All of that rain in Illinois – is that a portent for floods lower down the Mississippi river?

We’re out in the sticks and our internet went out for two hours, the way it does, leaving me wishing I had downloaded that book I’ve been meaning to read.  But it had me worrying, if the Ukraine thing blows up, a cyberwar the likes of which we have not yet seen is likely to break out, and I don’t mean just Russia and Ukraine. While the U.S. has not specifically threatened cyber action against Russia (that we know of) it is possible that U.S. measures will ultimately include this. Which leaves the U.S. open to cyber-retaliation.  I do so much financial business over the internet that I wonder about the consequences of a digital shutdown for a lengthy period of time.  Not sure if cash in the house is going to take care of my credit card and utility bills. To say nothing of Health Insurance premiums. Any advice about functioning as a fully embedded citizen under an extended (months) internet shutdown?

1) make good friends with your neighbors 2) reuse stuff 3) learn to tolerate some hunger 4) raise some of your own food. 5) explore loss of electricity, natural gas, piped water, and fuel for vehicles.  These are all things that many of our parents and grandparents lived through in the 1930’s.  They could do it, so can we. 

I agree. At our local station people went nuts and were topping off their pickup trucks and several gas cans apiece.  However, a local BP station by the expressway was running a ten-gallon limit on all sales, implemented at the pump. This made the most sense of anybody, and wish that all stations had the software to do limits like this at the pump itself, instead of having to go inside (during a pandemic) to purchase a set limit.

I live in a rural area in Georgia, the ten gas stations in a five-mile radius are out of every kind of gas except diesel. The one station near an expressway that had gas was using pump limits of 10 gallons.  Not a big deal for me, I’m retired and don’t have to go anywhere,  but feel for folks who routinely go through a tank of gas every two days, commuting to jobs, and priced out of low- or no-gas driving solutions.  This is much worse than the hurricane refinery outages and the Colonial pipe leak in Alabama a few years ago. People wondering on social media whether to sit on the gas they have or go roaming (using up the gas) to look for a fillup. 

I am thinking of my vaccination as an important backup.  I think it remains important to be very careful about entering buildings or other enclosed spaces, where the air is confined and shared. Maybe you can relax a bit more about being outside, or with friends who have also been vaccinated.  Along with others reporting this I, too, have experienced discomfort when around people, have lost my social ease, and am exhausted after an experience involving a public space.  Wonder if there is a word for that. 

I remember reading a tale by one fellow whose job was to kill several thousand chickens in a contaminated chickenhouse.  After the first 20 he decided the traditional kill methods took too much time. On the fly he developed a method whereby he held the chicken comfortably nestled in one arm, while with the other he place index and middle finger kind of under the chicken’s jawline and gave a swift tug. This separated the spinal cord instantly and the chicken died without fuss.

I had to retrain myself last year to let packages sit.  Just because my Amazon arrived, doesn’t mean I have to open it right then.  So I’ve been letting the mail and packages sit for 24 hrs before opening them. I don’t disinfect, just let the viruses, if there are any, die on the vine.  Groceries pretty much the same, except for perishables, which got wiped down or dishsoap-bathed briefly before refrigerating.  But since our vaccinations, have dropped the above behaviors re: mail and packages.  If a supervariant comes along, will probably reinstitute all. 

Thanks for the FEMA tip – we lost an older family member in December.

Not sure, but don’t think they have an ‘index case’ yet for the coronavirus in Wuhan.  Until they do, it’s just as easy to speculate that lab workers had gone shopping for grandma at that exotic animal market we’ve been hearing about. That being said, ‘there are old investigators and bold investigators but there are no old, bold investigators.’

Thing is, when you look at a goat you aren’t looking at ‘some dumb animal’.  Consider that each goat has a PhD (which they do).  This means that they pretty much do things their way, without consideration to guidance, tasking, channeling, or instruction. They need to browse – move and eat a little bit, move and eat a little bit, etc., so they will want to wander off from your planned clearing area.  Coyotes think goats are tasty, too, so you will need a pen for nighttime that is coyote-proof.  If I ever wanted them to follow me somewhere, I would whip up loud vocal enthusiasm for the venture and they would agree to come along. 

I do believe that for every disaster, there is a warning. It develops that the girlfriend’s call to the police in 2019 was it. I also think that disasters bring with them a layer of confusion. It is one thing to lay out the proper dos and don’ts in the event, but quite another to actually do those things that later turn out to be the right things to have done. I think you are right about listening to your inner ziggy. That has saved many a soul. 

I don’t think it’s ever too late to ramp up and get ahead of the curve. Priority needs to be given to self-testing schemes that have a low false-negative profile, something folks can pick up in the local store or pharmacy and use at home. Without that, all testing becomes either passively (long lines) or actively (mandating tests to be a clinical decision) rationed. That’s been a huge problem all along. A country this big, can’t get by on a highly managed or controlled testing strategy. Self-service is the way to go. 

In rural Georgia, many clinicians are still rationing tests.  We still haven’t got to the point where anyone within ten feet of a medical facility has a test ordered. Thus there are many missed opportunities to test and the true scope of infection in Georgia is still unknown. In the grocery, there have been election-week shortages and chicken breast, for instance, has become hard to get. Keep up the good work!

Stephanie, if there are no comments it’s because we’re all a bit stunned. 

Here in Georgia we are in a trough.  I would blame it on mismanaged stats, except my son works at the major charity hospital in Atlanta and they show a trough on internal stats, as well.  Cooler weather in Georgia means we are spending more time outside, so that may account for our trough.  Our peak was in July, when hideous temps drove everyone inside. 

Yes, Grocery wiping exhaustion!  But you have to make your own rules and stick to them.  Here’s a virus discovery on frozen packaging in China: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/19/live-coronavirus-found-on-frozen-food-packaging-in-china

More on this in the Guardian, report on a Virology journal paper: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/12/virus-that-causes-covid-19-can-survive-up-to-28-days-on-surfaces-scientists-find

I’ve been religiously wiping down the handle at the gas station, as well as most things coming in from ‘out there’, that I have to touch right away, e.g. things destined for the refrigerator. Everything else gets aged on the back porch for at least a day before it comes in. I do this despite official assurances that we are not to worry about surfaces, because I’m a hard case, feel that in the pandemic you have to make your own rules and follow them, and because 4 years in the Navy taught me that the time to worry, is when people are telling you not to worry.  So, thank you for that little item about trash can handles in New Zealand.  It’s not enough to keep my spouse from rolling her eyes when I wipe down the milk carton, but maybe there’s more research about this?

Informal limiting by big-chain groceries and others is already in place.  No more than 2 packages of chicken allowed, etc..  There are workarounds and if you are trying to build up a supply you can still do that with multiple trips to the store.  But I guess real rationing, i.e. with coupons, would prevent that.  I suppose that mechanized agriculture is still functioning well, but food production that depends on hands-on harvesting by migrant workers?  I’m guessing that has been disrupted this year, with results that may not show up until later. Distribution is imperfect at the moment. In Georgia, lettuce is old when it hits the shelves.