How to Be a Smart Coronavirus Prepper
Subtitle: Instead of freaking ourselves out, we need to plan for a difficult future every day.

Good article. i am glad they removed the advice to buy N95 masks. Those are best saved for infected people and medical personnel treating them.

i live now in fire and earthquake country. Given enough time, both are inevitable. So one makes preparations and develops coping strategies. Then get on with life.

My parents met and married during the Great Depression. There is a great family story about a roadkill chicken that provided an exquisite dinner. Growing up post WWII, I recall that we always had a fully stocked pantry with easily two weeks of how, maybe more if we skrimped.

Working for the National Park Service, I lived in some fairly remote places (Wupatki Nat'l mon, Gila Cliff Dwellings nat'l Mon). When you got to town, you loaded up. Who knew when you would be back?

Even living in Socal, working on the Channel Islands, I always packed extra chow and sometimes redundant gear because of weather and various events like 9/11.

Keeping a decent stockpile of necessities just seems like good common sense. Just make sure you have enough dark chocolate, one of life's neessities!

For us Dark Chocolate starts at 72% cocoa — I like hazelnuts/almonds, my better half prefers hers straight, but 72% is a minimum, less than that isn’t really dark.

There’s enough here to last for a couple weeks quarantine. Yeah, maybe I better pick up some more.

nothing going on here in minneapolis.i go to the mall of america to walk around when it's to cold to walk to the park and no one is using a mask.the hand cleaning gel pumps that have been there for
years are not being used.the big box grocery stores are fully stocked and I have not seen what might be called panic buying,full carts of tp and canned goods.we don't have storms,earth quakes or wild fires so there is no history of having to really prepare for any major event that would cause you to flee or stay at home for weeks.schools and such are open and no events that I know of have been called off.minneapolis is a sort of out of the way place with no other citys close by and no ports of call.the governor did suggest that stocking up might be a good idea but so far it looks like people don't see a need to do that.the state has a very good
health care system and that will go a long way to stave off any spread of this.

Yesterday in Costco, NO toilet paper, no paper towels, Kleenex was down to a half dozen packages, no hand sanitizer, no surface sanitizer wipes, no rubbing alcohol and no liquid surface sanitizer.

Not really directly Corona-related, but now that my wife and I retired to a very small rural area AND it is winter, we really don't go to stores and shops much. Mostly grocery shopping and picking up sandwiches (so much better than Subway) and pizza (awesome!) from the local Shell station.

We assumed that if we washed hands very well as soon as we got home that we could avoid colds, flu, and other nasties.

Well, no such luck. Last week my wife came down with a cold, and this week I've started having symptoms of a cold, though to a lesser extent than my wife.

I do wonder if it would have helped to routinely disinfect commonly touched items such as car door handles, steering wheels, door knobs, sink faucets, ... It seems that would be easiest done with Lysol spray and paper towels or similar wipes - if they could be purchased. That was how we disinfected the work area when I took a microbiology class. I think a bleach solution is effective, but too damaging to many surfaces. I wonder if vodka if effective as a surface sanitizer. No shortage of alcoholic beverages in Wisconsin!

Finally, I'll admit that it is really hard for me not to touch my eyes, nose, and mouth. It just is. Maybe I need counseling. Ha!

No signs of panic here in Bozeman. The stores are still well stocked with everything. Well, I'm not sure about hand sanitizer as I rarely use the stuff. A year or two ago I bought a 3 pack of the tiny bottles which I take camping for cleanup when there's not a large supply of water and never opened any of them. But I do note that there's plenty of bleach on store shelves.

No hand sanitizer, not even rubbing alcohol. BUT the local liquor store did have 94.5% alcohol "Everclear" to make your own sanitizer. They were not charging more than normal, still, a bit expensive, but then it is a double, or even triple tasker (sanitizer, stove fuel, libation).

Checked the local big box grocery - only low on tp, everything else fully stocked