Hey everyone,
Don’t know if it’s crazy yet where you live, but stores here are out of hand-soap, hand-sanitizer, and alcohol swabs!
I’m not too worried about the virus, more worried abut the ensuing sanity.
I have a bajillion swabs and syringes. I use swabs before applying pods and sensors, and also use swabs for my IV injections.
But anyway, a lot of the alcohol swabs on Amazon are out-of-stock, but you can still find some available. If you use alcohol swabs, hurry up and buy them before they are no longer available.
Also, I have some recommendations for some virus prep things, might be good to discuss.
I’m stocking up on grizzly wintergreen, black box wine, booby trapping supplies. Guns and ammo quota was long since filled but if any of you who’ve been nice to me need a tribe, I will train you.
I’m also good on toilet paper and soap since I used those even before this mess so had some on hand.
I made the mistake of forgetting to buy alcohol swabs and hand soap (both of which I’m getting low on) until this week. Couldn’t add them to my Walmart order yesterday and haven’t made it to a store to see if they’re really out of stock or just limiting what you can buy through the app. Did I mention we’re in a huge state and the closest confirmed cases are all confined 4 hours away?
Don’t forget Home Depot and Lowes. While my Costco and grocery store were wiped out, both Home Depot and Lowes had them in stock. We weren’t stocking up, just looking at carpet, but it was hard to miss the signs limiting each customer to 10 items in the cleaning aisle.
I do use alcohol swabs, I find them very useful when doing gel polish on my wife’s fingernails. For diabetes I use 91% isopropyl in a spray bottle (got it a couple of years ago from Walgreens, just keep refilling it) and those little round cotton things apparently intended for removing makeup.
When travelling I do carry the swabs; they are easily to use when changing a pod on an aircraft, however when on the ground I have pressurized alcohol spray cans; I haven’t seen them recently round here, but I still have a stock.
Realistically 70% isopropyl is fine and, indeed, I remember once when I was twelve the doc suggesting it was probably better not to try to clean the site before an injection. Mostly I use the alcohol to ensure adhesion of Omnipods and G6, but skin tack, etc, works for that.
Anyway, I live in Oregon. 95% ethanol is readily available from our liquor stores; you just have to ask for it. I have a couple of gallons stashed in the guest bathroom.
Our alcohol swabs are on auto-refill, so I think we’re good. I did what was (for me) “prepping” – basically I bought two weeks worth of groceries and refilled our general cleaning supplies soap, toilet paper, diapers and paper towel orders before we ran out. I also bought books on Amazon, a tile saw so that we can finally get to that house project when we’re both quarantined.
For diabetes supplies we already had excess insulin, extra sensors, test strips, sites and sensors, but I’m a little worried about the other supplies like skin-tac, needles, syringes, pen needles and unisolve.I may stock up on those. They’re not essential in an emergency, but we’ll use them eventually and it would be nice if lots of routines are disrupted to ensure that at least Samson’s diabetes care feels very routine.
We’re keeping Samson home from school this week. Kids don’t seem to be very affected, and even if his risk due to diabetes is 3X to 6X a similar kid his age, he’s still got lower risk than me. But I’m hearing real horror stories in Italy and just want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to stay out of the craziness.
My pharmacy’s first aid section was annihilated. Fortunately the general public who is panic buying doesn’t seem to know to go to the diabetes section for the rest of the alcohol swabs.
Just bought four of their last five boxes. Thanks for the heads up, @Eric. Walmart is showing out of stock and Amazon’s prices seem awfully high to me for what they have in stock. Maybe I’m wrong but it was 3x cheaper buying locally.
Thanks for the heads up,