Security and Coronavirus?

A pandemic is sweeping the world, and there’s a lot of people out there worried for their own safety and security. And we should be worried. While many of us are relatively young and healthy, there is no doubting the numbers. The most vulnerable among us – the sick and the old – are facing an unprecedented, extremely serious risk.

The question on most lips these days, is how to protect one self, and loved ones, and still survive in a modern society. We don’t grow our own crops anymore, we don’t hunt and very few of us even have the skills to make simple things on our own.

Social distancing is an extremely important part of your own security.

The reason for this isn’t to entirely prevent the spread of the virus, but to slow it down. This is an important distinction. Slowing the spread of the virus will help safeguard the availability of healthcare services, preventing an overload of hospitals and supplies.

There are two or three current and ongoing examples of how well this can work, and what happens when it’s not implemented.

South Korea is an excellent example of successful implementation, as well as China. South Korea went to great lengths to implement measures early, aggressively tracing contaminated individuals for quarantining of persons and groups, using GPS data, interviews, and credit card tracking in the process. This has worked very well.

China is a totalitarian regime, and shut down entire cities with millions of inhabitants, and is still, at the time of writing this, severely restricting the movement of people both inside and outside those zones. While still seeing about 80.000 confirmed cases, the country has been able to curb the spread and almost slow the virus to a halt.

Italy is the example on the other end of the spectrum. As with many Western countries, Italy did not put serious measures into action until it was arguably too late. The number of deaths is horrifying – with far fewer confirmed cases than China, Italy is suffering far worse numbers of fatalities (passing 4000 as of writing this – China is holding at 3250).

The cause of this is many faceted, of course, but the lack of response, leading to overloading an unprepared healthcare system, is definitely among the top. An elderly population, high numbers of smokers and underlying illness and disease as well as a cultural lack of social distance are all contributing factors to the mortality rate being extreme. The latest numbers, produced from examination of some 355 of the fatalities, show clearly that pre-existing conditions and age are vital.

Of the 355 examined, the average had 2.7 pre-existing conditions. 25% had one pre-existing condition, 25% had two such, and almost half had three or more. 96.3% of the fatalities were over 60 years of age, and only 0.8% were younger than 50 years of age. (source)

But, young people are far from invincible.

Protecting Yourself and Others

Unless you’re in the risk groups, “others” should be the operative word here.

We all have a responsibility to protect those among us that are most at risk. So how do you do that?

• Stay home. Best advice ever. If you can, you must.
• Don’t hoard. There’s nothing indicating that we need to “stock up” on anything. Anywhere. Hoarding leads to shortages more than anything else, so don’t do it. Shop sensibly – enough for a week or two of stay-at-home goodness. No more. And seriously… toilet paper? Get outta here.
• Use masks if you feel you must. But, remember that surgical masks and even dust masks are single use. I.e. once you’ve exposed them to environments that may have been contaminated, you’ll have to throw them away. Correctly. Also remove them correctly. Also put them on correctly. Tldr; if you don’t know how to use them correctly, don’t.
• Use gloves if you must. See above though… all the same things apply.
• Act as if both you, and everyone else, is infected. Because you might be. And they might be.

Shortages and DIY

Making your own protective gear and stocking up on supplies are questionable practices, and there’s no guarantee they won’t do more harm than good.

However, when supplies of simple things like masks are short, there are some things you can do to make your own, and repurposing things you already have to make similes that might be not as effective as the “real thing”, but comes close. We’ll be posting some things you can make yourself, but with the caveat that you should always do your own research, and always remember that social distancing, and isolation/self quarantine, is the absolute best option right now.

In the mean time, stay safe.

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