Hi all, OP here.
We are all still well in my home, despite one son living with me who works stocking the grocery store shelves at night. The workers there are now required to wear masks at work (county mandate) and I’ve sent some of the homemade fabric masks I’ve been sewing to his coworkers. My son is being very careful with hand washing etc. since my boyfriend has stage 4 lung cancer.
All my employees are very happy to have the masks I made for them two months ago. We are no longer seeing patients in our office (except for maybe 1 a week and not for acute illness) but are conducting telemedicine visits. As you might expect, income has dropped considerably and I am hoping to get the SBA forgivable loan to keep my employees paid. We still go to the office (plenty of work still refilling prescriptions, phone messages etc in addition to the televisits) but we all wear masks and try to keep 6 feet or more away from coworkers, frequent hand washing etc.
I haven’t had to break into my stock of dried beans and rice yet, and son has been able to bring things like milk and produce from work. I even have a box of Sees chocolates that I bought before they closed and saved for Easter candy.
My last shopping trip was to Costco a couple of weeks ago, and since we are projected to peak here soon, I’m trying to avoid going back for a while. Luckily a friend/patient who I treated for probable CoVID a couple of weeks ago thanked me with an order from Omaha steaks, so my freezer is full of steaks, burgers, shrimp and chicken right now. If we all got sick today, we could eat well for time enough to recover.
I’ve been less stressed than most because of my preparedness. I’m not worried about whether I can find this or that. I put half my IRA into cash at the peak of the market and although I will have to withdraw some cash to get me through the next few months, I’ve been reinvesting the rest as the market hit lows, so in the long run I should probably make up the money I had to take out and end up as good, or better, than I would have been if this hadn’t happened.
I’ve never been a prepper or anything resembling it, but I must say, I’m impressed with how much peace of mind comes in a crisis like this when you’re not worried about finances, food, or toilet paper. I know most are under extreme stress and I’m going to do everything I can to keep my employees paid and safe.
I noticed someone a while back posting about my original fatality estimates being off. I think I posted already, but to be clear - the crude case fatality rate of 3-4% does NOT include mild and asymptomatic cases. The best current estimates of overall fatality among ALL people who contract the virus is 0.7% - not far from the estimates I originally made. (For some unknown reason, the case fatality rate has been quite higher in Italy and Spain - maybe less testing or more elderly, but there might also be a more aggressive strain there. I imagine we won’t have the answer for a while).
I hope you are all safe and well. It’s a nasty bug and even cases that don’t have to be hospitalized can be pretty awful.