Hellobee Boards

@Anagram: I refuse to even consider looking. As an aside, my office in NYC started planning how we would handle our day to day operations in the event coronvirus disrupted our ability to go to the office and that has me a little freaked out!

I work in fashion with most of our production in China so we are getting hit too.

I don’t think there is confirmed case here yet; honestly I’m not really more worried about this than the flu but I’m def worried about what it’s doing to the stock, my work, day-to-day stuff.

I’m also Chinese and all the racist remarks I’ve seen lately are just...

I refuse to look. DH tried to bring it up last night and I was like nope nope nope nope... Burying my head in the sand cause I have to think of what the money will be in 20-30 years versus now.

DH just went and bought a ton of stock yesterday because of the plummet in prices. Honestly most of what we have is doing fine—DH is also a financial advisor though and has made sure we have a super diversified portfolio. I also wouldn’t look much right now. Viruses and even epidemics are relatively short lived.

@graceandjoy that is awful that people are reacting this way. It never even crossed my mind to think that it was the fault—if that’s the right word—of the country of origin.

@agold: DH was a little worried. He said if they do quarantine towns we should have 7 days worth of food. I bought a few extra bags of frozen veggies to appease him. I think we (and most people) would be surprised by what we could scarce up from the pantry/freezer if we had to.

@agold: I'm not doing prepping, but I shop at costco relatively frequently so I usually have a pretty adequate supply of food, TP, etc. But to be honest I probably wouldn't be prepping even if I didn't. I don't tend to worry too much about things like this. Although I will probably make sure I have enough baby formula on hand just in case. But again, I usually buy that from costco too.

I’m legit shocked by how much people are freaking out in our town. The Costco’s have been insane, people on Facebook are stockpiling food and supplies and masks/sanitizer/gloves are out of stock literally everywhere. I am a total hypochondriac with major health anxiety and I’m really trying to keep sane about it, which I have been managing pretty well so far. As others said, we have lots of food around anyway if we were quarantined, and we have an emergency natural disaster type kit that I put together after a random tornado hit near us 2 yrs ago and we lost power for 5 days. I think I’ll add some extra canned stuff to my grocery order this week but I’m not stocking a bunker or anything! Even bottled water is out of stock, which I’m like do we think the entire city water and electrical system is gonna shut down?!

I’m also curious about people’s travel plans. Is anyone cancelling based on corona? My in laws are going to Florida for a few weeks starting this weekend and I’m a little concerned things will escalate while they’re gone and they wouldn’t be able to get home or get quarantined.

@muffinsmuffins: I’m kind of surprised too about people stockpiling.

We had a big email go out at work today about general sickness info. They are getting hand sanitizer and purel wipes for everyone’s desks and loads of gloves for the office. A reminder to stay home if your not well. They also want everyone to start taking their laptops home nightly in case you can’t come in.

The crazy part is there are no cases in the province I’m in. I’m not taking my laptop home unless we start to see a lot of illness in our area. At our house we have a god couple weeks worth of food in the pantry.

@muffinsmuffins: I may get heckled for admitting this, but I cancelled the hotel portion of our spring break trip the other day. We were about to be billed for the full amount of the stay with limited refund options once we were within 30 days of the trip. While I’d like to think exceptions would be made for rescheduling if new travel bans made it impossible for us to go on our vacation, I’m not entirely sure what a crisis-struck resort would opt to do to stay afloat, and couldn’t afford the financial risk (its a high end destination in the Caribbean we had planned and budgeted for, so not an amount of money I’m willing to lose and shrug off). I didn’t cancel our airfare because it’s basically refundable/changeable, so I’ll analyze the situation the week before. If I’m feeling bold and the resort is still available (maybe even at a better rate), we may rebook and go after all. But I’d still have a teeny bit of reluctance only because if one of us were to become ill while traveling and have to quarantine in place while on the trip, we would not be able to afford to stay at this resort for another two weeks, and I don’t know enough about cheaper/air b’n’b options to say for sure that’s what I

As far as preparedness, I’m not particularly scared of one of us getting sick/dying since we aren’t a high risk group. It’s more that in the NYC suburbs where many people commute to the city and travel internationally for work, I accept that quarantines, school cancellations, and shortages as people panic buy are a real possibility. I’ve stocked up on a little extra cleaning supplies, OTC meds, paper products, and bulked up our pantry. Nothing crazy, just things we will use anyway, but a slightly higher amount than we’d normally keep on hand... like I bought soap when there were still 3 bars left instead of one, and grabbed an extra box of children’s Tylenol.

@PinkElephant: @caitcat: Dh and I were just talking about this last night. We have moderate travel plans for over easter and it seems like DH might want to cancel. I'll be honest the thought hadn't crossed my mind..... I'm really hoping this stuff gets under control. (fingers crossed)

We just pulled the trigger on a huge spring break trip about a month ago. So far, we have no plans to cancel yet. It's all domestic travel, so that helps. The hotels are all refundable, the flights we could pay to reschedule, but our Disneyland tickets are non-refundable. The reason we're doing this over spring break is because I don't know when we'll have another chance to take a family vacation in the foreseeable future. Of course, we'll monitor conditions. Maybe it will make spring break less crowded? I know there are a lot of foreign travelers who visit Disneyland, and obviously if there's an outbreak in that area, we'll reconsider. If we do have to postpone, maybe we could reschedule over the summer, but we have some things going on personally that we might not be able to.

@BadgerMom: I know! it's not like a hurricane where power and utilities might go down, folks!
But I do believe a lot of people won't drink tap water....

And I honestly believe some people get a little thrill out of prepping for an imagined crisis

@krispi: I’ve had the same thought re: crowd reduction, which is why I’m holding my flights for now. I’m definitely banking on resort cancellations.

@muffinsmuffins: Thanks for backing me up! honestly, cruises kind of gross my germophobe brain out under the best of circumstances and you could not pay me to go one one now. I feel so sorry for the people quarantined on ships, and can’t imagine how awful it must have been for people to be quarantined twice, neither time in their own home.

@BUNBUN: Haha preppers gonna prep! 🤪 I’ve frequently commented to DH and my friends that honestly, if it’s a true end-of-days situation, I’m not sure I really WANT to survive for months barricaded in our basement surviving on years-old jugs of Poland Spring and cold canned black beans, haha....but I guess that over the top prepping gives some people a sense of control. I feel like by buying the more minimal “supplies” that I do on a regular basis. I’ve made informed decisions/done right by my kids, and that gives me peace of mind.

@Ajsmommy: @caitcat: glad I’m not the only one being a little more cautious than usual. It’s out of character for us; we are avid travelers and our kids have been to all sorts of places that make most people raise an eyebrow. There’s just too much in this situation that is out of my control for now!

@BadgerMom: Also don’t get the water?!? But we have home filtration and drink tap.

@agold: omg I made the mistake of going to Costco last Friday and I didn't realize this was going on before going and was shocked! haha... I just wanted some basics and they were OUT of toilet paper.

My 401k is scary

But in better news, we're re-financing our mortgage since rates are SO LOW.

@hellobeeboston: we are refi-ing too! gotta take advantage
@LadyDi: glad it at least helped out in one aspect!

We think the rates will go even lower so we’ll refi then. A definite plus out of this whole thing.

I’m in the thick of the NY exposure scare so I’ve stocked up. It’s all things we’ll get through eventually so I don’t see the harm. It’s not a lot of money for peace of mind.

@Becky: woah! All the stores around us have big signs out front on the doors saying ‘we are sold out of hand sanitizer’ so that’s a gold mine! Nice of them to share the wealth with you guys instead of trying to sell it for profit.

I heard on the radio that multiple travel insurance companies are disqualifying corona from cancellation from here on out so check your policies!

I picked up my youngest from daycare yesterday and the teacher said they are suggesting our family doctor check any kids with a cough or symptoms because of corona. I was like uhhhhh we haven’t travelled and my kid has the daycare cold and is fine otherwise so no? What would they check or test?! It’s getting pretty out of hand I think. However, it made me think: has anyone had their daycare mention anything in case there are cases? Would they shut down? Quarantine?

@muffinsmuffins: Our school district has a plan in place for district-wide response to covid-19, especially if we have confirmed local cases. DS's preschool sent out an email letting us know that they are monitoring the recommendations of the health department, CDC, and the school district and encourage parents to monitor their kids health, keep them home if they are sick, and help the school enforce their (already established) hand-washing routine in the classrooms.
They identified what the level alert status means for any potential outbreak and how they will continue to stay in contact with us.
We are in the south and it's just the start of allergy season, combined with one of the worst local flu seasons we've had in years. It does make me wonder how people are drawing the line with symptoms, but I think everyone is encouraging folks to use an abundance of caution.
We have a high-risk person in our home and I'm currently 6 months pregnant, so I'm grateful to any parent who errs on the side of caution when it comes to containing a potential cold, flu, or any other virus!

@muffinsmuffins: our daycare sent out a letter that says to notify them if anyone in the household has traveled or plans to travel to China, South Korea, Iran, Italy, or Japan. Anyone returning from those regions has to quarantine themselves and their child from the center for 14 days. They have a notice posted on the door as well.

The elementary school just sent out a general recommendations to prevent spreading infections email and a copy of their too sick for school policy.