10 Other Things You Should Hoard For the Coronapocolypse
WARNING: CONTAINS FLIPPANCY ABOUT A SUBJECT MANY MIGHT FIND SERIOUS. READER DESCRETION ADVISED.
So, like everyone else in the world, I've been following the progress of the spread of the Coronavirus. Unlike most people, I haven't been glued to my TV set, watching 24-hour news and gradually growing more paranoid as I do.
My generation has gone through so many of these medical mass-hysterias at this point, including Bird Flu, Swine Flu, West Nile, E. coli, Ebola, and Zika, that I'm casehardened to it. Between the sheer number of these things in our lifetimes and the rapidity with which they coarse through social media trending algorithms like an infection, my generation has "hysteria fatigue."
Admittedly, though, this one does seem more serious since it is making its way across the world, and unlike all those other little microbes, we don't have methods of containment or means of combatting this illness in place. There is no Corona flu-shot.
However, I gotta tell yah, that when I heard the one thing that people seemed to have been buying in mass to hoard away in case they get quarantined was toilet paper, I about dropped on the floor laughing. Really? Toilet paper? Could they pick a less comic grocery item?
On the one hand, I get it. Diarrhea is one of the symptoms of COVID-19 (in 3-4% of cases), and anyone who's ever experienced it (and who hasn't?) knows having it involves frequent trips to the can. Either that, or so major clean-up afterward--if only to wash off the shame. The fact that a two-week quarantine is the only real means of combatting this thing currently means that you won't be doing much grocery shopping in that time, should you get it.
Still, in midst of panic, we often lose sight of commonsense. When people are anxious and frightened--with rare exceptions of people who do well under pressure--they cannot think straight. Thus, I thought that one of the best things I can do this week was remind you all that, while you're out there, gathering as much toilet paper as you can should you need to hold up in your house for two weeks, you might want to consider add these things to your shopping list as well--if for nothing else than variety's sake.
1. A Freezer's Worth of Food
If you wind up with Corona, you'll likely be making a lot of pitstops in the can, yes. You'll also need to eat during your two-week-long interment too. If you can, try to get as much unripen fruits and veggies as you can (this is the one time you'll want green bananas), since they'll last longer, but also make sure you get as much food that's freezable as you can. Frozen food lasts longer. Granted once you unfreeze it you can't freeze it again (unless you want an even more upset stomach), but even if you unfreeze a single pack of say chicken, you can bake, grill, or fry all of it and have meals for several days. You can't survive the apocalypse if you starve to death before it's over.
2. Other Toiletries
Yes, you'll need toilet paper, but your gluteal clef isn't the only part of your anatomy that requires regular cleaning and maintenance. What about your teeth? Your scalp? Your armpits? Your backs of your ears? Your feet? Your crotch? Unless your an exhibitionist, these parts of your body don't get much sun, but like space between your bed and the floor beneath it, they still need to get cleaned. So while you're in that aisle of the store stocking up your TP stores, make sure you also grab things like toothpaste. Soap (preferable bars of soap). Shampoo and conditioner. Mouthwash. Maybe even a spare toothbrush or two. Or if you're like me and your use and electric brush, a few spare brush-heads.
3. Over the Counter Pain Meds
Okay, consider this.
Your stuck at home, with Corona. You're stranded there for two weeks, and you're making regular trips to the bathroom. Say, one night, you're shuffling your way to the bathroom in the dark, and you stub your toe. As you're bouncing up and down in pain, you suddenly go to one side and bump your head on the wall. Say that last impact was sufficient enough to send you falling to the floor, where you land awkwardly enough that your pull a muscle in your back.
What are you going to do?
Well, if you don't have any Aleve, Aspirin, or Ibuprofen for the pain, you're just going to lay there in agony like an idiot in a slapstick movie, hoping and praying you didn't break something.
If, however, you were smart enough to go through the medical aisle of your local corner store and pick up every form of mild pain reliver you can think of, what you'll do it stiffly rise, go to the bathroom, do the business you initially intended to do (assuming you didn't soil yourself in my scenario), open your medicine cabinet, take two pills, and go sleep it off.
4. Other Medical Supplies
Let's say you do have the presence of mind to stock up your pills. What if you have a different kind of accident though during your seclusion? What if you accidently cut yourself with a knife or get a bad scrape and you go to your medicine cabinet...and there's no band-aids. No gauze pads. No rubbing alcohol. What are you going to do?
I'll tell you what: you're going to clean the wound with soap and water, apply pressure, and pray to whatever God you do (or don't) believe in that you don't get a secondary infection.
If you were smart however and planned ahead in case of this, you could clean that wound more thoroughly and lower the likelihood of that occurring. So, stock up on band-aids and other supplies and leave God alone (besides, we probably won't do anything for you anyway. He's got his own problems).
5. Candles, Matches, Flashlights, and Batteries
Again, dear reader, consider this.
You're quarantined, and suffering these cold and flu-like symptoms. And one day, your power goes out. Well, assuming you're not just experiencing a brown-out, which will be over soon once the generators kick back in, how are you going to find any of your stuff?
Well, if you're smart, you would've stocked up on either some forms of illumination that don' t require electricity, like candles and matches, or you've stocked up on flash lights and batteries. Sure, you could use your phone, but if the power's out and you use up your phone's charge, how are you going to recharge it?
Exactly. These old school ways of shedding light on the world still work and are still around for a reason. Candles and flashlights aren't just for creating a mood.
6. Coffee
(Okay, this one's a personal choice.)
If you're like me, and you basically drink a pot of coffee a day, you're going to want to stock up if you end up under quarantine. And by coffee, I mean real coffee. Not the sissy blends that look, taste, and smell like dirty water. I mean real coffee. Dark Roast coffee. The kind of coffee where you put five big scoops of it in the filter, and as it brews, you can smell if from half a block away.
Just because you're cooped up and can't go to Starbucks doesn't mean you should deprive yourself of the simple little pleasures in life.
7. If You Have Them, Prescriptions
If you suffer from some sort of chronic condition--anything from high blood pressure to diabetes--you should be wary of this virus anyway. Any sort of chronic condition that requires medical intervention and monitoring to control can have an ill-effect on your immune system, which is just what a virus like COVID-19 needs to make you miserable for half a month.
However, if you properly prepare, you can make it through any sort of medical episode like this. Make sure your prescriptions are properly filled, just in case this happens.
This also goes for people taking meds to help them manage any sort of mental health issue, not just physical health. If you're stuck in quarantine, you're not going to be able to go to your shrink (if you have one), to get a new prescription. For that matter, you won't be able to visit your shrink either (unless you do a phone conference, which we all know it more expensive). So make sure you're in a good place there, beforehand. There's no reason you should be suffering from the flu-on-steroids while having a mental meltdown. One of those is struggle enough.
8. Cleaning Supplies
So, if you're stuck in quarantine, for two weeks, there are a number of things you can do. One of them is sulk and wallow in your misery over the fact that you're sick. After about a day or two of that though, it gets old. '
Besides, wallowing (as I've discovered from experience), tends to also lead to living in a certain level of uncleanliness. There's a reason why wallow is the ideal verb to describe what pigs do in mud.
So once you've wallowed long enough, it's time to do something else. If you've been eating that food you stocked up, chances are you've also amassed a lot of dirty dishes. Dust and dust-bunnies have also likely begun to accumulate in their usual meeting spots (you know your house better than I do, so you know where I'm talking about), and there's also a strong chance the laundries piling up.
Well, there's no time like a two-week long quarantine to catch up on all those household chores you've been neglecting. Although, you might not want to do them the first week since you'll likely be stuck in bed most of the time. Sometime around week two though, maybe you'll feel up to putting a load of wash in, assuming you do the smart thing and raid the cleaning aisle of your local grocery or corner store.
9. Pet Food
Not everyone has pets, but a lot of people do. If you do, and you're put under a two week quarantine because "you caught the corona," you're not the only one who's going to be suffering. It's always a smart choice to have ample amount of pet food at hand when taking care of your house animals anyway, but no one's perfect.
So when you're out stock piling everything else, don't forget that if you have an animal at home, you're not the only one who's going to suffer through this.
Besides, some pets will eat you if you don't feed them. Like cats. If you die and have a cat in the house, chances are when the authorities finally come to investigate that weird smell your neighbors reported, you're gonna look like one of Hannibal Lector's victims.
Go through the pet aisle before you go home.
10. Hobby Supplies
To wind things up, we come to a final most important piece of the puzzle: how to spend your time, should you need to, under quarantine. As any person who's done hard time can tell you, one of the hardest things to do is preoccupy yourself. Thankfully, unlike the cast of Orange is the New Black or The Shawshank Redemption you won't be doing your time behind bars. You'll be doing it from the comfort of your home.
However, once you've fed your animals, looked after your plants, cleaned the living room, done all the laundry you can to justify using the washing machine, and of course, looked after your own health, you have one final obstacle in your way:
What are you going to do with the rest of the day?
Chances are, if you're even mildly tech-savvy, you'll just spend the rest of that day browsing the internet looking at dubious articles (like this one), for your own amusement. The problem then becomes that you have another 13 days to go. So what do you do then?
Some people read. Some do crafts. Some journal. Some do art. Some make jewelry. Some even knit. Everyone needs a hobby. So before you go home, make sure you swing by your local (preferably non-homophobic) hobby store, your local independent book store, or whatever it is that interests you the most to idle away your time and stock up on your hobby of choice.
The point of all this nonsense is simple: do whatever it is you have to do to get through this. Human beings have face insane forces of nature like this before, and we've, amazingly enough, survived them. I'm not sure what the final solution of this latest fiasco will be, but I'm sure we'll find one. Just remember, it could be much worse. it could be TB, Smallpox, or the Black Plague, but it isn't (this time). We'll get through this (at least those of us who live).
So, like everyone else in the world, I've been following the progress of the spread of the Coronavirus. Unlike most people, I haven't been glued to my TV set, watching 24-hour news and gradually growing more paranoid as I do.
 |
| Smile for the Camera, Coronavirus. |
My generation has gone through so many of these medical mass-hysterias at this point, including Bird Flu, Swine Flu, West Nile, E. coli, Ebola, and Zika, that I'm casehardened to it. Between the sheer number of these things in our lifetimes and the rapidity with which they coarse through social media trending algorithms like an infection, my generation has "hysteria fatigue."
Admittedly, though, this one does seem more serious since it is making its way across the world, and unlike all those other little microbes, we don't have methods of containment or means of combatting this illness in place. There is no Corona flu-shot.
However, I gotta tell yah, that when I heard the one thing that people seemed to have been buying in mass to hoard away in case they get quarantined was toilet paper, I about dropped on the floor laughing. Really? Toilet paper? Could they pick a less comic grocery item?
On the one hand, I get it. Diarrhea is one of the symptoms of COVID-19 (in 3-4% of cases), and anyone who's ever experienced it (and who hasn't?) knows having it involves frequent trips to the can. Either that, or so major clean-up afterward--if only to wash off the shame. The fact that a two-week quarantine is the only real means of combatting this thing currently means that you won't be doing much grocery shopping in that time, should you get it.
Still, in midst of panic, we often lose sight of commonsense. When people are anxious and frightened--with rare exceptions of people who do well under pressure--they cannot think straight. Thus, I thought that one of the best things I can do this week was remind you all that, while you're out there, gathering as much toilet paper as you can should you need to hold up in your house for two weeks, you might want to consider add these things to your shopping list as well--if for nothing else than variety's sake.
1. A Freezer's Worth of Food
If you wind up with Corona, you'll likely be making a lot of pitstops in the can, yes. You'll also need to eat during your two-week-long interment too. If you can, try to get as much unripen fruits and veggies as you can (this is the one time you'll want green bananas), since they'll last longer, but also make sure you get as much food that's freezable as you can. Frozen food lasts longer. Granted once you unfreeze it you can't freeze it again (unless you want an even more upset stomach), but even if you unfreeze a single pack of say chicken, you can bake, grill, or fry all of it and have meals for several days. You can't survive the apocalypse if you starve to death before it's over.
2. Other Toiletries
Yes, you'll need toilet paper, but your gluteal clef isn't the only part of your anatomy that requires regular cleaning and maintenance. What about your teeth? Your scalp? Your armpits? Your backs of your ears? Your feet? Your crotch? Unless your an exhibitionist, these parts of your body don't get much sun, but like space between your bed and the floor beneath it, they still need to get cleaned. So while you're in that aisle of the store stocking up your TP stores, make sure you also grab things like toothpaste. Soap (preferable bars of soap). Shampoo and conditioner. Mouthwash. Maybe even a spare toothbrush or two. Or if you're like me and your use and electric brush, a few spare brush-heads.
3. Over the Counter Pain Meds
Okay, consider this.
Your stuck at home, with Corona. You're stranded there for two weeks, and you're making regular trips to the bathroom. Say, one night, you're shuffling your way to the bathroom in the dark, and you stub your toe. As you're bouncing up and down in pain, you suddenly go to one side and bump your head on the wall. Say that last impact was sufficient enough to send you falling to the floor, where you land awkwardly enough that your pull a muscle in your back.
What are you going to do?
Well, if you don't have any Aleve, Aspirin, or Ibuprofen for the pain, you're just going to lay there in agony like an idiot in a slapstick movie, hoping and praying you didn't break something.
If, however, you were smart enough to go through the medical aisle of your local corner store and pick up every form of mild pain reliver you can think of, what you'll do it stiffly rise, go to the bathroom, do the business you initially intended to do (assuming you didn't soil yourself in my scenario), open your medicine cabinet, take two pills, and go sleep it off.
4. Other Medical Supplies
Let's say you do have the presence of mind to stock up your pills. What if you have a different kind of accident though during your seclusion? What if you accidently cut yourself with a knife or get a bad scrape and you go to your medicine cabinet...and there's no band-aids. No gauze pads. No rubbing alcohol. What are you going to do?
I'll tell you what: you're going to clean the wound with soap and water, apply pressure, and pray to whatever God you do (or don't) believe in that you don't get a secondary infection.
If you were smart however and planned ahead in case of this, you could clean that wound more thoroughly and lower the likelihood of that occurring. So, stock up on band-aids and other supplies and leave God alone (besides, we probably won't do anything for you anyway. He's got his own problems).
5. Candles, Matches, Flashlights, and Batteries
Again, dear reader, consider this.
You're quarantined, and suffering these cold and flu-like symptoms. And one day, your power goes out. Well, assuming you're not just experiencing a brown-out, which will be over soon once the generators kick back in, how are you going to find any of your stuff?
Well, if you're smart, you would've stocked up on either some forms of illumination that don' t require electricity, like candles and matches, or you've stocked up on flash lights and batteries. Sure, you could use your phone, but if the power's out and you use up your phone's charge, how are you going to recharge it?
Exactly. These old school ways of shedding light on the world still work and are still around for a reason. Candles and flashlights aren't just for creating a mood.
6. Coffee
(Okay, this one's a personal choice.)
If you're like me, and you basically drink a pot of coffee a day, you're going to want to stock up if you end up under quarantine. And by coffee, I mean real coffee. Not the sissy blends that look, taste, and smell like dirty water. I mean real coffee. Dark Roast coffee. The kind of coffee where you put five big scoops of it in the filter, and as it brews, you can smell if from half a block away.
Just because you're cooped up and can't go to Starbucks doesn't mean you should deprive yourself of the simple little pleasures in life.
7. If You Have Them, Prescriptions
If you suffer from some sort of chronic condition--anything from high blood pressure to diabetes--you should be wary of this virus anyway. Any sort of chronic condition that requires medical intervention and monitoring to control can have an ill-effect on your immune system, which is just what a virus like COVID-19 needs to make you miserable for half a month.
However, if you properly prepare, you can make it through any sort of medical episode like this. Make sure your prescriptions are properly filled, just in case this happens.
This also goes for people taking meds to help them manage any sort of mental health issue, not just physical health. If you're stuck in quarantine, you're not going to be able to go to your shrink (if you have one), to get a new prescription. For that matter, you won't be able to visit your shrink either (unless you do a phone conference, which we all know it more expensive). So make sure you're in a good place there, beforehand. There's no reason you should be suffering from the flu-on-steroids while having a mental meltdown. One of those is struggle enough.
8. Cleaning Supplies
So, if you're stuck in quarantine, for two weeks, there are a number of things you can do. One of them is sulk and wallow in your misery over the fact that you're sick. After about a day or two of that though, it gets old. '
Besides, wallowing (as I've discovered from experience), tends to also lead to living in a certain level of uncleanliness. There's a reason why wallow is the ideal verb to describe what pigs do in mud.
So once you've wallowed long enough, it's time to do something else. If you've been eating that food you stocked up, chances are you've also amassed a lot of dirty dishes. Dust and dust-bunnies have also likely begun to accumulate in their usual meeting spots (you know your house better than I do, so you know where I'm talking about), and there's also a strong chance the laundries piling up.
Well, there's no time like a two-week long quarantine to catch up on all those household chores you've been neglecting. Although, you might not want to do them the first week since you'll likely be stuck in bed most of the time. Sometime around week two though, maybe you'll feel up to putting a load of wash in, assuming you do the smart thing and raid the cleaning aisle of your local grocery or corner store.
9. Pet Food
Not everyone has pets, but a lot of people do. If you do, and you're put under a two week quarantine because "you caught the corona," you're not the only one who's going to be suffering. It's always a smart choice to have ample amount of pet food at hand when taking care of your house animals anyway, but no one's perfect.
So when you're out stock piling everything else, don't forget that if you have an animal at home, you're not the only one who's going to suffer through this.
Besides, some pets will eat you if you don't feed them. Like cats. If you die and have a cat in the house, chances are when the authorities finally come to investigate that weird smell your neighbors reported, you're gonna look like one of Hannibal Lector's victims.
Go through the pet aisle before you go home.
10. Hobby Supplies
To wind things up, we come to a final most important piece of the puzzle: how to spend your time, should you need to, under quarantine. As any person who's done hard time can tell you, one of the hardest things to do is preoccupy yourself. Thankfully, unlike the cast of Orange is the New Black or The Shawshank Redemption you won't be doing your time behind bars. You'll be doing it from the comfort of your home.
However, once you've fed your animals, looked after your plants, cleaned the living room, done all the laundry you can to justify using the washing machine, and of course, looked after your own health, you have one final obstacle in your way:
What are you going to do with the rest of the day?
Chances are, if you're even mildly tech-savvy, you'll just spend the rest of that day browsing the internet looking at dubious articles (like this one), for your own amusement. The problem then becomes that you have another 13 days to go. So what do you do then?
Some people read. Some do crafts. Some journal. Some do art. Some make jewelry. Some even knit. Everyone needs a hobby. So before you go home, make sure you swing by your local (preferably non-homophobic) hobby store, your local independent book store, or whatever it is that interests you the most to idle away your time and stock up on your hobby of choice.
The point of all this nonsense is simple: do whatever it is you have to do to get through this. Human beings have face insane forces of nature like this before, and we've, amazingly enough, survived them. I'm not sure what the final solution of this latest fiasco will be, but I'm sure we'll find one. Just remember, it could be much worse. it could be TB, Smallpox, or the Black Plague, but it isn't (this time). We'll get through this (at least those of us who live).
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