again "people are IODIOTS"

Effective and Cheap Sanitizer

https://www.dhhs.nh.gov/dphs/holu/do...s/hom-sani.pdf

my preparation is I now have a small thing of hand sanitizer in my truck. The government is quite literally taking care of the rest. Shutting down pretty much the entire restaurant business, now I'm even hearing of car dealers closing up. Our kids are all doing online home lessons starting this week. My girlfriend works in home care and lots of patients are cancelling. It's all understandable and will certainly help stop the spread. But the financial hit to families and small businesses is going to be freaking terrible. Personally I work in Auto restoration and we share a building with another small business. six people total. Still business as normal for us. But a lot of people I know are suddenly out of work. And that sucks.

Yes, there will be significant downsides to any actions taken by the government or the citizens that affect business as usual, but how do you protect the citizens without affecting business?

We need to do everything we can to slow the spread of this virus to allow the medical folks to try to get ahead of this. That will cause some (hopefully) temporary financial pain, but hopefully this will result in pent up demand and increased business for the local restaurants and other industries that are suffering now.

We have a choice to follow the South Korean model or the Italian model, but we don't have a lot of time to decide.

My concern is this now becomes the de-facto reaction to any new virus, so we'll be going through this approximately every 3-5 years. How is the common working man to make any progress with his meager savings/401k investments when the market crashes every 3-5 years? How are new grads, entry level workers, and those who work in service/hospitality industries going to cope with a frequent loss of opportunity/ongoing layoffs? Such a repeating cycle will financially crush those already most vulnerable.

There has to be a better way. Maybe this will help us figure it out and be better prepared next time.

currently, things are status quo for me. the kids are out of school of course. the woman has online classes only, but still working.. for now.

I do have a plan if things really hit the fan.

for me, the virus is a NON-issue. the biggest problem from all of this, is the reaction by the public, as well as our government. I hope my business can survive this financially. time will tell...

Let the American spirit be your guide. In Denver also through out the states there are a lot of elderly retired volunteers that deliver meals on wheels also food banks and other charities who are more susceptible to the virus. So if you are a healthy adult without preexisting conditions like diabetes or asthma call your local charities and see if you can help them out. Also when you go shopping if you can afford to pickup a couple of extra supplies and deliver it to your local food bank or charity.Or if you know of some one that is struggling to provide for their family deliver those supplies to them.

Well, the good news is this will definitely help prepare the US for the "next time". This has never really been an issue in the past so naturally everyone was slow to react. In areas where this is common place everyone is shut down and contained and everyone knows what to do.

Your stocks will be back to normal in a month. If you were smart, you would be investing MORE right now. That's what I did (well, last week when it was down before Mondays massive selloff).

I think there will be many financial lessons and health lessons gained from the lives and money lost during this pandemic.

The US economy has been on a high the past decade and everyone was enjoying the success. Hopefully people will learn that they NEED a 3-6 month emergency fund and stop living paycheck to paycheck. Those that don't have an emergency fund right now are the ones who can't stock up on items they are running low on. They also can't support themselves or their family during the freeze and quarantine. Americans are consumers and hopefully they will stop buying $1000 phones every year, leasing & financing cars they can't afford, and buying material objects. People need to be savers, not spenders.

From a medical and health standpoint maybe people will start washing their hands now? I work in the medical field so I do it out of habit but it really does not require much time or effort to wash your hands. Good hand washing, coughing, sneezing hygiene should be common sense but it's certainly not common practice. I'm glad people are cleaning everything they touch now. I also hope this discourages people from going to the doctor every time they have a viral illness and request/demand antibiotics. Hopefully this will shed a little light on viruses vs bacterial infections and education people on appropriate antibiotic use. Lastly, I hope this quiets any of the anti-vaxxers. If and when the COVID19 vaccination comes out I bet people will be lining up outside doctors offices and pharmacies for vaccinations like it was Black Friday; even those who resisted them in the past. Flu, MMR, pneumococcal, shingles, whatever just get all your vaccinations. Herd immunity keeps everyone safer.

If we can apply the lessons learned now we can avoid and at least help mitigate future pandemics like this and the economic windfall.

I would LOVE to see the statistics on how many regular illnesses/flus/colds/etc are prevented from this overly hygienic phase and everyone staying home. Is there any way to track this?

Hmmm that would actually be a interesting study indeed. I guess we'll have to wait and see how long this quarantine lasts for but it would be interesting to see a large study on the effect of non-coronvirus related infections over the next 3 months or so. However my guess is that everyone is so scared of the coronavirus that they aren't going to visit their FP, urgent care, or ERs for non-life threatening illnesses as much as before which could negatively impact such a study as well.

No study, but a personal observation. For several years before he died, my dad was bedridden (Alzheimer's) at home with all sorts of nasty bugs including MRSA, Clostridium difficile (C-diff), recurring UTIs and so forth. We got into the habit of very frequent hand washing and wiping down surfaces. Nobody in the household including me, my wife, my (then 80+) year old mom and my dad's 75 year old cousin, got sick and in the 10 years since then, I think I've gotten two colds - far down from the usual one or two colds a year. I credit the continued frequent handwashing to that.

People have short memories. Case in point, the economy was on life support ten years ago compared to the past few years lol. At least up until forced closures of small businesses.

I feel bad for the small guy LLC. Some people just dont have the margins to absorb this kind of setback in sales.

As stated previously, the real issue that we as a nation are trying to prevent is such a significant need for hospital beds and medical equipment that we as a nation do not have in supply.

If we over run our medical capabilities, then we as a nation start denying medical support to those that require it causing significant increases in death - AKA triage, to save those that have the best future ahead of them and let the others 'fend for themselves'/die.

That is the bottom line for why we are trying to slow down the spread of the virus and the disease it causes - so we do not have to deny people medical facilities that otherwise would help keep them alive.