On Tuesday, officials in both South Korea and Italy indicated that they felt that infections with COVID-19 were coming under control and that they had a good handle on the primary sources of their cases. On Wednesday, that’s much more difficult to believe, as in both places the number of cases spiked again overnight. A week ago, the Diamond Princess cruise ship had more cases of COVID-19 than everywhere else in the world outside of China. On Wednesday morning, South Korea alone had nearly the same number as the Diamond Princess did. Italy, which had just four cases four days ago, hit 374.
Within the United States, the number of active cases held steady at 51. The origin of all of those cases is understood. There is currently no sign of an unchecked outbreak spreading inside this country—which is why this is a perfect day to start executing a plan to prepare.
At this point, there is any number of websites ready to tell you how to prepare for an upcoming epidemic, though it seems that a number of them are fixated on either rating food that can be stored for over 20 years or selecting the best guns for home defense … possibly because they’ve dragged these plans from either a 1950s civil defense video or a zombie movie. But with the CDC warning that Americans should be prepared for a severe disruption of day-to-day life, crossing your fingers and hoping that this too shall pass is not a good response.
So here are a few suggestions for what you can do now that do not involve filling your basement with military surplus MREs or strapping on a mask that makes you look like an extra from 12 Monkeys.
1. Get your flu shot.
Will a flu shot help to protect you from being infected with COVID-19? Yes. Because if you get your flu shot now, you won’t be that guy who has to go to the clinic with flu six weeks from now, when every seat in that clinic could be filled with people coughing and sneezing great big wads of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus behind COVID).
In fact, there is a whole raft of reasons that, with the possibility of a COVID-19 epidemic looming, you don’t want to come down with a flu that requires medical attention. In addition to exposure to all those COVID-carriers that could be clogging every medical facility, flu can be serious. You don’t want to be competing for a hospital bed in the middle of an epidemic that could potentially overwhelm health care facilities. Do you want to be wrestling someone for the last oxygen bottle at the local hospital? You do not. Do you want to end up prodded into a quarantine facility because you’re coughing and running a fever at a point where test kits aren’t available? You do not. Do you want to find out if flu is one of those “additional complications” that makes the chances of COVID-19 being fatal so much greater? You definitely do not.
Plus, flu is plain old serious, dangerous, and intensely miserable all on its own. Get your flu shot.
2. Get that check up.
As someone whose next doctor’s appointment is in May, an appointment I made in November, I understand that this little bit of advice may be impossible. However, if there’s something that you’ve been meaning to get done—from a wellness check to a follow-up visit—see about scheduling it Real Soon Now. Sure, your gastroenterologist might not normally be down at the hospital ER, but if conditions get as bad as some experts are predicting, even people whose doctorate is in Assyrian art history may find themselves shoved into a mask and gloves and facing a triage tent. If you want to get that colonoscopy in while it’s still 2020 … make a call and get a date as close to now as you can.
3. Work it out with work.
Odds are, unless you are that person who has to stare down human throats with a tiny flashlight, you do not have to be there to do your job. Don’t wait until the local cube farm is a cough-cacophony before working out how to manage working from home, or working remotely from sites that have a smaller group of people. Do that now. Like … right now.
If you’re a boss or business owner, you owe it to your employees—and yourself, and your family, and your business—to work this crap out right now. And test it right now. And sure, if your company does something like make cars, or bake donuts, or build houses, it’s not really possible to do all that remotely. But not everyone at your business needs to be in an office or on-site. Start sending the IT guys and accountants and even middle-management folks home now. Get over the bumps of working remotely while you’re not also dealing with chaos in every other aspect of your life.
And be ready to face the idea that everything may have to be placed on hold at some point. Even donuts.
4. Work it out with school.
Few school districts do a good job of dealing with kids who are out of class for an extended period. Students are often hit with loads of make-up work because they committed the sin of being ill, and even now it’s a rare classroom that has the information available for students at home to keep up or read along in their textbooks (if they’re allowed to take them home).
Suck it up, school systems. Just assume that your whole system is going to be shut down for weeks. And every single student in your school is likely to be out for days or weeks on either side of that break. Unless you want to still be dealing with 2020 spring classes when 2020 fall classes begin, don’t treat this as a break. Treat is as (and yes, I hate this term as well) an opportunity to figure out how you can improve your remote learning—and while doing so, please don’t assume that all your students have high-speed internet and home computers. If that’s part of your plan, you better be providing the devices and the pipeline. Remember the miracle of paper.
Parents: Be prepared for your kids to be home. If you’re one of those people who has to shine the throat flashlight or bake the it’s-not-doomsday-yet donuts and you’re not also going to be working from home, do not wait another week before figuring out how you’re going to handle this. Becky, your regular Friday night babysitter, is not going to be the answer for a three-week 24/7 kid watch.
5. Get some stuff.
By now you surely know the drill: Masks are not going to save you, and neither are surgical gloves. If you want to have a box of either on hand (and your local Walgreens/CVS/Rite Aid hasn’t already been ransacked), you can get some. Which will be handy … if you’re sick and nice about not contaminating the rest of us.
But while you’re at the drug store, think about picking up some aspirin and Tums and decongestants, and all the other little things that you might need to get through a month or two during a month that doesn’t yet see TV networks competing to produce the scariest “AMERICA UNDER SIEGE!” bumpers. See the part about the flu shot above: You don’t not want to be the person who has to visit the drug store for a bottle of Pepto when everyone else in the store is shivering with fever. Most of this stuff lasts quite a while on the shelf. Check your supplies and top them up now. Also, if your health care plan is amenable, now might not be a bad time to think about changing your regular prescriptions to delivery by mail.
When it comes to the grocery store run, think about the things that don’t have an expiration date first: paper towels, toilet paper, and all the soap and cleaning wipes you’re going to be compulsively using in the weeks ahead. On the food front, get the stuff you like. Do not end up locked inside your house and also eating food that makes you feel like you’re being punished for getting prepared. In fact, maybe sneak in a few items that you secretly like but don’t buy normally (say, anything stamped with labels that say Chef Boyardee or Dinty Moore). Don’t go overboard. I don’t want anyone telling me they survived COVID but gained 10 pounds eating canned ravioli.
6. Don’t listen to me.
For real advice on how to handle the immediate future, check out Ready.gov and the CDC COVID-19 site. Both The New York Times and The Washington Post have published articles on preparing, but I confess I haven’t read them yet. I will. I’ll also add more links on this topic in the coming days—offer not good in case of the discovery of a miracle cure.
Okay. I’ve put it off as long as possible, but let’s look at the numbers.
COVID-19: Total Case Status
On an “all cases in one big bowl” basis, things continue to improve. China reported just 400 new cases overnight, while clocking another 600 recoveries and also revising some past numbers downward. So the blue area continues to grow, the orange “active cases” section of the chart continues to shrink, and, even as the total case count continues upward, things look hopeful.
Until you look more closely at the global situation.
COVID-19: Case status outside China
If the chart looks a lot taller today, that’s because cases spiked again in South Korea. If it looks a little narrower, that’s because there are now so many countries with active infections that I’ve left off all those with fewer than 4 active cases. That means you’re not seeing some of the surprising new places where infections have cropped up, such as Brazil. During Carnival. Frankly, I’m going to have to design a new chart, because the almost-pandemic has now outgrown this one.
By the way, what officially makes a pandemic is not the severity of a disease, but the existence of multiple epicenters around the globe that are spreading disease to other countries. For example, the way that case in Brazil, and another in Switzerland, and others in four more European countries all originated in Italy. Or the way that cases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Canada all came from Iran. Yesterday, the World Health Organization was arguing against using the term “pandemic,” saying it felt it was a little early. I suspect that attitude is crumbling.
The growth in South Korea’s case number continues to be the largest in terms of sheer number of cases added, but despite those numbers, it doesn’t seem to be acting as a major epicenter for COVID diagnoses elsewhere. One bit of unpleasant news for Americans is that Tuesday marked the first known case among U.S. military personnel stationed in South Korea.
Meanwhile, the rate of growth in Italy has been nothing short of astounding, and both the number of cases in other countries already connected to Italy and the number of deaths racked up are indicators of just how long the initial cases were cooking before anyone sounded an alarm.
Finally … Iran. Iran reported 25 cases are “recovered” on Wednesday, which is nice, except that it’s only been a week since Iran reported its first case. There hasn’t been time for anyone in Iran to recover unless the disease has been in that country much longer, and spread much more widely, than the government is admitting. That’s clearly the case. The 95 active cases in Iran are obviously a tiny fraction of a genuine epidemic that has already spread outside Iran’s borders to neighboring countries and across the globe.
Stay prepared. Stay not panicking. Think about how long it’s been since you enjoyed a Vienna sausage on a saltine, or opened a tin of Underwood Deviled Ham. All right, maybe I’m the only one who grew up eating these things, but there has to be something that you like that comes in a can.
