeks is considered a minimum. Hard core preppers have up to a year or two stockpiled.

 

[starry_solo]

Reading all this makes me want to stockpile stuff....

oh wait, I have too much junk in the house to be able to stockpile food...oops.

 

[Heather07438]

Probably the best thing we can stock up on is health.

Get enough sleep, stay hydrated, eat our veggies Avoid stress... lol.

 

[lovin'fl]

The only thing I am going to do is buy my hurricane supplies in the next couple weeks instead of waiting a couple months. It’s something I would be doing anyway and it’s stuff that won’t go bad, so why not. A minimum of 14 days supply is recommended for hurricane supplies, so a very similar period of time to possibly need to cover.

Yeah, I may do that tomorrow myself. Canned goods and jugs of water and TP and the such. Maybe some clorox wipes and tylenol. Running low on all that stuff and need it anyway.

 

[DLgal]

So far, there appear to be some interesting differences... I'm not sure if this has changed, because the reporting I read was a week or so ago, but the BBC was examining the profiles of the COVID19 fatalities and noted a virtually total lack of pediatric deaths. That's a big difference from the flu, which is deadly to both the very young and the very old. And it appears to be pretty gender-biased as well, with men more than twice as likely to die than women who are diagnosed with the disease, though I've heard that may be attributable to the gendered divide on smoking rates in China.

In studying MERS and SARS in laboratory mice, scientists found that estrogen seemed to have a protective effect. They had similar rates of death with female and male mice as they saw in the human populations (i.e. more male mice died than females), and then when they suppressed estrogen in the female mice, more died. It seems that this virus may be similar enough to SARS and MERS -that we are seeing a similar pattern.

Also, it is theorized that the X chromosome has something to do with it. It's a complicated interplay between the protein the virus latches onto and the role the X chromosome plays in that. Women, having 2, have a sort of fail safe built in that men don't, since they only have one X chromosome.

 

[Planogirl]

I shopped a bit at Wal-Mart today and checked out the drug section. A lot of shelves were empty or close to it so I bought some things we were low on anyway. I will be calling in prescriptions in the next few days because there are a few that I have to have.

 

[Monykalyn]

We live in tornado area (all year although fairly rare in winter) and ice storm prone area. So have a supply anyway-2 freezers that are stocked (daughter and hubs are hunters) and I buy bulk when on sale since I have the space. Did send the hubs out for water (not due to coronavirus but more due to fact we will be starting higher risk tornado season soon). I always have bleach and clorox wipes on hand. In fact did some spring cleaning today and wiped down all the door handles/doors/light switches etc. I've been sick with one cold or another nearly all winter (worst winter for being sick than I can remember) and am getting over a sinus infection so the house needed to be sanitized anyway. And I haven't been able to get flu shot this season either due to always being sick with something (and that is from my doctor's advice). I figure our "prepping" is more like the hurricane prep seems others do. Plus I have backyard chickens so I know we will have 12-18 eggs a week for a while. I do keep extra of their food on hand as we've had a weird winter with lots of single day snows, followed by cold rain and the hens haven't been out to get bugs as much. We also adopted a puppy after Christmas so he has a supply of food as well - but both those are autodelivery from Chewy. We don't have "bug out bags" but do have items we know we need to grab or keep close when storms start and warnings may go off. We have a storm shelter in basement we can keep some of that in too.

I’m more concerned about Supply Chain disruptions than quarantine

This is likely to be more of a concern and things take longer to restock. Like it or not we are a global economy and completely "closing borders" would grind life to a halt in this country PDQ.

I keep enough gas in the car

Living in tornado country I try to never let my tank get below 1/2 full. Drives my NUTS that hubs routinely will go for miles AFTER his "time to get gas" light comes on. I also try to keep enough cash on hand to get through several days of no ATM/Debit card use. When power is out it means it is OUT everywhere after a tornado and stores/gas stations etc can't take debit/credit!

But I am more preparing for storm season than Covid-19 panic

 

[aprilchem]

We are not stockpiling anything, and I think the media is really working to cause panic and hype people up at this point.

 

[mnrose]

I’m curious about the water? Is there a reason to think running water would cease?

Well, running water takes human power to keep it running in a clean and healthful way. It's something I *do* worry about because I know our City is staffed very leanly (a total of 5 people do water and sewer for our town of 12K). If 2-3 of them get sick at the same time, we'd be up a creek without a paddle. If something goes wrong, it could quickly bring the system down, and it takes 24 hours minimum to bring it back up. I can't speak for all communities, but I know this to be the case in ours.

 

[Tapdancenanna]

We usually have two to three weeks of food: frozen and staples and at least a week or more of fresh fruits and veggies. I did stock up on toilet paper, ibuprofen and tylenol. I usually get my prescriptions three months at a time. There's been a lot of news about meds coming from China so hopefully there won't be a problem getting them.

 

[TCRAIG]

yeah I think production supply/shipping concerns are likely to be more problematic. I’m grateful my meds aren’t made in China

Just wondering - how do you know your Meds aren’t made in China?

 

[tarheelmjfan]

I didn't read all the posts, but this is like hurricane season way too early. It's a Floridian's worst nightmare. People buying stuff they don't need & wouldn't normally buy keeps people from getting things they do need. Water that is usually plentiful is impossible to come by. All shelves are empty. After the scare is over, people will be donating a lot of stuff they no longer want. This is the same stuff that some people needed, but couldn't get. If people would only buy what they would normally need, there wouldn't be a problem.

PS: If you need a particular brand of meds, it makes sense to make sure you have a months worth. IMO, stockpiling things you can buy at any grocery store is a different situation. If people didn't stockpile, there would be enough for everyone.

 

[dreamin_disney]

I plan on going tomorrow to get a few things. I plan on getting over the counter meds, tissues, toilet paper, paper towels, Clorox wipes, water, soup. I’m diabetic and I don’t need to catch any sickness.

What food is everyone stocking up on?

 

[mamamary]

I have not done any extra shopping. The other day I did need to buy Clorox wipes and there was no shortage of them. Last night we went grocery shopping and I didn’t notice anything different in the store.

 

[NYCgrrl]

I plan on going tomorrow to get a few things. I work at a school as a paraprofessional. I work with different classrooms and different grades(middle school) so I’m around a lot of different kids. Plus I do duty in the quad and surrounded by a lot of kids. I plan on getting over the counter meds, tissues, toilet paper, paper towels, Clorox wipes, water, soup. I’m diabetic and I don’t need to catch any sickness.

What food is everyone stocking up on?

From my perspective, it's a good idea to purchase food goods you'd normally eat. No sense in keeping cans of Spam on hand if it's not part of your regular diet since nobody here will eat it until the zombie apocalypse.Maybe, LOL.

I'm a perimeter shopper for the most part and avoid overly processed food so maintain an auxiliary freezer filled with various types of protein, home made main courses and flash frozen mirepoix ingredients.

As a just in case move I recently bought bread, frozen juice, and asparagus (it was on sale and can make a nice soup) to add to my freezer. Also powdered milk for the pantry. We eat a lot of fresh fruit and I'm thinking since some berries are at a good price locally I'll puree and flash freeze some to use in yogurt parfaits, fools, smoothies, etc.


CDC is recommending bottled water be kept on hand but I'll probably bypass as we normally use tap water and the delivery is pretty regular. Besides I just lucked out on a seltzer sale and have at least enough for a 2 week stock.

 

[Disneylover99]

Well, running water takes human power to keep it running in a clean and healthful way. It's something I *do* worry about because I know our City is staffed very leanly (a total of 5 people do water and sewer for our town of 12K). If 2-3 of them get sick at the same time, we'd be up a creek without a paddle. If something goes wrong, it could quickly bring the system down, and it takes 24 hours minimum to bring it back up. I can't speak for all communities, but I know this to be the case in ours.

I’m always more concerned about stocking up on water over food. We always have lots of food in our house to survive on, but if something goes wrong with the water supply or there is a boil water advisory, I need back-up.

 

[agame2323]

We are stocking up on water. Just bought a huge pallet from Cosco.

 

[Coffee66]

We are stocking up on water. Just bought a huge pallet from Cosco.

Also consider can goods and yes toilet paper.