19 posts were split to a new topic: Unexpectedly Robust Discussion of Bidets and Toilet Construction
I don’t really know anything much, other than what I have read about it, but collectively I can put some thoughts together.
While the flu and pneumonia shot won’t protect you from CV, I think it is still useful because preventing illness in general can make you less susceptible to becoming sick from other things. Being sick from the flu makes it harder to fight other illnesses. Also, if you get the flu and need to be hospitalized, that is not ideal as far as limiting exposure. So I think a flu and pneumonia shot is a good idea, as an indirect measure of reducing risk.
These are just the general recommendations that have been made on reducing the risk of infection:
- avoid crowds
- perform frequent hand washing
- maintain distance when speaking with people
- avoid contact with people and public surfaces (elevator buttons with elbows!!)
- clean surfaces of areas other people have touched
- wash hands well after touching public surfaces
- avoid touching face, mouth, nose
- sorry, hate to be rude, but sneezing and coughing people, just gotta avoid them…hate to be a hater, but…
The spread of germs is so easy. Think about a scenario, like co-worker Larry is walking to the break-room and coughs. He covers his cough with his hand. Then he opens the break-room refrigerator to take out his lunch, and touches the refrigerator door handle with his cough-hand. Hey, thanks Larry! 
Co-worker Betty then opens the door right after him, takes out her sandwich, and eats it with her hands. Yay! Betty was not really pulling her weight on that project anyway!
I think it’s important to have a reasonable amount of food, necessities (things like detergent, soap, toilet paper), and medical supplies (insulin and syringes!!) at home in case there is a run on everything. Be prepared to have everything you need at home for at least two weeks.
For food, I like the simple emergency stash of these two items - ramen noodles and peanut butter. Why? Because they have a shelf-life of like forever, and those two things contain the basic nutrients of carbs, fat, and protein. There are many other ways of doing it - would love to hear recommendations - but those two things last a long time and are super easy to have, and they cover it all - carbs, fat, and protein. (For long term, you’d need other vitamins and minerals and a supply of other things, this is just for the short-term apocalypse).
(Yes honey, I know we’ve had nothing but ramen noodles and peanut butter for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the past 4 nights, but this is the zombie apocalypse, so suck it up.)
For D supplies, you should have a stash of whatever you think you will need for the short-term. I would recommend having several months of short-term stash.
In the long-term, for me it all comes down to nothing but syringes and rapid insulin. I could live a good life with nothing but those two things. If you want to get fancy, you can buy $20 vials of NPH - without a prescription in most states. (I have a healthy stash of NPH, but not a lifetime supply.)
When I was 5, I lived off nothing but syringes, slow insulin, and NPH. I could do that again if I had to. You could do it also, if you had to.
CGM, fancy basals, pumps, BG meters - those are all luxury items. To stay alive, all you need is food, insulin, and a delivery mechanism. Syringes last almost forever, and can be re-used over and over.
6 Likes
Thanks, for the good common sense.
3 Likes
Or a knuckle. Easier in northern climes where we wear bulky winter coats. Also use knuckle for ATMs, debit card readers, etc.
3 Likes
Canadians who can’t get alcohol swabs from pharmacies can still (as of today) order them from diabetesexpress.ca and omnipod.diabetesexpress.ca.
1 Like
Same, plus quinoa, oats, gf pasta, seeds/nuts, frozen meat, frozen gf pizzas, various snack foods, peanut butter, shelf-stable non-dairy milk. Probably would have gotten a bunch of canned tuna and canned tomatoes, but I can’t eat either. We have a deep freezer in our basement, so that’s super handy right about now. Also have a stash of frozen homemade broth and frozen homemade yellow tomato sauce (which I can eat!).
Also if you want shelf-stable bulk dried goods sent to you, like grains, nuts etc, I highly recommend nuts.com. I think they have a lowered or waived $ requirement for free delivery right now bc of the pandemic and their shipping is super fast and products high quality.
Other things to make sure you’re stocked up on besides toilet paper is dental stuff, soap (sanitizing everything will be less important if you’re staying home, but you’ll still need soap!), laundry detergent, etc.
2 Likes
Diluted bleach in a spray bottle and paper towels or napkins can substitute for the wipes.
4 Likes
Do you have a dilution amount?
Bleach can also be used to help purify water for drinking. 2-4 drops per quart. Although boiling your water is preferred, if things really hit the fan, it may be difficult to boil your drinking water…
But since bleach does not last forever, a lot of survivalists recommend calcium hypochlorite instead. It’s basically the stuff found in the tablets you put in swimming pools to disinfect it.
And you can use calcium hypochlorite to make your own bleach too. If you can’t find bleach in your supermarket right now, buy some 70% calcium hypochlorite from Amazon while it is still available.
8 tablespoons calcium hypochlorite per quart of water makes bleach.
3 Likes
This is an old thread, but a while ago I wrote about how to reuse an infusion site set. Even ones that are not steel - you can still reuse them!
Something to read once and file away for a future day if it ever becomes necessary…
1 Like
For general cleaning 1-3 Tbsp per gallon is effective. Make sure to use room temperature water, too hot or cold and you reduce the chlorine content.
For sterilizing you should use 1 cup per gallon of water.
3 Likes
Interesting pair of comments too…
So, there is “cleaning” and there is “disinfecting”. Normally cleaning is a lot easier because disinfecting involves either killing or at least denaturing (depending on your religion). Cleaning just washes stuff away and complete cleaning is also complete disinfecting.
So most of the time we clean things. When we wash dishes we are cleaning them, when we put them in a dishwasher to clean them we are also disinfecting them because of the temperature in the dishwasher.
Cleaning things is really important. If you can’t eat off it then you probably need to disinfect it too, assuming you have cleaned it enough. I can’t think, at this moment, when such a situation might arise; when I might need to disinfect something I had completely cleaned.
I am absolutely with @Sam in his conclusion, though he probably won’t thank me for saying so.
I clean my counter when I spill vegetables and cooking spatter on them. I disinfect them when I spill raw meat on them. To each his/her own.
1 Like
Just bought a couple of bottles of Smirnoff Vodka…I am ready!
2 Likes
Thanks for posting this. We ordered from them today.
3 Likes
We have lots of swabs if anyone needs some. Inadvertently over-ordered and would be happy to ship some.
MPF
5 Likes
2 posts were split to a new topic: Watch that can run XDrip+