A Lack Of Preparedness On “Their Part”
Posted on March 10, 2020 by Salty & Becca
There’s an old saying out there… “A lack of preparedness on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”
Since you are reading this on a prepping related website, I think it’s safe to substitute the word “your” for “their”. SO… let’s talk about what dealing with people who mock us for being preppers for a bit.
Here’s the kicker though… in this situation, where healthcare workers don’t have enough protective gear due to just-in-time inventory… a lack of preparedness on the medical industry’s part may well constitute an emergency for all of us.
We will try not to rant.
Much.
The mask is better at catching germs when the sick person wears it. Wearing one as a healthy person does help some though, especially as it stops hand-to-nose or hand-to-mouth transmission.
A Lack Of Preparedness
Our good prepping friend and 3BY contributor Becca shared the following on social media, and I thought it was gold so I’m going to reproduce it here (with her permission, of course).
FYI: disseminating information so that people can make decisions for their family is NOT panicking. Multiple posts on a topic is not a sign of panic.
FWIW: I just saw stats that the US Govt stockpile of N95 masks is about 12 million. Any idea what the current population is? The government is NOT stockpiling to take care of my family or yours. Stores operate off of “just in time” shipments. That means they only get a new shipment in just as the old stock runs out. That is not an encouragement to run out and buy masks, before I get 5,879 nasty messages. It’s an example. If they don’t stockpile enough masks to deal with an oncoming epidemic like this one, how are they going to have enough of literally ANYTHING else to take care of you?
China and India have essentially stopped exporting. Including medications.
I see the same people criticizing people who “rely on the government” (food stamps, tanf, etc) poopooing anyone who makes an attempt at preparedness because…the government will bail us out. Yeah. Not.
Again, disseminating information so that people have the opportunity to try to provide for the health and safety of their family is NOT spreading fear. You do what you need to do but don’t bother criticizing those of us who have spent literal YEARS accumulating what our families might need to make it through a disaster of some sort.
But hey. I’m not throwing fists at the grocery store to score a little tp…BECAUSE I ALREADY HAD IT. So, there is that.
The Whole TP Thing
The recent and well publicized mass hoarding of toilet paper is a perfect example of “bad prepping”.
Don’t get me wrong, TP is a perfectly reasonable item to stock up on, we’ve got a reasonable supply ourselves… but during the recent scare, there are stories out there of people buying INSANE amounts of the stuff for reasons that make absolutely zero sense from a prepping standpoint.
Let’s Look At The Article Becca Mentioned
Here are a couple of quotes pulled from the article by Liz Specht as she makes her point about systemic health care failure. The subject of this article isn’t what Liz is writing about, but check out her article in full, there’s some really well supported data she’s sharing.
She uses math to support the following point: “By this estimate, by about May 8th, all open hospital beds in the US will be filled. (This says nothing, of course, about whether these beds are suitable for isolation of patients with a highly infectious virus.).”
Later: “Alright, so that’s beds. Now masks. Feds say we have a national stockpile of 12M N95 masks and 30M surgical masks (which are not ideal, but better than nothing).
There are about 18M healthcare workers in the US. Let’s assume only 6M HCW are working on any given day. (This is likely an underestimate as most people work most days of the week, but again, I’m playing conservative at every turn.)…” clip… “These HCWs would burn through N95 stockpile in 2 days if each HCW only got ONE mask per day”
Preppers Already Knew This
Just In Time (JIT) inventory management is both the reason that we are able to have such inexpensive groceries and such a large selection of goods… and the reason that we can be totally hosed when an emergency pops up.
Looking at the supply of N95 masks is a perfect example of how JIT inventory can reach up and bite us in our posteriors.
Me? I have a whole case of N95 masks. I have a case of face shields, plenty of lab-style gloves, and I’ve even got a dozen isolation suits in both Spice and my sizes, complete with shoe covers, the whole shooting match.
The problem, however, isn’t with me, it’s with the doctor at our local family health care clinic who stands to run out of masks this week.
Honestly, there’s nothing we can do about that… all we can do is to isolate ourselves as much as possible, limit our risks, WASH OUR HANDS A LOT, keep our hands away from our face, and limit contact.
Oh, and not stand in line waiting for toilet paper delivery.
What Is Up With TP?
Of all the bizarre things to run out of, TP? For a virus? Really?
I mean, I get N95 masks. I get protective gloves. I get hand cleaning gel. But TP?
It’s not milk. It’s not bread. It’s not even something you can’t live without*
The whole “buying up toilet paper” thing is a perfect knee-jerk reaction to the situation people who have given no thought to prepping find themselves in… Buying TP doesn’t in any way reduce the risk of contracting the coronavirus, nor does it help keep one alive if one does.
It does make a perfect metaphor for real prepping vs. false, feel good prepping though.
A false, feel good prepped person will be happy that they have more TP than they will need if the family comes down with viurus-induced diarrhea.
In contrast, a real prepper will have a reasonable quantity of butt-cleaning materials already on hand, but more importantly he or she will have plenty of anti-diarrhea drugs like loperamide (Imodium) and/or bismuth subsalicylate (Kaopectate, Pepto-Bismol).
The “In Addition” Kicker
A lot of people are out there spouting how coronavirus isn’t that much worse than the “seasonal flu”.
Fact or not, doesn’t matter… whether it’s worse death-wise than the seasonal flu is irrelevant, because we are getting BOTH of them this year, not just the seasonal flu.
Coronavirus is “in addition” to the regular flu, so we get nailed by both.
Just some grist for your mental mills.
*Salty uses a bidet, not toilet paper. It’s cleaner, it’s refreshing and you don’t have to worry about running out of it.
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