Pandemic Survival Guide

Survival for any purpose under any circumstance is the act of adapting.” – Det V Cader

An epidemic is a quickly wide-spreading outbreak of a disease within a relatively localized area. A pandemic is an epidemic on a much larger geographic scale – globally in the case of coronavirus disease 2019.

    The Virus

COVID-19 is a highly infectious virus with a fatality rate of roughly 3+ percent and 15 percent experiencing severe symptoms. It’s spread person to person from respiratory droplets that can contaminate almost any object from proximity or contact.

Infection occurs when another person touches or inhales the droplets or its residue. Of which the virus can remain (“survive”) infectious on most surfaces for up to 3 days and up to 3 hours in aerosols.

A simple touch with the hands than a rub to the face (eyes, nose, mouth) can introduce the virus into your system, or breathing in an infected person’s cough.

The onset of symptoms is long at 2 – 14 days. Making it even more infectious as it can spread person to person for weeks before each infected person realizes that they are sick, not being able to take measures.

    The Symptoms

If you’re experiencing one or two of these symptoms, you may not necessarily be infected with COVID-19, perhaps the common cold, influenza or allergies.

However, if you are having multiple symptoms; especially coughing, difficulty breathing and fevers, it is a fairly good indicator of infection.

If you feel you may be infected, isolate yourself from anyone else you live in close proximity with and contact your doctor, or an ambulance if your condition is severe (can’t breath). Avoid public transportation to reduce the chance of infecting others.

    The Medicine

As of writing this pandemic survival guide, there is no cure, vaccine or specific treatment for COVID-19. Only pain and symptoms management.

However, some of the symptoms can be alleviated – you may feel slightly better but you won’t actually be better. Acetaminophen is preferred over ibuprofen (Advil) for headaches and fevers – Tylenol CFS is an excellent over-the-counter remedy.

As with having the flu or a cold, drinking lots of fluids, eating soup and getting rest is always ideal.

Look out for scams touting cures the CDC, WHO or FDA haven’t approved or even heard of.

    The Defense

COVID-19 is spread person to person, surface to person and not just by direct physical contact. But also potentially by merely being close to an infected person or even just touching something that person has touched.

So as with any infectious disease, staying away from the virus guarantees you will not be infected. The concept is simple but it gets complicated when you have to go into public spaces and other potentially contaminated places out of necessity.

Use common sense and physics. If you stay away (at least 6 feet) from all people all the time (within possibility and reason), including friends and family that you don’t live with already. It will significantly reduce the chance of contracting the virus.

Just as important is to reduce touching everyday public surfaces unless you absolutely have to.

If it’s a particularly “busy” surface, don’t touch your face, keys, phone or other heavily used personal item again until you disinfect or wash that hand.

When greeting people from the outside, obviously don’t shake their hands, hug or even elbow bump. Give a head nod. It’s universally recognized, requires no physical contact and works over long distances.

If you have to cough in public (even if you don’t think you’re infected), do it in the inside corner of your elbow, never in your hand. If someone coughs near you, hold your breath (but not taking in a breath) and try to get distance from the person and trajectory of the cough.

When washing your hands, do it with soap for at least 20 full seconds. Be careful of the faucet nob or lever after you finish as that can be contaminated as well. Try not to touch it directly when turning it off.

If you wear (nitrile) gloves outside, remember that they can just as easily get contaminated. So treat them as you would your bare hands, but instead of washing, throw them away. And don’t touch your face, phone, wallet etc., with your gloves after touching public surfaces. It’s the same concept.

When shopping at stores, pick from the back of the stack as these will have been touched less by human hands. Use contactless credit / debit cards whenever possible as physical cash can carry COVID-19.

Use the corner of your phone or the tip of your keys to press public buttons (elevators, ATMs etc.) as this gives the virus almost no surface area to cling to.

While out of your homebase, assume everyone is a carrier and every surface is contaminated.

For the kids: Tell them to think of every public surface as lava and people’s coughs as farts.

    The Social

The most effective method of slowing down the spread and eventually eradicating a contagion like COVID-19 is social distancing. The virus must continuously spread from person to person before it “dies” in order to replicate and continue to exist to keep on infecting.

Deprive the virus of all suitable hosts (humans) for a certain period of time then it’s viral life cycle and or our immune systems will take care of the rest.

The physics is simple; just stay away from other people. But everyone has to participate or the spread will continue. That’s why fighting and surviving a pandemic is a “crowdsourced” strategy.

Don’t go out to known crowded places or even to your friend’s house whatsoever unless it’s absolutely essential. Remember that COVID-19 carriers may not show symptoms for up to 2 weeks as well as some being asymptomatic. So just because a stranger or your best friend looks fine, doesn’t mean they are fine.

You may be young and healthy and not care about the consequences to your our body but you may fatally infect someone close to you with a compromised immune system or an underlying medical condition.

Mathematically speaking, if everyone in the world practiced perfect social distancing for 14 days, the pandemic would effectively be over.

Instead it’s been 3 months and it hasn’t peaked yet.

So do your part and stay apart.

    The Sustenance

A pandemic crisis isn’t like a natural disaster (hurricane, earthquake) or an active war zone in that infrastructure, businesses and other physical property would be greatly affected, let alone be destroyed.

There will be loss in human life, but the food supply chain, while strained and declined, will continue to prevail – at least so far in every modern pandemic.

Don’t overly hoard food that will take away from more needy people and further strain the supply chain. But do stock up no more than weekly (preferably online) on certain types of “survival foods”:

Foods that can be stored without refrigeration and served indefinitely and without significant or any electricity / gas. This is an extra precaution in the unlikely but possible event of a power grid failure.

At worst, even if you never end up eating those foods during the pandemic, you’ll have potentially years to consume them because of their extensive shelf lives.

Pre-practicing survival preppers will thrive but for everyone else, it’s not necessary to accumulate that level of food if you haven’t already done so before the pandemic. This is also crowdsourced survival for the betterment of all people during a pandemic.

Many or all restaurants may be closed to eat in but take advantage of delivery and contactless pickup options if available – remember to tip well.

    The Mindset

Strategies and concepts of a pandemic survival guide is nothing without the right mentality. When you’re sick, you stay home, relax, keep low and ride it out until it’s over. In a pandemic, the world is sick. So that’s why your perceived reality of the world may shift as so.

Panic and worry won’t help you, the situation or anyone else, so don’t. Don’t be depressed if you feel helpless, because there is something real you can do to fight the virus… social distancing.

Again, it’s a crowdsourced survival mechanism that combats pandemics with extreme efficiency – but we all have to chip in. Do this little thing for a little while and you will have literally helped save the world.