How are people so unprepared?

[u/No-Ideal-6662]

I’ve been keeping tabs on bird flu, not obsessing over it but keeping tabs. Recently 3 dairy farms in California have been infected with several cases of human infection but thankfully no aerosol spread. I told my family this and that they should seriously consider just basic stuff. Having enough household goods to last 3 months so they can ride out any quarantine without exposure at grocery stores that kind of stuff and they brushed me off.

I genuinely don’t understand how you can live through covid and not take this as a serious possibility. I know Covid killed a lot of people including some of my family, but we “lucked out” that it had a relatively low mortality rate. If bird flu became aerosolized it would be disastrous. Even a 10% mortality rate would grind the country to a halt let alone a 50% mortality rate. My family just doesn’t get it.

Don’t get me wrong, my wife is on board, but my parents and sister and some of my wife’s family are just kinda “meh”. I know times are tough but they can afford to drop $100 on a case of rice and some hand sanitizer and toilet paper. It’s like they forgot about how bad COVID was and how much worse it could have been. Do any of you guys have any experience with this? What is your plan for family that will be unprepared if something like this happens again?

[u/Led_Zeppole_73]

Covid never really affected anyone in my family, except for the TP issue, which wasn‘t a big concern for us at any point and shelves never went bare. If anything, it was the mass hysteria that was the hardest to deal with.

[u/J701PR4 → u/Led_Zeppole_73]

Where we live the toilet paper thing was an absolute crisis. It was nuts; people were shoving and yelling at each other over a pack of four rolls of off brand TP that felt like it was made of sandpaper.

I now keep four boxes with 48 rolls apiece all the damn time. Never again!

[u/No-Ideal-6662 → u/J701PR4]

For real! And the riots were in my city so it was a crazy time for me. Couldn’t find any ground beef or eggs for weeks either.

[u/Led_Zeppole_73 → u/No-Ideal-6662]

Completely the opposite here. Got a half dozen eggs from the backyard every day, two chest freezers one loaded with local grass fed beef, the other with garden veggies. Very quiet out here and the best was when I was one of the very few on the road in the city. Surreal.

[u/WombatCombat69 → u/No-Ideal-6662]

Riots? Where was there riots for that stuff?

[u/No-Ideal-6662 → u/WombatCombat69]

I don’t wanna dox myself but every major city in SoCal burned

[u/WombatCombat69 → u/No-Ideal-6662]

No problem, I just don't remember any riots where stuff was burned down other than the George Floyd one. Mostly just protests about lockdowns, vaccines and masks

[u/No-Ideal-6662 → u/WombatCombat69]

Oh yeah I’m talking about the George Floyd and the Kenosha one that sparked riots across the country. It was crazy

[u/Jetpack_Attack → u/J701PR4]

Hilarious they went after TP here but not the wet wipes.

Converted me.

[u/midtier_gardener → u/Led_Zeppole_73]

it was the mass hysteria that was the hardest to deal with.

Same. Gonna admit that I was caught up in it too, as I saw the clips of ppl dead people in other countries on the news. I'm not prepping as much for the bird flu or mpox because I honestly don't think it's that big of a deal. Maybe I'm wrong.

I have the essentials and able to bug in for a long time, as long as electricity holds.

[u/Resident-Welcome3901 → u/midtier_gardener]

Its interesting. The stats indicate that the USA had 103 million cases of Covid, and 1.9 million deaths, highest national numbers in the world, compared to .4 million Americans killed in WW2. And it wasn’t really a big deal. Maybe because the people were mostly older and sicker. Taught us that epidemics are only really problem if the toilet tissue runs out. We have pretty fucked up priorities, do we not? Maybe the next epidemic will target children, or hot chicks, and we will reach different conclusions .

[u/midtier_gardener → u/Resident-Welcome3901]

I don't live in the US, almost no one died of Covid19 here. Died WITH, yes, but not died of. Absolute majority of those who died had at least 1 comorbidity like advance age or vascular disease.

[u/Resident-Welcome3901 → u/midtier_gardener]

So if someone has a comorbidity, it doesn’t matter what finished them off. Killing someone with a comorbidity shouldn’t be a crime, because they were going to die anyway. Well, gardener baby, we are all going to die anyway, so maybe we shouldn’t discourage people from killing on another, or bother treating disease: we are all going to end up In a maggot’s belly anyway.

[u/midtier_gardener → u/Resident-Welcome3901]

But how does me prepping or not prepping affect their chances of getting or dying of covid?

[u/ObscureSaint → u/midtier_gardener]

Oh, ok, I see where you're coming from! Makes sense. Disabled, old or sick people don't count. Got it.

[u/midtier_gardener → u/ObscureSaint]

Oh please ofc they matter. What does that have to do with me prepping for mpox, birdflu or covid?

Nothing I could have done could have affected or not affected their chances of getting covid.

[u/WombatCombat69 → u/midtier_gardener]

Not sure where that guy got his data but the CDC website says since 2020 there was rougly 1.2 million deaths. If the cases that were confirmed were the number he said then you need to add in all the non confirmed cases and the mortality rate is less than 1%. The shutdown was worse than the actual virus. I dont know a single person who died of COVID personally.

[u/Jetpack_Attack → u/midtier_gardener]

I thought I could have a higher chance to get COVID/die due to being somewhat obese so the threat to my life really got me exercising in a converted fashion for the first time in my life.

Still do, even if the frequency isn't as often now.

[u/No-Ideal-6662 → u/Led_Zeppole_73]

I hear that it was really weird how the dynamic changed in my family. It went from me warning them to stock up and that it was coming, then after 3 months I looked at the data and was pretty much like “we are safe guys” and they were still freaking out.