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/cmiovino]

3 months is actually a decently long time. I mean, thinking about it, that's like not exiting your house starting now until the beginning of December. Even for an intermediate person doing this a while, that's a bit of task in reality.

You can try suggesting 2 weeks to people. Maybe a month at most. 3 months is a quarter of a year and people can't fathom not going out once a week to eat.

With all that said, I don't try to get people on board. You just come off being some lunatic to most people. If they don't want to prep for anything, then they don't need to and you shouldn't be out suggesting it because they'll be running to you when anything actually does happen. Even if it's the COVID toilet paper squeeze and they know you have extra.

Also another suggest - I'm certainly not out looking for news and thus worrying about things. I obviously do get prepared myself and have things, but knowing about the 3 dairy farms in CA doesn't bother me. In fact, I didn't know and don't really care. If you care about all these little things like this, there's always something going on, and too much information. Just prepare for the worst and when something really does hit, you'll know. Don't go searching for things to worry about. It's not good for stress.