Quarantine observations and other Swine Flu reflections.

It’s not really a quarantine because my wife and I do go out sometimes. But we’ve managed to put our daily activities on hold and we spend a lot of time indoors, several days going by without even opening the front door.
Waiting for the worst of the epidemic to reach it’s peak and see what happens. we’ve been staying home a lot lately.

1)Stress: This is maybe one of the most complicated things to deal with. Staying home for so long really irritates you. The constant bumping into one another, the kid wanting to go to school, see his friends, go outside, etc, and you telling him he can’t wears you out. You also want to go out, do things, see other people, change a bit.
We all have short fusses by now and any little thing is enough to start an argument or a fight.
We’ve recognized this for what it is and talked over it, trying to be more patient with each other, finding things to do.
Talking helps, listening to one another helps even more.
We’ve talked about how, in spite of the situation, this is better than being forced to go outside to work, 9 to 5, and having no choice in spite of having two small children to worry about.
2)General preps apply: All that gear we always talk about, this is just one situation out of thousands were it all ends up being very useful. The better prepared you are, the better you’ll deal with these things.
Most of all I’ve found that I didn’t have enough of common, everyday use supplies like clothes softener, cleaning supplies for the house, bathroom, dish washing soap, etc, things that are easy to obtain and cheap but I somehow forgot about.
Having enough of these supplies for months, we only go out a couple days a week to take care of things we have to or buy fresh food so as to keep a healthy diet and also restock our long term supplies.
3)The ability to quarantine: National emergency is declared, classes have been suspended and certain events were large amounts of people gather have been canceled, but there’s not been an official quarantine approved or enforced by the authorities.
For them a few thousand dead are acceptable to keep the already poor economy going.
When this happens, having the ability to bug in indispensable. Either working for yourself, having enough non pay days available or having enough saving to pull this through is invaluable.
Most people can’t do this, doesn’t mean you should try to get to the point where you can make the decision and stop working for a few months.
One small tip though. When the economy is shaky, this is much easier done. In some cases companies actually look forward to a proposition where they have to pay you maybe 60%-80% of your salary and you stay home for a couple months. If the recession is hitting hard and there’s no actual work for your company, you’d even be saving them money.
Working from home is also a viable option for many of us. Maybe you get on line each day and work, and just go to the office once a week (wearing a respirator) and doing what paperwork is required.
This is something both employees, company managers and owners should look into as a contingency plan for a hard hitting epidemic. You have to be creative and think outside the box here. Find ways to keep things working yet preserve people’s health.
Being self employed and having savings for rainy days such as these would be an alternative as well. Maybe you don’t stop working entirely but also work from home or work less, and pack your visits into one or two days a week only.
4) Entertainment: A good TV, videogames, CD and DVD collection, toys for the kids, books, homeschooling material and supplies.
Some of these things such as toys you can order on line for cheap and you don’t even have to leave the house.
Also gear for working out, don’t forget the heavy bag, helps when you just need to hit something.
5)Again, stress is worth mentioning yet another time. (crap, as I write this my wife is arguing with my son over nothing at all).
Imagine a fallout bunker, imagine staying underground all packed in a very confined space for 14 days minimum.
I’d keep guns locked and ammo FAR away after the first 48hs in those conditions. Heck I’d secure sharp objects and possible blunts weapons as well, you really can’t stand each other after so much time all looking at each other.

FerFAL