I finished my grocery shopping a long time ago and have about 2 years worth of food stored. Probably only have about a year's worth of TP, but it's enough for now. I also have about 50 N95/N100 masks, 20 pairs of goggles, and about 2,000 pairs of gloves (for working on computers).
I'm not looking forward to living on unhealthy canned food that's full of sodium so I'm hoping to get some high blood pressure medicine just in case I need it before China cuts off vital pharmaceutical supplies. I never ended up getting "survival food" kits because they require water and usually taste like sh*t and are full of chemicals (not to mention expensive!)
I wouldn't go out to the grocery store for a million dollars right now, but if you do, you MUST do the following:
1. Make sure you wear gloves, a mask (N95 or eqivalent), AND goggles! The droplets/aerosols that are in the air can remain there for 3+ hours. If these get into your eyes you WILL get infected!
2. Buy whatever products you need.
3. When you come home, unload the groceries into your garage and let them sit for at least 2 weeks (I personally wouldn't touch them for a month).
4. Take off ALL your clothes in the garage including the protective gear. Go inside and shower IMMEDIATELY! DO NOT sit down or do anything else until you've showered! Those droplets/aerosols I was talking about earlier? They could be on your skin, in your hair, etc.
I'm getting everything I need delivered from Amazon including computer parts, groceries, etc. I open the packages in the garage. If the item is inside a box, I empty the box into a Ziploc bag and then bring it into the house. This requires TWO people to make sure there's no cross-contamination. If there's no box or it's not something I need right away, I put it on the shelves in the garage to sit for 30 DAYS.
I knew this Coronavirus thing was going to get bad months ago so I prepared. I started stocking up in January. I'm not a "prepper" by any means, but I knew that shortages would come so I stocked up on the essentials way before #toiletpaperpanic was even a thing on Twitter.
The thing that truly terrifies me is the thought of a disruption of vital pharmaceutical drugs. Do you have any idea how many millions of people are on high blood pressure drugs or insulin? If they run out, millions of people are going to die. My mother has high blood pressure and would likely die very shortly without it. Her doctor refused to "over prescribe" her medication so she can stock up, but I have a buddy I knew in high school who's a doctor. I talked with him and he was willing to write a script for an asinine amount of the stuff on the condition that I dole it out to her. The next hurdle was the pharmacist but I managed to convince them to release the medicine with a little bit of old fashioned social engineering.
I hope I'm wrong about the upcoming medicine shortages, but I haven't been wrong yet. Things are going to get a lot worse unless they just open up the economy and let the virus rip through the population killing millions. But the way things are heading, millions are going to die regardless what we do, so opening up the economy is probably the smartest move. I will tell you this though, I will NOT stop isolating no matter what the government says. I'm not going to let my mother die because of this stupid virus, and I'll do whatever it takes to make sure we both make it through, regardless which way it goes (continued 18+ month quarantine or re-opening the economy).
The only thing I'm concerned about is that I don't have a strong enough gun or enough ammo for my liking. I live in the middle of the city so my skills are also going to suffer without access to a range. I'm not a good shot as it is, but lord help me if my skills revert to when I first held a gun. I was more of a danger to myself than others. I don't like guns. I never have, and if I could erase them from history I'd do it without a moment's hesitation. Unfortunately you don't bring a knife to a gun fight so I have no choice in the matter.
Business is okay. It's definitely less than it was before the quarantine, but there's still enough for me to make it (for now). I must say, it really sucks working out of my garage. My garage is nasty. I never really put any money into it because I didn't care much, but now that I'm having to work there and store my groceries there it really sucks. The floor is all pitted/cracked, there's oil stains and other nasty things in the concrete, the sheet rock is half-assed, the outlets are brown and burnt, there's no heat/AC, and the work area I've set up is really shoddy.
I just don't have a spare of every tool I have so I've had to make due with whatever I can throw together. Even my flash drives are broken/mismatched, my monitor is small, and the Mac I'm using out there is pre-2012 so it only supports Mac OS 10.13 and has no USB 3.0 ports. Every surface has to be treated as potentially virus-infected so I change all my clothes except my underwear every time I enter/leave my garage. I'm showering at least 3 times per day because I can't help but accidentally touch stuff when I'm out there with parts of my body that can't be cleaned in the sink. I'm working 10x harder for not even 1/2 pay, but I don't know how much longer people are going to be willing to spend money on their computers so I can't let this opportunity go to waste.
I'm still working on sorting all the food I have stored up. My mother lives with me and she has an online business selling antiques so our entire bottom floor is dedicated to her inventory. We've spent the last few weeks re-organizing everything, building new shelving units, etc. She has so much stuff and we've stocked up on so much stuff that we're absolutely overwhelmed. All the while I'm trying to run my business while changing the ENTIRE operation of my business from a walk-in shop to everyone working on computers from home. My stress levels are quite high, I'm not sleeping much, and I'm having to deal with past clients calling up asking for refunds on purchases as old as 1+ years because they need money because they've been laid off.
People aren't really willing to do anything that's not 100% necessary anymore. For example, I just got in a Dell gaming laptop with a cracked screen. I quoted $450 to replace the screen (the screen cost about $85) and they said yes. Then once I got the screen installed, I saw that the SSD (120GB SSD + 1TB HDD) was full, so I recommended installing a 1TB SSD and nixing the HDD for a price of $900 total (including the cost of the screen replacement). The guy agreed, but called back about 30 minutes later and said that he changed his mind with all the uncertainty with the Coronavirus.
I can't blame him, but this is really affecting my business. This doesn't even take into consideration all the people that are delaying (perhaps indefinitely) repairing their computers and never call or make an appointment. This is only going to get worse the longer this quarantine goes on.
I feel rather helpless at the moment. All I can do is make the best of a bad situation just like everybody. I also can't imagine spending 18+ months locked in my house. It's a big house (5,000 square feet) but it's still a prison, and now that I'm working from here it feels like I never leave work except to work on food and other things necessary for home life.
There's something wrong with the washing machine but there's no way in hell I'm calling anyone out. I've never fixed an appliance before, but that's my next project. I'm used to coming home and relaxing, but now it seems like just constant stress all the time. I have no doubt that this Coronavirus thing is going to take years off my life.
As for the state of my community, I couldn't tell you. I haven't went out in probably a month. When I did I did it in full gear and got lots of weird looks (after all, back then there were only a few cases here in the US and the media barely even talked about Coronavirus). I doubt anyone would bat an eye at me now, but I'm not going out again for at least 18 months.
