“Lessons from Lockdown” is an op-ed series where contributors write about their personal experiences with self-isolation for COVID-19. We’re committed to publishing a variety of voices and perspectives in this series, and we generally leave contributors’ thoughts and ideas as-is even in places where we as a site might have a different take. For The Prepared’s official site tips and recommendations on all things prepping, informed by contributions from relevant subject matter experts, see our guides and gear reviews.
I’m done, as of right now, with the posts in my social media feed telling me that anybody who’s acting to make themselves more resilient in this epidemic is hysterical, selfish, anti-social, and succumbing to irrational panic.
I live in Seattle, which has been dealing with this for seven weeks now. I’m 10 miles from the first US case, and three miles as the crow flies from the Kirkland senior home where the first deaths occurred. When it comes to dealing with this epidemic, we are probably few weeks ahead of you, give or take, depending on where you are in the US.
Most of these folks telling us all not to “overreact” are on the East Coast, where the first cases just turned up last week. Back east, they tend to assume that every new thing originates there, and that they’re naturally always the very first ones to know about it. But this one didn’t start on their coast; and they seem to be a bit bewildered that they’re actually a bit behind the curve on this one.
Being new to COVID-19, the East Coasters haven’t yet been forced to understand and reckon with this thing the way we have (although reality is pushing them there, fast), and they don’t yet understand that they’re just arriving to an emergent future we’ve been living in for a while now. (The eastern-splaining is getting thick. Thanks, but I’ve known about hand-washing and the indispensable JHU dashboard for weeks. No, the Mayo Clinic does not know more about this than the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center does. At this point, your friends in the PNW know some things. Welcome to our nightmare. There’s plenty of room for everyone.)
I’m also a masters-level foresight professional, trained to analyze and navigate broad-scale changes just like this one. Panic is not in my nature, but the willingness to confront grim realities with a clear eye and a certain dispassion runs deep in my character. I collect expert research, get the best data I can, stay mindful of its limitations (and in this situation, it’s absurdly limited), assess risk, map out the systems dynamics, ponder second- and third-order consequences, create a variety of scenarios, and make the best decisions I can based on the likely outcomes I’ve found.
Right now, the best information we have says to take this damned seriously — and here in Seattle, we are. Three of the country’s largest companies — Microsoft, Amazon, and Boeing, all headquartered here — have sent their hundreds of thousands of employees to work from home for the rest of March. (Boeing told its own employees to stay off airliners — a piece of advice that should give us all pause.)
The University of Washington, just down the street from me, was the very first college in the nation to go online for the rest of this quarter — 46,000 students studying exclusively from home. Thirty-six schools in the northern part of town are closed.
ComicCon has been cancelled.
Early last week, our county health department told everyone over 60 or who was otherwise compromised to go home and stay there — guidance that the CDC only echoed three days later. We are so far ahead of this here that one of our local research centers put the world’s first COVID vaccine into clinical trials on Friday. And the Gates Foundation announced that same day that will will have a widely-available home test for COVID available for online ordering within the next two weeks. In Seattle, we are ON THIS.
But even so, our governor, Jay Inslee, went on Face The Nation on March 8 and informed us that these voluntary steps aren’t enough. We’re in for some mandatory shutdowns.
Please note that this is has nothing to do with “panic.” Social distancing and locking down cities is exactly what the WHO recommends — the best way anyone knows of to stop a runaway virus. Planning for a few weeks at home isn’t an “overreaction;” it is preparing to do your duty as a citizen of this planet, and to make a personal sacrifice that will, in the end, prevent countless deaths. And this is not being “media-driven;” we are acting on the best advice the world’s top epidemiologists can give us.
Yes, people in Seattle are stocking up. Not crazy panic hoarding, which nobody I know is doing — just getting a few weeks or a month ahead on both necessities and comforts, so that if the commercial and medical systems that we depend on get overloaded, we can do right by ourselves and our community by not becoming an extra strain on them. In uncertain times, when just-in-time business models seem likely to fray, this is what resilience and personal responsibility look like. We’re battening down the hatches against a worsening storm — and instead of deriding us, you should be doing the same.
So, please stop sending around those fatuous articles telling everyone that they’re being silly and succumbing to panic if they actually take any of this seriously enough to prepare. Getting past this thing is going to require real sacrifices from all of us — and in some parts of the country, people are already stepping up and starting to make those sacrifices.
If you can’t help us do that, then at the very least, shut your mouth and get the hell out of our way.
Sara Robinson is one of the few trained social futurists in North America. Her skill set includes trend analysis, scenario development, futures research, social change theories, systems thinking, and strategic planning. She holds an MS in Futures Studies from the University of Houston and a BA in Journalism from the USC Annenberg School of Communication, and has worked as a columnist or editor for several national magazines.
You are reporting the comment """ by on