Great idea for using beans! You’ll find recipes all over the Internet for black bean brownies, too. And the use of beans in desserts is not so uncommon in Asian cuisine — take red bean paste, for instance, which can be found as a filling or topping in many desserts.

I would say that it sounds like you’re doing it the right way already by keeping in touch with neighbors and family. Working together, all of you are better able to keep an eye out for danger and can rely on one another for help. As someone who is himself physically disabled, I am constantly aware that others may secretly perceive me to be burdensome, so I strive to make myself as useful and helpful as possible so that others will be convinced that I am “worth” keeping around. Perhaps that line of thinking sounds a little bit unsavory — after all, shouldn’t we be compassionate to others just on general principle? — but I suspect that some people, less humane and more mercenary, might still manage to see the value in reciprocating aid with someone who is skilled or knowledgeable, especially in a field that not many others have access to. Thus, the pandemic might be a good time to pick up some new skills or brush up on old ones. Are you good at repairing home electronics? Or do you enjoy cooking? Is there something you know a good deal about that others don’t? There’s always something to do that people will find handy. Maybe there’s no need for me to assume the worst of other people in such a way, but I believe it’s better to be as prepared as possible. I can’t go it alone.

According to the county-by-county risk map, a week and a half ago, my county in Mississippi was at a risk level of 86% for an event size of 100 — meaning that if I attended an event with 100 people in it, I had an 86% chance of encountering someone affected with COVID-19. Today? Today my county has a risk level of 82% … for an event size of 50. The risk has gone up drastically. What’s it going to take for people to be serious about COVID-19? Will literally everyone have to have at least one family member who has died from it?

A couple years ago, I bought a LifeStraw Family water filter because I live in a hurricane-prone area — I lived through Hurricane Katrina — and was worried about access to clean drinking water. Since that time, I haven’t had cause to use the filter, so it’s been sitting in its bag, collecting dust, and I periodically felt a bit sheepish about having bought it, wondering if it was really necessary. I don’t wonder so much about that nowadays.

What a disaster. What will it take for my country to take this virus seriously? Does literally everyone have to know someone who died from COVID-19 in order to reach that point?

“The recipe calls for sugar, but we don’t put sugar in our cornbread.” As is correct. The only thing I’d change about your recipe is using buttermilk instead of regular milk. I’ve seen powdered buttermilk on the store shelf, and I’ve been tempted to try it out. Maybe I’ll give it a shot and keep you updated.

“Listen, kid. We’re all in this together.”

This post has a wealth of good advice. I particularly appreciate this line: “For instance, if I have an asset or a liability (e.g. a lease or other commitment) I’d like to part with before things get bad, now’s the time to hand that off to someone who’s more optimistic than I am.” It’s like my own personal wake-up call to do some things I’d been putting off before the pandemic. Thank you!

lemur is correct. The coronavirus has an outer shell made up of lipids (i.e., fats). Using warm/hot water and ordinary dish soap will destroy the virus.

Animal-to-human transmission is what I’ve feared the whole time — that once this variant gets out into the cat/mustelid population, they and humans just keep swapping variants back and forth for the foreseeable future. Given a greatly increased population in which to spread, the coronavirus will keep mutating, and we’ll never be able to develop a vaccine for it. I expect hysteria over pets to develop soon, including mass culling and maybe even government recommendations (or mandates) that people cull their pets. It’s going to be a nightmare. Sorry to be such a downer, and maybe none of this will come to pass, but these are the kind of things I fret about, even though I personally can’t do anything about them. But this is why it’s so important to isolate and contain diseases from the very beginning.

The disruption to the meat supply chain is beginning to show up here in Mississippi. At Walmart today, ground beef was $15 a pound.

Survival is about managing risk. In order to do that, we need accurate assessments. Information like the kind Dr. Bromage provides helps us do that better.

That article from Dr. Erin Bromage is pretty informative; he stresses that one factor of infection risk is the time in which you are exposed. Similarly, an earlier article from The Prepared on grocery shopping advised not to linger in the grocery store: be prepared beforehand with a list (and substitutions), go directly to what you need, and get out as quickly as possible. I personally have been thinking about exposure to the coronavirus as being roughly analogous to radioactive fallout. With radioactive fallout, you’d want to put as much distance between yourself and it as possible, to avoid breathing it in, to undress and shower if you’ve been exposed, and, if you absolutely must go out in it, to limit the amount of time you spend exposed to it.

The state that I live in, Mississippi, today experienced its highest number of new reported cases since the pandemic began — 397 new cases in one day. Our governor’s “stay at home” order expired on Monday of this week, so I’m worried that the number of cases has yet to see its peak. I also saw an article in the Clarion-Ledger about chicken plants in our state closing because too many workers have contracted COVID-19. Pandemics are exactly the kind of large-scale event that good governance could be ready and able to tackle — but that ours, at both the state and federal level, is woefully unprepared for.

Listen, buddy. The President of the United States literally suggested that people could inject themselves with disinfectants in order to cure COVID-19. Instead of “imprecise” or “inartful”, here are some better ways to describe what the president said: “lie” “harmful misinformation” “rambling sh*tshow” “shocking display of irresponsibility that may cost lives” “deeply worrying display of insanity”

Unfortunately, survival itself has become politicized.

The push to reopen is not coming from the media.

That Washington Post link about how the novel coronavirus attacks different systems, including even the nervous system, is highly disconcerting. What exactly is this virus?

I’ve got a friend in Sweden who thinks he has COVID-19, but he can’t get tested right now. He says he’s worried (and completely baffled) as to why his country isn’t doing anything.

Don’t forget that flour and flour products have weevil eggs in them. Freezing those products for a couple days will help make them safer for long-term storage. https://www.ehow.com/how_10007175_rid-dry-pasta-weevils.html