The cash should go for sardines and ammo 
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You do realize you are going to create a run on those, right? LOL!
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I sure hope so - A 1 time run on the product is worthwhile to create better hygiene, lower long term cost and helpful to the planet by reducing use of paper. 
I see that we agree , 100%, about something. 
In any case the media even dramatizes the weather by putting the max possible rain/snow fall in the headline.
So I don’t think the media is really helping much with something that could possibly be very disruptive.
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this!
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If things get REALLY desperate, remember most kitchen sinks have sprayers on a flexible hose. 
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Or get one for your shower. It would cost far less and take up far less storage space than all that paper. 
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Its drawing near…
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When I went to the grocery store tonight, it really made me sad. I live in PA, where there are a total of 11 cases. 8 in one county, 30 miles away, apparently tied to a pediatrician at one facility, and 1 each in 3 other counties. Yet, not only were the shelves empty of all hand sanitizers and liquid soaps, but also of sugar and flour.
I’m not really worried about getting sick as my outside contacts are primarily said grocery stores and physical therapy at the moment. I’m “only” 56, but do have some history with likely immune-system related illnesses (CFS & ulcerative colitis) and colorectal cancer. But I’ve got some surgery in 2 weeks that I’d like to be healthy enough for. So I’d at least like to be able to buy a single container of hand sanitizer for when I do leave the house.
The cases here are 1200 as of today. And that is only what we know about due to lack of testing. Italy shut down schools at 3000 and the whole country is shut down now. They are already overwhelmed with the number of severe cases. Denmark is also now shut down. It is wrong to compare this to the flu etc.- the terrible and criminal multi faceted mis management here is going to make controlling this very hard. It will get worse unfortunately. You can make your own sanitizer wipes with rubbing alcohol and I recommend using benzelkonium chloride which works for 7 hand washes. Maybe get a bidet if you can’t get tp. I always buy it in bulk. I am thinking about a bidet to cut down on tp use. That is the least of my worries currently as my collgee has yet to shut down in person classes, although we are discussing it.
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From the get go I haven’t fully understood the pandemonium over this virus. It’s not good but we are faced with the flu every year and thousands die from it every year. We are still in the “flu season” so we should already be practicing good hand washing techniques, and isolating ourselves if we are that sick; etc and so on.
Today though I read something that finally makes me understand, to some extent, the “urgency” of this virus. One of the victims of the coronavirus was totally fine until the early morning hours of the 3rd when her temperature went up to 104. By 2 am Wednesday morning (not even a full 24 hours later), she was gone. Another one fell ill out of the blue on Monday the 2nd and she was gone by the 4th. That is disconcerting, people going from “just fine” to gone within such a short amount of time.
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Apparently one of the things with this virus is that its second phase triggers immune hyper-reactivity, and its the immune system overreaction that does a lot of the damage to lungs and other organs (sound familiar?). So people with demonstrably overreacting immune systems—T1s f’rinstance—are at higher risk of serious problems. It ain’t just a bad cold.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/02/here-is-what-coronavirus-does-to-the-body/?fbclid=IwAR3v4RWhT5tUtVmm9iBiry4qgafak4ObCkNtCnckeqFCLHb1hvfjqeswYvk
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This is what scares me. I read a terrifying thread on Twitter (that I won’t link to, because I don’t know for sure if it’s credible) about what Italy’s overwhelmed healthcare system is dealing with right now. The scariest part was when I read that people over age 65 or those who are younger than 65 but have underlying conditions were not being treated as aggressively as young, totally healthy people, because they simply didn’t have enough staff and equipment to go around.
Wuhan went from totally fine to being totally overwhelmed and locked down in a matter of weeks. The same happened with Italy. So now I’m looking at North America going, “Are we going to be in that position in two weeks?” There is no way of telling right now, but you can’t deny that it’s played out in two other countries and the possibility definitely exists.
This virus has a death rate that’s at least ten to twenty times higher than the seasonal flu, and possibly much higher than that even, especially if healthcare systems get totally overwhelmed. Scary times, for sure.
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It all depends on how rapidly and effectively widespread social isolation of both infected and healthy people is enforced. Wuhan did an amazing job of getting it under control again, but it required the strength of their police state to do so. In western countries with our ideas of personal freedoms and rights, I just can’t see it being possible to get the Coronavirus genie back in the bottle like that. I know in Australia the state of NSW is planning based on a 20% infection rate, which leads to an assumption of deaths in the range of 15000-75000 of their population 7.5M. The faster it hits, the higher the death rate will be as bed block on ventilator beds is the limiting factor.
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It’s not urgent because people die quickly if they get it. It’s urgent because once the rate of infection gets above a certain level it becomes impossible to stop nearly everyone getting it. If containment fails, every one of us is likely to know someone it kills within the next year. I’m 47 in a couple of weeks, and nobody I know has ever died from the flu.
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I’ve read about this, too, and it is frightening. An overwhelmed health care system forces medical staff to make decisions none of them want to make. I sympathize with them as well as the patients who don’t get the medical help they need.
Some countries have handled this better than others. South Korea and Singapore, for instance, have been able to “flatten the curve” and keep the number of cases from overwhelming their health care systems. I can understand why this happened in China due to them being first. (They could have responded sooner but they did change their course.)
Countries that followed had the benefit of observing prior outbreaks, draw the right lesson, and implement an aggressive proactive plan. Unfortunately, not all countries have drawn the right lesson, Instead, they just can’t help themselves from falling into a political mindset. To characterize this as a “foreign virus” totally misses the point. Any blame can be attributed by future historians; our job is to respond appropriately the best we can.
When I think of my large family relationship, I fear that this scourge might take some of them. And I am on that list.
For those who may now be preoccupied with their irritated feelings of perceived “hysteria,” that may soon be erased by brutal fear. We won’t get back this time to prepare; do your best to make use of it. Panic is not useful, pragmatic preparation is.
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I read an interesting article about how, technically, soap is a far better method of removing viruses from ones hands, than any type of wipe or sanitizer. If I can find it again I’ll post it. It was somewhat technical but also it made a lot of sense to me, a lay person.
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