- Planning purchases for hunkering down for a few weeks: Food, water, batteries, water purifier, battery-powered radio, hand-crank power generator for radio, etc.
- Sold 50% of my stock holdings.
- Putting a large amount cash in my checking account.
- Getting a smaller amount of cash (paper) to have at home.
Shouldn't you be doing the opposite? Banks go down pretty quickly when society panics.
Even if it depresses in the summer months, it will return in full force next winter (see e.g. flu, common colds, etc).
Best case scenario a working vaccine is invented. But nobody currently has a proven working one (regardless of a few headlines to the contrary) and even if they did that would be 18 months minimum before mass manufacturing could begin.
What I am saying is "bomb shelter"-style hunkering down will likely be ineffective if there's a mass spread in your country because the disease would out-live whatever supplies you have.
After that, who knows. Hopefully there will be a vaccine.
Overall I think it is a good thing. Only by many diverse opinions and goals from many different people can we try everything and see what really works out.
Please provide examples.
- We used to be able to build Hoover Dam. Now it takes literally years to pass a bill to maintain our highways.
- Do I need to remind you what a joke Infrastructure Week has become?
- How are those gun violence stats? Number 1 in the world at something, at least.
- The fastest-growing approach to paying for medical bills, in this country, is a GoFundMe campaign.
- The world financial system was nearly destroyed by inadequately regulated US "finanice industry innovation" in 2008. As Paul Volcker said the following year: “the ATM has been the only useful innovation in banking for the past 20 years”.
- Facebook and Google -- the most successful US companies in history, I think, have destroyed privacy, and are now bringing down democracy. Oh, right, I forgot, Facebook is connecting people. Point for you.
Seriously. What has this country done recently that proves we can do anything productive any longer?
Fasting growing doesn't mean much. Most people have insurance which covers everything. Yes there are too many people on the edges who don't have it, but most people do and don't need gofundme (I suspect some of them have a gofundme anyway as a way to raise money because they can)
Sure we don't do massive society wide projects, but that is because we don't need them. That doesn't mean we can't.
Having said that, I would expect that in most Western countries, sufficient quantities to cover the most vulnerable people (older people and those with existing heart or respiratory conditions - ie largely the same people selected for annual flu vaccines in many places) will be available by next (Northern hemisphere) winter.
We can't speculate at this point what kind/likelihood of a civil emergency we might face with this or any other disaster that hasn't happened yet.
However, having been through Sandy where we had 16 consecutive days of no power or heat and a snowstorm with a foot of snow and fouled treatment facilities with boil alerts, here's my recommendations:
1) Hold 10x24x16oz bottles of water and use them in FIFO. When you finish one flat, you buy a new one and put it on the bottom of the stack. It's not that crazy to hold 2 weeks of drinking water in your pantry/garage. 2) In many places around the world, the sink water isn't treated at all. Have some sterilizer solution available for washing dishes but don't risk drinking water that isn't treated 3) peanut butter has a really long shelf life, easy to store, is really cheap, and if you don't have nut allergies, not a bad source of nutrition. 4) figure out the electrical needs of critical devices - phones/tablets CPAPs, air machines, etc. GoalZero is a pretty user friendly brand of solar / battery combos. 5) get a 100W 12V adaptor for your car. If you need to recharge something that isn't USB, you can use your car as a simple generator. 6) be prepared to live without heat or A/C but if you do have power, make sure your filters are clean. Ask your hvac guy to recommend the max level of HEPA your HVAC can tolerate. 7) have squirt bottles with disinfectant in every room with a sink.. not just normal countertop cleaning stuff. Bleach IIRC needs 7 minutes to achieve a maximum log reduction of bacteria / viruses so keep in mind when you're cleaning, its not possible to kill everything, you're reducing the load of bad things over a period of time.
The recommendations I've seen have been for 1 gallon per person per day.
That's 14 gallons for just one person for 2 weeks. 56 gallons for a family of 4.
Not that crazy, I guess, but that's still a lot of water.
If that's the case I wonder how a vaccine would work. Weekly shots for everyone until it's gone? That would be hard to manage.
The CDC, amongst other US and foreign government agencies, recommend it. When the CDC speaks, I listen.
I sold because I think the risk of further, large declines is greater than the likelihood of a continuing increase.
(In 2008, as that crisis was developing, I also sold everything, and bought back once things returned to a new normal.)
I have the usual spectrum, ranging from more money in safer, long-term investments, to smaller amounts that are liquid. All I've done is to move things moderately toward the more-liquid end of the spectrum.