Prepping for pandemic...

[wheresmymojo]

I was quite blasé about the novel corona virus outbreak but things I've read today have changed my mind.

I'm not usually a prepper but best things to stock up on for a pandemic?

Surgical face masks?
Latex gloves?
Anti bac wipes and hand wash?

Best before on long life goods is for advice
I have some long life juice that I have pulled out today. Its bbe date is December 2019. I don't consider it out if date. Just ready to consume now.

@MynameisJune

what do you eat? Not being funny genuinely asking, you don’t eat rice? Or Curry? Or veggie lasagne? Anything that you could at least batch cook and freeze?

No, we don’t eat rice

We do eat vegetarian Curry, but we don’t have a freezer st the moment (not even one in the fridge)

We don’t eat lasagne as such, but eat things similar without the pasta - made with fresh veg. Not fabulous frozen though.

Basically fresh above ground veg, mostly with fresh sauce (cheese/mushroom). Cream & Dairy. Nuts. Some Cauldron products (sausages/marinated tofu) but no Quorn

Never much joy with fresh/plain tofu.

We are renovating the house & I wanted to wait to get the new fridge freezer until it was finished, but I might get it this week & just move it into another room when they do the kitchen. That would help somewhat.

I’ll get some tins of things I wouldn’t normally use (too high in carbs) like peas, corn, beans etc that I can donate if we don’t use and pasta/pasta sauces & hopefully we won’t need them & hopefully the neighbours/friends/food banks can use them in the event we don’t need them.

As for milk though. I know people who always freeze their milk and just let it defrost in the fridge (or put the bottle in warm water -not sure that’s such a good idea though!) No problem at all.

Just wanted to thank the pp who mention pancake mix, it didn't occur to me before to buy it but it makes complete sense so I've been to poundstretcher today and got three bottles, it was only 69p so not a huge expense.

I also have a bread maker which is a god send, it doesn't just do bread you can make malt loaf, dough for fresh pizza, fruit cake etc which can all be made from dry ingredients that will store for a long time.

I also have an area in my freezer for things that I've made like cookie dough, pasta sauces, odds and ends of veg that was ready to be used or thrown. Just things that aren't as good from a tin or jar.

MynameisJune I have a well stocked cupboard (usually!) in winter: in case of illness or bad weather.

We do use a lot of milk usually. I don't have a huge freezer but keep a spare in there. Then I have long life oat milk that I like in tea and kids would have on cereal. I also have dried yoghurt mix (easiyo) that I can make up overnight with water, everyone will have this with muesli at a push.

I no longer get uht milk as no one likes it except me in hot chocolate and it was a pain to use up last time.

Powdered milk is very handy if you cook pancakes or do home baking.

Yes I’m quite thankful of my bread machine

That along with bags of flours, yeast, salt and some tins of beans, tuna and and tomato puree and a large block of cheese should be able to do many meals if needed.

Plenty of Milton products still available on my online food shopping. Although the hand gel seems to be gone at the moment

Link to Tweets of Zhang's full story - very similar to several other stories I've come across now so seems legit.

I wonder what level of underreporting it becomes or if Zhang and others are logged as suspected cases?

twitter.com/davidpaulk/status/1223934638986424320?s=21

Thanks for the milk info, will get some 2L bottles and put them in the chest freezer, if it all comes to nothing then we’ll use them anyway. I don’t drink milk or eat cereal so I’m not up on my milk storage.

We have a pretty well stocked store cupboard, enough medicines for 2-3 months plus some pain killers like Tramadol if shit got real and we couldn’t/didn’t want to go hospital.

We have an Aga so can make bread/cakes/pizza or whatever really easily

@HasaDigaEebowai

t always bugs me slightly when people say that they don't eat long life things on threads like this. Most people don't live on tinned food and eat as much fresh food as possible. The point is that that they could live on processed food if they had to

IF you’d bothered to read what I wrote, instead of just being snarky about it, you’d have noticed that I had already said I’d eat processed & long life food if I had to. 🙄🙄

I choose to eat the way I do because it means I can avoid medication. I have ALREADY SAID, I’d eat whatever if I had to (as long as it’s vegetarian) in an emergency - my dilemma was what and how much food to buy that we won’t eat IF It’s not used in an emergency situation because it will all be given/donated if not necessary. I made that VERY clear in my posts, had you bothered to actually read them

@wheresmymojo

Not to mention the fact (again) that they say they don’t have enough supplies to test people. It’s not just the wilful ‘under reporting’ it’s the ‘not even testing clearly ill
people’ that is scaring me.

Ok then. Thinking emergency but food bank. How about tinned carrots? ( They are soft but good for veg in curries) peas sweetcorn also do cheap versions that are acceptable.

Dried raisins, apricots,sultanas?

Tinned fruit ( peaches cheapish and mandarin pieces)

Dried beans and lentils? Tinned beans and lentils.

Dried milk.

If it is not something you will eat then cheap versions will save you money and are perfectly edible.

@BestOption, I try to eat similarly to you, to avoid taking lanzoprazole for acid reflux.
I do eat meat however, although I'd rather not, as it makes it simpler (not suggesting you should!)
I'd recommend getting a freezer in, although I can see why you've waited.

@BlackeyedSusan

Yes,as I said in my post at 16:23 I’ll get some tinned sweet corn, peas, beans etc (as well as pasta etc) but I’ll give the fruit a swerve as that’ll really not be good for me.

@funkycats

If I get the bigger fridge/freezer it’ll give me a lot more options.

I can kill anyone that dents it while it’s not in the best place for a FF right?

It would make my life easier if I ate meat/fish but after 30 years I really couldn’t even if I wanted to and I don’t.

I asked dh what we like to eat when we've got a flu like illness. All we could come up with was soup, toast, squash and juice. So if it did spread to that level, those would be good things to have.

I think the main thing at the moment is making sure you have tissues (for general coughs and sneezes), soap, hand gel for if you can't get to a sink and are as up to date as you can be with prescriptions.

My current concerns are mostly around limitation of medication due to issues with China being able to supply. We've already seen that last year.

Is it just you or more than one of you? If you feed them the tinned stuff, it leaves more room for your specialist stuff elsewhere. This is what I have planned. Children with different needs, I have got individual stuff in, Eg only I like rice pudding so I will eat that for calcium, while saving the milk for Ds.

Cup a soups are good. Just add hot water and stagger back to bed.

I’ve just been through my freezers - I bought a freezer for the shed in September last year to stock up for no deal brexit as we’re low earners and I was thinking I can’t afford a price hike.

I’ve got one drawer filled with meat/veg/fruit and a second filled with meals that I’ve batch cooked or had leftovers from. The third drawer I think I’ll concentrate on filling with GF stuff like bread for DS.

It’s medicine cupboard products that I’m going to focus on now I think. DH and I are relatively healthy but DS is 3 so does he count as vulnerable?

I’m going to head to the shops and start adding to my weekly shop from tomorrow.

Probably.

DD is asthmatic, so her too.

It concerns me that this thread is where I’ve got most of my information about the virus from.

I am a life long vegi, dh is a veggy but also can not tolerate simple carbs, allergy to potatoes. Dc all omni diets. So as standard we have lots of lentils, chicpeas, other beans, quinoa etc.

Forage so have lots of wild food dried or made into kimchi, compote etc.

Insidently kimchi is eaten as an anti viral/antibiotic in Cambodia, as well as a general relish.

There are lots of herbs and spices that can help to fight infections, adaptogenic herbs are particularly good such as garlic, tumeric and ginger, as are thyme, icelandic moss, elderflower and berry, echinacea, etc.

Tbere is a lot out there that can help with viral infections!

I've seen a lot of graphics that demonstrate that bog standard flu is a bigger killer/has a higher death rate than Corona so far...but the Chinese response seems incommensurate with that. It's all so odd.

We just don't know the case fatality rate yet. Officially it is at 2% according to WHO.

I've read that 20% of those who contract the virus end up needing oxygen and a high level of care. I suppose that plus the speed at which the virus is multiplying requires a dramatic response beyond the regular flu.

And then it's a matter of weighing up the possibility that people are dying of 'pneumonia' without having been tested for the coronavirus which would skew the data.

Try and hold to the idea that it's 20% of known cases.

Let's also hope it's just a cold with these passengers who've landed in France.
www.laprovence.com/article/france-monde/5869029/direct-laprovence-coronavirus-des-ressortissants-francais-accueillis-a-aix-air-france-suspend-ses-v