My behavior wouldn’t need to change much from the last time we had a pandemic.
However, I would maintain a greater degree of skepticism about the “science” being distributed - not because I believe in science any less, but because Trump is systematically destroying our research institutions and public health system. It’s going to be really hard for them to respond to crises with drastically reduced resources and actively malignant government oversight.
That assumes the next pandemic comes while we’re still being affected by his policies, of course.
So far cases identified in the United States have been mild with one fatality. The biggest problem is not knowing how big the n is. There is some number of mild cases that are not being identified. One just has to guess if that is in the dozens, the hundreds, the thousands?
My mom died of covid, so i won’t do anything differently next time. But the one thing I’d do differently if i could do it over is spend more in-person time with her. She never got much out of zoom, etc. And the isolation was terrible for her.
I buy toilet paper by the case (started doing so before the pandemic) and keep both masks and hand sanitizer around. I think i did an appropriate amount of stockpiling (mostly rice and beans, flour, some canned fish and fruit, and ultra-pasteurized milk. Oh, and some dried fruit. I’d do that again if i could.
Although there were publicly available research papers that made it clear it was airborne quite early. I was so pissed at the CDC for pushing the “six foot” rule instead of masking and improved ventilation.
Yeah, to be more accurate I should probably say they did a bad job at quickly reaching an accurate internal consensus. They all had people that understood things early on. But that knowledge didn’t percolate through the bureaucracy quickly. And so they made a lot of bad public recommendations even when the internal knowledge was there.
Mostly I’d do the same thing. But it would be fun to have a plague doctor mask to wear to work (with a spot to put an N95 filter rather than the herbs and spices used back in the day ).
And the damage to the monitoring and response systems, to the research in progress to prepare for future threats, to the international coordinated efforts of shared information, will not be undone quickly.
I too am 66. I have no expectation of outliving the trump era. I will outlive him almost for sure. But the wreckage will live on a century after he is dust.
My parents had a house built to specification when I was in kindergarten. They put a bidet in their bathroom. Not even sure where they got one in 1972. But it was hard-wired.
My mother got a toenail fungus when they were a bitch to get rid of (before the oral med), and ended up using the bidet more to soak her feet than anything.
In South Africa, our less-than-beloved Health Minister banned alcohol and cigarettes, because both cause “people to socialise”.
Prices went up through the roof, but illegally smuggled Zimbabwean cigarettes started flooding the market. Wine was available on the black market, if you knew a person, wine farms, after all, make money from selling wine.
So next pandemic, I will stockpile cigarettes and booze, and make a profit out of government stupidity.
(We did not have a toilet paper shortage here, not sure what that fear was about in the USA)
So my understanding is there are several things that may help prevent the spread of infection that I’d do differently now that I didn’t know about before.
For one thing, I’d have masks in storage because there was a mask storage when covid started.
Also, gargling with a mouthwash containing cetylpyridinium chloride like Crest Pro Health before going out can help create an anti-microbial barrier in your mouth that helps prevent respiratory infections from taking hold.
There are also oral probiotics/prebiotics that supposedly help make it harder for respiratory infections to take hold if they get in your mouth, as well as nasal sprays that do the same thing for protecting your nasal cavity. I would’ve used those before I went outside the house if I could do it all over again.
Also I wouldn’t go on a cruise. Thats how I got covid the first time, which caused long covid symptoms. They even made everyone on the cruise take a covid test before the cruise and you had to test negative to be allowed onboard. Despite that, I still caught covid. I don’t know why I let my SIL talk me into going on that.
I was going to make a crack about “that’s what they want you to think” and then I realized the crazies don’t need any more encouragement, even in joke form. And now I’m depressed.
See..post a quick message and go out of town for a few days, and come back to find your typos!
Personally, I like picturing them panning as in panning for gold.. At the wedding. I’m not sure what they were looking for, though!