Dealing with COVID-19 Overload

[Chemsoldier]

I think the medical community confused keeping people calm with being prepared for a pandemic contingency.  We are probably guilty of it to some degree in the prepper community.  My store of PPE and hand sanitizer was very small.  We still lit off our disaster top off of family stockage early, including gloves and hand sanitizer, but not for masks and I am sure I was on the leading edge of the demand spike that caused hand sanitizer to sell out.  I wish I had had enough on hand that I could have avoided being any part of the abnormal demand.

The medical community could have worked to calm people while drastically increasing stockage of supplies and preparing personnel for the possibility of an outbreak.  I am sure some medical facilities did increase stockage, but I imagine they didnt increase it by near enough.*



*In a digression, one thing that could be done on the FDA level is trying to loosen up on shelf life for medical supplies.  They might want to push the margin on degradation due to time since production more than they have willing to thus far.  If institutions are not confronted with having to throw away large amounts of supplies as fast, that might be an inducement for medical facilities to keep a deeper supply closet. 

[mountainmoma]

Not sure why they turned their nose up at you. I should have paid closer attention and admittedly didn't. I've commented in another thread that our preps for a viral, air born contagion are non existent in my home. I can plug a gunshot would with my preps but I can't give you a mask. This has revealed a gaping hole in my preps. That being said for those that really took this seriously early on, I applaud you. I hope it never happens again but if it does I hope that I'm in the group that saw it coming and was ready.

I agree with Stwood and liken it to Jack's 'powdered butt' syndrome that parents have towards their kids. You'll never be taken seriously because they 'know more than you'.

They dont listen to their parents either.  I had very few masks, from the swine flue days, but enough to share with my local(ish) offspring, if we each just had 7, one day and rotate.  ( I also raided my get home bag in the trunk for the other 3  to get there ) And the youngest, a bit farther away, I pleaded with, to just go to the dollar store and spend maybe $6 to get hand sanatizer, just 2, 2 hydrogen peroxide, a fever reducer.... nope, wouldnt do it !

They won't wear them.  It would be very non-PC.   Even though we cannot donate them, open box and 10 years old. SO they want me to sew them a few cloth ones now.  OK.  Excuse me for having the smallest amount of preps in the back of the bathroom closet.  That you wont use.  The one has to go to certain meetings for job, which is why I gave the masks, but being seen in a mask would ruin credibility.