Oh, important to note: bleach is inactivated by sunlight. A shoe bath would need to be out of direct light.

For shoes, consider setting up a diluted bleach shoe bath. When we had patients in isolation at the veterinary hospital, we had to step into a shallow pan of dilute bleach with a towel on the bottom of it. The towel was mostly to keep someone from slipping and falling, but we'd step in, wipe our feet on the towel in the bleach bath for a few seconds, and then step out onto a dry towel. We used to gown up to enter iso, (gown, gloves, mask, shoe covers), for iso, and then leave all the potentially contaminated garb in the isolation ward before we left. We did have a spray to use on our scrubs, but I have no idea if it would be effective against COVID-19. If I had to set up some kind of decontamination area for my house, I'd set up a shoe bath outside and then keep the shoes in a rubbermaid tote outside. We have rattlesnakes and scorpions here, so I can't leave shoes outside unprotected, because something will absolutely slither in. My garage is detached, so I could theoretically have everyone change clothes in there, and bag up the contaminated clothes to immediately go into the wash.

I am right there with you, regarding the worry. My husband's employer wants to send him on a business trip to Chicago next month. Even without the specter of this virus looming, I'd still frown about that because air travel during flu and cold season = husband with a cold/the flu. Oh, and looking at the calendar, he'll be traveling during spring break. Fantastic.

I am wondering if we will see the virus hit the US in a big way after spring break, due to vacation travel.

I'm lucky and have a large, walk-in pantry. To my annoyance, 2/3 of the pantry is taken up by husband's tools. If I really needed to, I could organize the pantry better (his stuff is a mess) and we could store about 2 or 3 months of food in it. Cleaning supplies are kept in the laundry room. I have enough for about 3 months, excepting tp and paper towels. They take up too much room. If we needed to stock up on those items suddenly, I guess I'd store them in a spare closet. We are a family of 3 humans, 2 cats, 1 dog. We have 2 chickens, too, but I keep their feed outside.

I know of a few people who've discussed it, but they've veered off into a political blame-game: "The US is/is not going to be impacted by COVID-19 because of who we do/do not elect this year!" Makes my head hurt. Locally, we've got people that are using COVID-19 to promote their CBD oil business. I'm unaware of any evidence that CBD oil will help with this, but ok. There's a bunch of really confused people in a local fb group that are under the impression that the area schools are working with the CDC to test the kids for coronavirus, so they aren't worried. (??????). They also think a vaccine is coming within the next few weeks, but they won't let their kids get it, because it's poison and the tests will be enough. (??????) The preppers I know are quiet. They are probably checking inventory and making sure everything is ready.

Only slight hyperbole. The kitchen is clear, as is the bathroom. Bedrooms and living spaces are ankle deep in toys. Halloween decorations are still up, as are Christmas, and probably won't get put away until May, if they get put away at all.

This is interesting. Hopefully a positive sign and not an indication that the virus is not containable, and thus no point of a lockdown.

One of my relatives does not use sheets for the kids' beds. The house is a wreck 24/7. Not hoarder-level of wreck, but you can't run the vacuum because the toy-layer is 3-6 inches deep across the whole house. Sheets-on-the-bed is something they've given up on, because they figure the house is going to be a constant wreck from kids for the next 5+ years, so not dealing with sheets is one less thing to manage. I kind of don't understand that outlook, but 🤷‍♂️

NY Post is kind of tabloid-ish. I don't trust much of what they write.

Thank you! Every time I say this, I get crazy-eye from people. Avoiding the children's museum and air travel during flu season does not mean I'm hiding in a bunker, lol.

I don't mention my "stockpile" to anyone, (just the word stockpile makes me sound like a loon), because it's met with eye rolls. No one I know would be prepared in the event of quarantine. There's also a lot of "live free or die!" types around here, and I can envision a lot of tension due to people yelling about their freedoms being trampled due to quarantine and refusing to comply. I know way, way too many people who have a "Lol, wut germz?!" attitude about illness. Like, they just don't care if they spread *or* catch illnesses, because they don't believe any of this stuff could actually harm them or anyone else. It's all a lot of drama and fear tactics from "Big Pharma" to steal your money. I could rant for hours and hours about this, but I'll stop. I'm expecting that this virus will become endemic.

I don't know if this link has been posted, but it shows a breakdown of every country with a reported case. It lists the Diamond Princess passengers separately. Data is broken down in many different ways: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Adding this link I found on a study on cloth masks. Conclusion is that cloth mask are not good, because they can retain moisture. I'm going to update my previous post. https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577

Hot water won't sterilize the cotton, but it will sanitize it if the temp is hot enough and you use bleach. For it to be truly sterile, you'd have to run it through an autoclave, which uses pressure and heat over time to sterilize. Items in an autoclave need to process at 121 degrees F for 15 minutes at 15 psi. There are also gas sterilizers that use ethylene oxide. I can't say that processing a cloth mask in an instant pot would meet the criteria for sterility. If someone is really concerned about needing a truly sterile mask, (like for an oncology appointment), they are better off talking with their oncology office about using cloth masks and having the oncology staff run them through the autoclave or gas sterilizer properly. Or whatever other thing the office recommends. There are cloth surgical masks out there, like real ones that a surgeon could use, not the ones on Etsy. I don't remember what the standards are for the cloth they are made of; there has to be so many threads per inch and the stitching has to be just so for them to be considered effective. But even then, they won't be as effective as a disposable mask with a filter layer in the middle. There are only a few articles on cloth masks (the "fashion" masks that people wear in areas of poor air quality), that I found on line, and they all indicated that cloth wasn't even very good at filtering out smog particles. Effectiveness really depends on fit, too. I've seen people walking around with a loose mask that barely covers the nose. Glove effectiveness also depends on proper usage. I've seen people don a pair of latex gloves, then touch various surfaces, then touch their face and hair, then go back to touching surfaces. Ack! No! The gloves aren't a magical anti-germ force field. The germs go on the gloves instead of your hands, but if you just go and touch everything with your now germy gloves, you aren't helping yourself at all! Edited to add: I think if one were looking to make decently effective cloth masks, you could probably get some cloth surgical drape and make them out of that material. Any regular type of cotton you find at a fabric store will be way too porous to be effective. Edit: I crossed out the talk about cloth masks because a study showed that cloth mask use resulted in higher rates of illness than other masks.

In agreement that keeping the military healthy is important. Then again, maybe housing quarantine patients on a military base is a poor idea. As you say, it's very easy to make errors in isolation protocol. But the risk of errors is also why moving quarantined people is risky. The more you move them, the more opportunities for error. You potentially leave a contaminated trail behind you.

I've felt like this is the case no matter which education philosopher/expert/"enthusiast" I've read. Under it all is the concept that children have a "true" nature that will only be be fully realized by following the author's philosophy. Peter Gray makes me nuts because he is very much about how kids need to spend time away from adults, otherwise they'll never learn how to be self-reliant. I've got a kid that does not crave time away from adults. He's always been an "old soul", and seems to prefer the predictable behavior of adults over the unpredictable behavior of other kids. Anything that has a vibe of "All kids want abc, all kids like xyz.." usually doesn't fit my kid. I'm not sure what exactly is meant by "natural learning". "Natural", as in "go out in nature and take learning from there" or "natural" as in "learning from play and regular interactions with the world at large"?

"Relative, you seem really anxious about this process. How are you feeling/doing? What are your worries?" And then I'd sit back and listen. If I had to bet, I'd say what was driving this is fear, which she'll have to work through in her own time. How long has she been homeschooling? A few weeks? Edited to add: Rather than discouraging her from reading other blogs and fb, maybe what she needs to to read All The Things about homeschooling, so she's not burning you out on the topic. I know when I first started homeschooling, I had LOTS of opinions and stupid ideas, lol. Lots of fear, too. I talked about homeschooling way too much.

Sodium hypochlorite is just bleach. I'm not sure there is much value in spraying the sides of buildings with it, because it's inactivated by sunlight and organic material. Bleach would work well to clean the insides of buildings. Maybe some value on cleaning outdoor surfaces that get handled frequently, like doorknobs, shopping cart handles, etc. But spraying the sides of buildings seems odd to me. I'm not an infectious disease specialist, however, so 🤷‍♂️

So basically, you need bleach and Lysol, lol. Chlorhex is good for bacterial control. If you have an infected wound or gingivitis, chlorhex is great. Bleach is good for viruses. Results may vary with Lysol.

If they rotate through disinfectant types, then probably not. Bleach can penetrate enveloped viruses like corona. The problem with bleach is that it can damage other surfaces, so it isn't necessarily a first choice disinfectant, depending on what needs cleaning.

This is a really weird response from WHO. Like, really, really weird and insensitive.

Article on supply chain issues. The virus is impacting not just production at Chinese factories, but shipping anything out of China. British Airways air cargo division has cancelled all flights for the rest of the month to mainland China. https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/05/business/shipping-coronavirus-impact/index.html

Exactly. If you know you'll need it in the near future and you can afford to buy it now, then buy now. If it turns out the supply chain is fine, then no harm. You're prepared early! Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

I think it's wise to buy a few extras of things your family typically uses, and consider it part of the rainy day fund. As long as what you buy is part of your normal usage, it won't feel burdensome to use it up. I don't think we're at a point where anyone needs to run out and panic-buy at the grocery. That being said, my husband noticed a big price jump on a piece of woodworking equipment he just bought. The motor for the router is made in China and the supplier was already having trouble getting the motor, and was having to turn to more expensive producers. It made us both go "hmmm", and do a quick household inventory to see if there is anything we should pick up now rather than wait. I coupon, so I typically have extras of a lot of things we use, but I'm being a little more diligent in making sure we have enough of the things we use every day.