Planning ahead during the covid-19 lockdown

Little things are going to take longer; ordering glasses, getting prescriptions, etc. We're planning ahead; just ordered some re-supplies for April

I knew we needed to prepare, and we have. Still, I did not expect this.

Jeanette Isabelle

Looking back a year...What did we, individually, get right?
_ precautions
_ preparations
-Assumptions

Precautions:

• observed general hygene measures (as before)
• kept strangers at a little more distance
• ordered more goods online to avoid crowded super markets

Preparations:
The preparedness life style actually was enough to see me through. No special meassures were required. There was no need for panic buying.

• had a decent amount of supplies anyways
• overestimated my coffee consumption and temporarily had too much in stock
• vehicles are in good shape and kept refueled
• cultivated some extra tomatoes and chillies

Assumptions:

• fresh grocery will be available (got that one right)
• once people overstuffed their larders all items would return to the shelves (got that one right)
• 2021 will not see the end of the pandemic (result pending)
• Brexit might have an impact on the supply of bitter orange marmalade

How can one have too much coffee in stock?

Is that a rhetorical question? It’s a cold brew coffee time of year. I find dark roast beans go better with cold brew coffee than they do hot brewed. Whatever, some folks don’t like cold brew, but it’s super easy to make and uses no electricity other than for grinding the beans.

But regarding the subject at hand, I have enough bags of coffee beans in stock to last through Christmas. Just planning ahead.

I have a hand cranked coffee bean grinder.So no electricity needed even for that.

Coffee beans do not stay fresh indefintely. If the supply is likely to exceed two month worth of excessive consumption, it may be too much. I also realized that I still had an iron reserve on top of that.
Bear in mind that I could go to the store and buy some almost any day of the week or order up to 20 lbs online with next day delivery.

I have a hand grinder too which for daily use would be really time consuming. But during a long term power outage, that might be the highlight of my day

I don´t think it is time consuming, I have timed my coffee making = hand grinding and french press.

Started the clock when I put water kettle on. While the water heated up to 95 degrees celsius I weighed the beans on a scale and grinded. By then water is ready, pour over and let steep for 4 minutes. Whole process take max 10 minutes.

I got most "right," but TBH, I think this was mostly a self-imposed over-blown event.

I work in an ER - last year I was doing a fellowship. Our leadership quickly had mask rationing, though we didn't get hit by Covid locally until several months in. That means I had several used, but not exposed, N-95 masks at home. I was also able to run out and grab supplies before/after my shifts, allowing my wife and kids to do the home quarantine thing.

I saw the TP shortage coming about a week early, and managed to stock up. Hand sanitizer caught me short, but we're more of a soap & water family, so no big deal. Doug Ritter had a link on ETS at some point in April (May?) with a link to hand sanitizer, so I ordered a bunch for my family. We're still grinding through that.

Work from home wasn't an issue. My wife was already doing telehealth as a pilot for her job when Covid kicked off. However, she ended up getting fired and on unemployment, which paid relatively close to what she was making. At the same time, I was pulled out of fellowship and called up by the military, which ironically paid better. By summer we had new job offers in hand, so the fiscal impact was minimal.

School from home wasn't a big deal. As I said, wife was already home. Small town, we knew our son's teacher on a personal level, and my daughter is head of the class in a lot of topics (no joke, she use to go do classes with the first grade class while in kindergarten). So about 2 hours a morning, they buckled down and ground through the online shennanigans. School this academic year was back in full swing.

Masks were silly. We didn't have any at home. I was able to grab the last P-100 industrial mask at our local Ace Hardware, but never wore it at work. We were able to get cloth masks when they started to come around relatively easily, which I attribute more to industries cranking up to meet demand, more than any sort of prep on our part.

Assumptions - overall, I really called the "rolling Covid" that we saw - a city would get hit, hard, then about 4-6 weeks later it would die down. I had hoped that America Masking Up in April/May of 2020 would nip it in the bud, but when NYC bailed like startled roaches, they really screwed up any chance of containment. I didn't expect to still be talking about this a year later, but, c'est la vie.

Overall, this was a weird year, a departure from the norm, but never any real setback.

I know a lot of people who work in/with/on Asia. They pay attention to different news sources. Some of them already foresaw the coming of the virus way back in December, 2019. Because China had repeated outbreaks over the last few decades, these guys were prepared and stocked up before 2020. They alerted me to beat the rush.

In retrospect, pandemic prep just wasn't high on my list. Hurricanes, tornadoes, blackouts -- yes, but not pandemics. I didn't stockpile anything, but I had enough. I had a machine that made hypochlorous acid, so I didn't need to buy hand sanitizer. I had more masks than I could use.

At the end, I just spent the year working from home, having my groceries delivered, walking my dog a lot, and discovering different varieties of coffee through mail order. It was great, actually.

To be fair, I was really lucky to have a stable job that allowed me to work from home, and to be able to choose whether I wanted to be around people. Not everyone had the same choices.

Some benefits from this year's experience:

1. I learned to wash my hands thoroughly. Why not do it right if you're going to do it at all?

2. I'm going to continue wearing a mask even after the pandemic is over. (a) I no longer have to suppress my facial expression when people at work say or do stupid things, because the mask hides it for me. (b) I like having another fashion accessory. Yes, they actually sell sets of matching mask and pocket square! (c) Normally every year I'd catch a cold once or twice. I was fine this year. I enjoy not getting sick.

3. Lots of stuff got moved online. I got access to things that would normally require international travel.

For me, the big medical issue was surgery - hip replacement. Covid was just a complicating factor that delayed my procedure and subsequent therapy.

Being retired and mostly pursuing volunteer work and temporary gigs, finances were relatively stable. A lot of my volunteer work shifted to my home, where it will likely remain post covid.

I sympathize for those with school age kids, for whom the past year was far more complex.

I also had health issues and Covid added more to the pressure

Generally speaking, there were no shortage (other than face masks). I had face masks and sanitizer among my preps.

During lockdown phase, we were dead worried (especially the wife) about our married daughter who was pregnant at the time. We couldn't reach her or help her and didn't know how safe hospitals were during the pandemic.

Lockdown was lifted, she gave birth, and she came to stay with us for a month. During that period we had our own concerns. One daughter just had childbirth, and has a hyperactive son who doesn't sit for a second (going all around the house all the time). And OTOH, we have a daughter who is an emergency doctor dealing with Covid patients. Separating the two daughters gave me strange feelings. And trying to convince the kid not to go into his aunt's room was a bit hard.

All in all. It wasn't hard. I am retired and didn't have to go to work. Also, I am an introvert and LOVE staying at home. One son has just graduated and neither had to go to college nor was hired yet. Other son is engineer and his company suspended some of their projects, so he stayed with us. The married daughter was our biggest concern at the time.

Some kitchen gadgets broke down during lockdown, but we have plan B, C, and D. In our house, we have an internal kitchen which works on electric, and outside kitchen which works on propane cylinders, (and if real genuine SHTF, we have a fireplace and bags of coal in the backyard). So, it wasn't a big deal. And the minute that lockdown eased, I jumped to buy duplicate kitchen heaters, installed one and stored the other, just in case.