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?

DD flew back from Brussels last week. When I checked if flight had handed, it had followed a flight from Beijing. So I've just checked and Heathrow alone have three flights coming in this afternoon from Beijing. They'll be other Chinese cities flying into Heathrow and our other UK airports, so thats a lot of passengers coming in from a high risk area. It's worrying.

And ... UK universities are striking again in February and March, so many students will be travelling to homes all over the world, not just China, as they won't want to stay in uni.

www.rt.com/news/480026-china-extends-coronavirus-quarantine/amp/?__twitter_impression=true 21 million more people in the quarantine zone

Why are we still accepting flights from China? Why couldn’t we follow the US and Australia?

Where are all the people who’ve had “a mild illness”????
Why are young people in intensive care??

@FourTeaFallOut

A lot of the international students are billeted/go to guardians/friends over the short school holidays, not that many take international flights in the half term

Jesus, I thought we had stopped taking ANY flights from anywhere in China?! That seems the very least we should be doing.

It pisses me off that our walk in centres and government generally are still asking if/focusing on whether people have travelled recently when they present with symptoms when those knowledgable dudes in the excellent clip posted a few pages ago specifically said that there should now be a change of focus (in the US) away from trying to track down people who have travelled, to testing people assuming that even those who have been nowhere near China could have contracted it from someone else. It seems so maddeningly slow it makes me want to scream.

I really should stay away from Twitter for a bit, I was on there til 1am watching terrifying videos that don't add up and reading scientific articles and generally scaring the shit out of myself.

AmelieTaylor unfortunately not at DD's uni. She stayed for reading week in October, it was very quiet as many had gone home. Her friendship group consists of about 20, only 3 live in the UK, others in places like China, India, USA.

Hi everyone. I'm joining this thread as there are likeminded worried people on it!

I ordered some masks from a medical supplies website 2 weeks ago. They didn't turn up, so I rang them today and was told that all their masks had been commandeered by the NHS. I think that speaks volumes.

I am concerned, not just for my family's health, but because I just do not see how the country will cope if it spreads here. I read somewhere yesterday that the NHS only has just over 500 specialist beds available.

I am just hanging onto the hope that because we have been forewarned, we are in a much better position than China was to stop it spreading. I am also trying to remind myself that the population of China is huge, so even if there are hundreds of cases in, say, Shanghai, out of that city's population of 25 million that isn't such a huge number (yet).

That's very interesting about the masks! They must be stockpiling just in case. Worrying that they know something we don't.

Another here with a DD at uni and many international students. Her uni is striking as well, she's trying to work out if she can afford the train fare home as many cleared out during reading week and the last strikes. Other than Wuhen, her uni stated at the start (and their website hasn't changed) that everyone was free to travel and to follow handwashing, coughing into tissue guidelines. Hopefully they'll change this as they have reading week, then two weeks of strikes, a week back and then another week of strikes.

@Amelie at our nearest international school many of the mainland Chinese go home for half term. More so than many of the other Asian nationalities as they are generally very affluent.

I have two DS at different unis, both with significant numbers of Chinese students. I am hoping that many of those students will choose not to travel back to China at the moment!

I'm another one who wishes that the UK government would, at the very least, ban all direct flights to and from China.

From everything I'm reading the masks are more to stop sick people from spreading water droplets than to prevent you catching it. We have some masks somewhere from the last panic but I can't work out which shed they're in. Typical result of keeping something for years in a piled up shed 'just in case' then not being able to find the damn things.

I'm fairly calm as I don't think the UK will end up as bad as China but, as per the name of the board, I intend to be fully prepped just in case so have ordered lots of extra medicines etc and restocked the brexit stash. DH isn't arguing this time.

I'm hoping the NHS is stockpiling in case they are predicting supply issues due to increased demand and possible shortages and not because they know something is coming.

I am remaining open-minded about the situation. However, I did snap up about £80 of disinfectants and gloves etc in my online shop last night . Still, half of that is for another family member, and, as DH said, we probably have a lifetime supply...

Managed to get a small supply of facemasks last week. Surgical and for DIY. We have plenty of goggles too. Haven't done a shop for tinned food yet.

HK has two more cases diagnosed and of those and two others they don't know where the infection came from:

"Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the Centre for Health Protection’s communicable disease branch, said so far four confirmed cases presented “no obvious source of infection”, and warned of the possibility of outbreaks in the community.
“It is highly probably the four cases were infected locally, so there could be invisible chains of infection happening within communities,” Chuang said. “We do not rule out a large spread [of the virus] in the future.”

www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3048839/coronavirus-hong-kong-confirms-first-death-39

I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, that it is circulating undetected?

Hi guys, been lurking for ages and followed thread from the start.
Everyone I know thinks I'm nuts when I say I'm worried about 2019-ncov but my dh (who's a consultant) has now started worrying too. He's looked out an old ebola mask (not used) that a colleague gave him for our DC to okay with and has even asked how my Brexit food stash is. This has worried me more than anything else.
The figures coming out of China just don't add up.
Anyone else getting a coronavirus SOS sign coming up on Google searches?

Sorry, just want to add back in September police Scotland did a grab bag public warning. Essentially it said that we should always have a bag of essentials ready to grab in an emergency. Things to include were medication, first aid kit, clothes, id and essential paperwork. We discussed at the time as thought it strange and the only 2 realistic scenarios where you would need this would either be a Pandemic or natural disaster. Just seems quite coincidental to me now....

@justanothernameonthewall that SOS was discussed by the WHO in their conference earlier. They are working with Google to try and help stop disinformation.

I remember that grab bag thing. People were wondering if it had anything to do with a no deal brexit.

8 year old boy diagnosed in Queensland Australia

I often think we should have grab bags, especially as DS and I have different surnames so I would want a letter from DP saying I’m his mother, like if I want to travel abroad with DSonmy own.

Do you all have one? I’m terms of documentation, what do you have and are they copies of originals?

The grab bag thing was to do with national preparedness month, it happens every year just with the October brexit deadline it hit the headlines as people thought it was about that

The grab bag thing is more for natural disasters/ evaluations. Epidemics would require people to stay in.

It was preparedess month or something similar, and was about the same time as the dam near collapse in Derbyshire.