This is the great cataclysm that the preppers have all been preparing for. Well, a lighter version, actually, but the world seems to have ground to a halt nonetheless, and those people who were preppers are probably not worried in the least at the moment. The sane ones, anyway. But then again, I would have told you that you were insane a month ago, if you told me that the world would be in the state it’s in now in just four weeks. It’s Covid-19, the Coronavirus. The world has ground to a halt out of necessity, to save lives, to stop the rapid spread of the virus, and prevent our collective medical systems becoming so overwhelmed by patients that is collapses.
In many ways, the medical system already has collapsed, some. There is nowhere near enough PPE’s, or Personal Protective Equipment, to keep the healthcare workers safe from catching the virus. There are not near enough ventilators to keep patients breathing, thus keeping the people with the more severe cases alive. People have died almost instantly after the first symptoms have shown up, such as a mother who died within four days in the UK. In addition to the general public, healthcare workers are constantly exposed to the virus, and many have caught it, then fallen victim to it themselves, such as a world renown brain surgeon in the US, and a leading HIV doctor in South Africa. Think about that a second. HIV is itself an infectious disease. And finally, coming back to the general public, several families have been decimated by the virus, wiping out three or more members within days of each other.
The dead include an infant, children in their early teens, twenty-something’s and on, with the numbers going up as people get older.
Let me finally say that this is one of the most devastating events of a generation. I don’t even want to try to compare it to other events though, as doing so seems to trivialize the dead, who are more than just statistics and numbers. They are people, in every event.
Our family requires a top-up shop every two weeks. Two weeks is how long a person can have Covid-19 and remain asymptomatic. In other words, I could go out to get our shopping, pick it up too, and bring it home, only to find out I did around the time I need to go out to get the next shop. Two weeks also means that mapping the virus based on where cases have been discovered means that the virus is already ahead of the plot points.
When the plot points were still far away, I heard several people who said that society was overreacting. “It’s just like the flu,” they said. “Only three percent of the people who get it will die, almost as low as the flu,” they said. “People should just go ahead and get it, then they will be immune,” they said.
Coronavirus is roughly twice as fatal as the flu. It is far more contagious, and it tends to hospitalize 20% of those who get it. Some people will develop almost no symptoms at all, and then act the part of Typhoid Mary, spreading it afield, without even realizing they are. Remember, of every ten people that person comes into contact with, two will end up in the hospital, and nearly all will spread it further. Out of every hundred people that person comes into contact with, three will die, and most will also spread it further afield. In other words, I would never roll the dice with the advice of people who do not understand infectious diseases. Go home. Stay home. Wash your hands. Don’t touch your face. Cover your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze, and do so in the crook of your arm and not onto your hand. Wash your hands again.
A vaccine for this pandemic will not be available for a little more than a year now, if things go well in development. I think it is fair to say that till it is released, and everyone gets it, which will be some months after, even with a herculean effort, we can count on this virus to continue to spread. Right now, China has flattened the curve of it spreading. It has not stopped it. They are not out of the woods yet. We will not be for some time to come, either.
People are not necessarily hoarding. I read today a very good argument that the reason our grocery stores are running bare on many essential products is not solely because of selfish jerks buying up everything they can. Think about that. It doesn’t even make sense. We have been told for years that the average American does not have enough money to hand to deal with a $400 emergency. So where did all the toilet paper go? Instead of going to the workplace, or to the office, it went home. People knew they would be at home, so they bought enough toilet paper for them and their families to remain home to do their business.
On the supply side, the markets for many of the essentials we are out of now has been historically very stable and very predictable, and the suppliers have been running at maximum efficiency, which means they produce just enough, and no more. So with TP, if a city required 100,000 rolls per week, and suddenly buys 300,000 rolls and still wants more as it runs out, there will not be the capacity of a producer to satisfy that demand. They cannot reroute the supplies from the commercial products because as we all know, it is a different product, cheaper, larger, and priced and distributed differently. If your town is out of toilet paper now, it probably will be for some time to come.
I worry about the seed suppliers. They are backlogged severely. Somehow the pandemic seemed to threaten the food supply (it hasn’t), so people seemed to decide it was time to garden. I have not heard or read any arguments yet as to why this happened. I can only tell you that we have put in three orders for seeds and dug out old packets as well. We did so for the same reason that panic buying begets panic buying. We put in an order three weeks ago that has not yet been fulfilled. Then we put in two more and one of them is sat on the dock at the warehouse, and has been for a week now. It is not a priority package for shipping.
I worry about the seed suppliers not getting us our seeds. I worry about them because I know that not every seed that gets put into the ground produces food. So I worry that hundreds of thousands of people who have been looking at Pintrest suddenly decided that now is the time to start that container garden in the window and try to make food. But for many, that will mean lack of skill and good gardening habits will send many millions of seeds into the soil without a final product. That feels unfair, but in truth, if they beat me to the order button and I am stood in line, then that is fair, even if more than half of the seeds sold before my packets were picked go to waste.
In the end, we do have some old seeds that we can try out. They have not been stored properly, but they are seeds of hope. And if the seeds we ordered do all come, then hopefully we can produce far more than we need with them, and share our produce with those of our kids no longer living with us.
We are now three weeks from the day I walked into Sam’s Club and saw the staff lowering all of the last of the toilet paper they had in stock down to the middle of an aisle, and it getting picked over by so many people. I knew instinctively that I should have bought three packets of it then. I did not. We needed one. I bought one. I defied the urge to buy more, so to that end, we are a little insecure because we don’t yet know where our next pack is going to come from, and until it starts to remain in stock somewhere, it is an essential item that is insecure.
Three weeks ago, when I saw that pallet of paper lowering down, I had just before that seen the very last moment of what I till then considered normal reality. In the week that followed, society began to rapidly grind to a halt. The next week, 3.3 million Americans filed unemployment claims. Last week, 6.6 million more joined them. Nations have been brought to a standstill. Governments have been brought to their knees. Humanity has been largely united in the effort to stop this virus from spreading. There’s what, 7.8 billion people on the earth right now? That would mean that out of them, the 20% that would want hospitalization would reach some 1.56 billion, and the death toll would reach 234,000,000. That will touch everybody on earth.
Right now we are overdue for a unified governmental response. For the first two weeks, our President here in the United States has primarily been concerned about the economy, brushing off the virus as something at first that would just go away on its own, then not a big deal. As he is a man heavily invested in the Stock Market, and has probably lost billions already, I can easily assume his reasons for his initial response were hope, bolstered by a desire to stop the panic long enough for him to get out of the market, or at least try to prevent its freefall. Whatever the case, I really don’t care. In ways he is somewhat right when he says he is a wartime President, and I expect him to be reelected. If he is, he will have the time to recoup the losses and do the right thing. If he is not, then he will be relegated to a tragic chapter in American History. Speculation on my part. Again, I really don’t care about his personal losses.
What I do care about is his responses. So far, this seems to be one of the few times in his Presidency that he has been too busy to golf. Seeing him every day on a podium that he has ignored for years does not impress me. Seeing him making excuses for himself and his past statements does not thrill me. Seeing him defending himself from what he calls nasty questions pointed at his demonstrable incompetence does not even amuse me.I am not at all impressed with the $2.2TRILLION stimulus package. That is about the stupidest thing I think I have ever seen the American Government do! Checks for every American? Does every American need a check? Why is the money not being used to meet the needs of those who have lost their jobs?
The Stimulus check that a single American receives will be just about equal to a month’s pay for one full time minimum wage earner. Most minimum wage earners are supplemented with government assistance to get by. They have to have a monetary top up from the government to pay rent and buy food. In short, they will need far more than a single check for $1,200. I think the checks should only go to those who have lost their jobs, or otherwise been negatively and demonstrably affected by the economic downturn caused by the virus. All of these people are not going to be magically back at work in a month, two, or three. This will likely result in much longer unemployment as the virus is brought under control, and as the economy get not only started again, but adapts to a new reality after.
The Stimulus Bill is not the President’s fault alone. Him saying he plans to manage the distribution of it to corporations is likely unconstitutional as we have no way to prove he is not violating the emoluments clause. Congressional oversight is needed in this case, and they should assert it. What is the fault of the President is the poor, if not completely lacking leadership in this case. People are scared, but you don’t throw a bone out at all of them. You feed the ones that need it, and you assure they have something to hold them over till they reach a point when they can get control over their own lives again.
Now, if you’ve got this far reader, you are thinking to yourself or even out loud, “Are you going to not cash your check then?” Well, my friend, let me first point out that this mess is not yet over. I cannot answer what I will do with it apart from hope that my family doesn’t need it. It is not security for us if we do need it. It could pay our bills for maybe a month, and buy us a week’s worth of groceries. How is that security? “Look! A family that starved to death!” “Yeah, but their bills are caught up!”
There is much to be determined still, where our family is concerned. But we are not looking to the leadership of government at this point, as there is little to none. Hell, we locked down about two weeks before our state did. As far as I am concerned, that was the right time to do it, and the last chance to even come close to assuring our safety with a lockdown. The state fiddled about two more weeks!
So where does the future lie? It is so unsure, and so hard to predict or plan for.
I have learned something about the future from my garden. In the spring I sow seeds. I put those seeds in the ground and I put water on those seeds. I do that, completely aware that life changes. I know that by the time fall comes around, we may have decided to pack up and move away. I may have lost a member or members of my family. I may not be alive to eat from the garden which I have planted. With all of these possibilities, none of them stop me planting the seeds. I never reduce the sowing because of the negative possibilities . In fact, each year I try to grow more than the last, to increase my harvest. Even if nobody is around to eat the bounty, then the birds will have it. But I always plant the first seed, and follow it up with as many more as I can fit.
Whatever the future, the seeds still need sowing. The garden still needs working. The water still needs applying. Every seed is planted so that no matter who is there to harvest the crop, someone will be the benefactor. An empty garden come autumn is no favor to anyone.
For the immediate future, I will plan on making Social Distancing the theme for the next eighteen months to two years. I think by that time, barring any other unforeseen events, things will achieve a new normal soon after that period. I am a little skeptical because in the last three weeks we have felt two earthquakes and seen a pandemic grind the world to a halt. During the period ahead, we will plan on adapting however needed to adjust to the current reality, and to prepare for a future that is different to the world we knew three weeks ago. Maybe that means we will buy a bidet or two. Maybe that means we will grow closer to 80% of our own food. Maybe it means we will reduce our car use to once a month. I don’t know what it means. I just know that so long as I am alive, there are seeds in my hand, and with them, promise.
One day at a time.