5 ms·

What are the chances that residential electricity, gas or water get shut off as a result of an outbreak in North America? I live in a mid-sized town and we have

What are the chances that residential electricity, gas or water get shut off as a result of an outbreak in North America? I live in a mid-sized town and we have enough dry beans and cereals to last a few months, but without hot water it would be a week at most.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
James_Henry 7y ago
I don't know the chances but some of the linked documents go over how the governments should work to minimize service disruptions like these. Of course, it will depend on the specifics of where you live, but I would guess that there are very few issues in this regard through the country.
jerf 7y ago
I don't know more than anybody else. All I can tell you is that I'm not personally expecting that to happen, or at least, no more so than usual. One of the reasons for that is that there's actually multiple phases to this sort of thing. Quarantine is a response you use when trying to completely squash it early, but as the virus escapes quarantine, you go to a different strategy of trying to reduce the virus' effective r0, involving preventing mass gatherings, encouraging self-quarantine, encouraging working from home, etc. Some quarantines may still be part of the strategy, but it's not the only arrow in the quiver. It's not a matter of choosing between "quarantine everybody completely for weeks" or "everybody dies". Broadly speaking, it's reasonable to expect a very high chance that the infrastructure industry will successfully keep transmission within itself low enough that it won't actually catastrophically fail. It's a high priority and everybody knows it. A lot of the work involved in this sort of infrastructure doesn't involve being up close and personal with people. You might want to try to avoid having a plumbing problem in your residence or something, though. I live in an area prone to power outages (a 4 day outage less than a year ago, although that was an outlier), and I haven't been buffing up my "power outage" supplies. I do have them. But I've been filling up my freezer in stages instead for this. To be honest, I don't even expect the stores to completely fail, though there may be a run on them at the beginning. But the stores will be one of the biggest remaining hubs there will be, by necessity. If I can just pre-buy some stuff I would have bought anyhow and avoid having to go there at all during the containment period, it seems worth it. The extra package of toilet paper from Costco isn't going to go bad in the meantime. Let me give my generic "preparation" spiel here: Basic prep is a good idea anyhow. Society is far more resilient against a wide variety of threats when more people can last a week or two of infrastructure outage. Being prepped is the socially responsible thing to do. If this is what it takes for you to set up a bit of prep, ok, fine. It's not panic, it's being responsible. Shoot for not having to go to the grocery store for 2-3 weeks, probably. Buy things you'll use anyhow, which means you're just forward-loading some spending you'd have done anyhow. Don't forget to think beyond food; toilet paper, tissues, medicine, shampoo, soap, etc. (Fortunately most of this stuff keeps even better than food.) No need to panic. But it is a good idea to be ready, because even if COVID-19 never hits your area, someday it's going to be something. And let me emphasize again, I don't know more than anybody else; I'm just saying where I personally have put some skin in the game.
- notabee 7y ago
  Just to add a bit, don't forget supplies for pets too.
humaniania 7y ago
Extremely low IMO. From what I have read it's like a stronger version of the flu.
- Nuzzerino 7y ago
  While I don't expect the power to shut off from this, I want to point out that the flu virus doesn't directly destroy heart and kidney cells as COVID-19 does in some of the patients.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  I cannot believe people are still saying this. It's literally 1-2 orders of magnitude more deadly than the flu, and 5% of the survivors walk away with permanent lung damage.
  - humaniania 7y ago
    Where did you see that? I have not seen anything like that reported and I feel like that would be pretty important information https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/as-coronavirus-spreads-many-questions-and-some-answers-2020022719004 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/as-coronavirus-spreads-m...
    - James_Henry 7y ago
      They say in the article that you linked that it looks like 20% of cases are severe and that the mortality rate is around 3% (though that is probably high because we are still early on in the epidemic). Last flu season around 1.4% of symptomatic cases ended up in the hospital and less than .1% of symptomatic cases ended with death. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html As for the 5% permanent lung damage figure, ARDS is found in around 20% of cases with mechanical ventilation for around 12.3% (https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19 https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus-disease-2019-c...) Survivors of ARDS often have decreased quality of life including lung damage and cognitive issues. I wasn't able to find percentages of these issues in covid-19-related ARDS survivors though.
jobseeker990 7y ago
Can you make them in cold water, just takes longer? Not sure. Or heat them in the sun? Sun tea beans??
- kragen 7y ago
  No, most beans are toxic if not cooked. Some, such as kidney beans, become more toxic if cooked at low temperatures.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
jcranmer 7y ago
Not worth considering. These services generally require someone in the production facility monitoring them 24/7, along with some form of repair crews available 24/7. But, on the other hand, these are services that require 24/7 monitoring, even in the face of blizzards, earthquakes, hurricanes, or other natural disasters that severely impact physical infrastructure, and so they'll have contingency plans for "people can't come into work" scenarios.
- gdubs 7y ago
  Just a reminder to people living in California that — viruses aside — it’s generally a good idea to be prepared to lose power for stretches.
kragen 7y ago
Build and test Mark Jurey's penny stove design. You can do it in half an hour with household materials, and then you can fry an egg on a skillet over it. (If you have a gas stove, you can put the penny stove on the gas stove to provide the needed air space.) Alcohol is the best liquid fuel to use. It's nontoxic, can be extinguished with water, and serves double duty as an antiseptic and a nonpolar organic solvent. If you store the alcohol bottles floating in a larger container of water, they are inherently fire-safe for storage, although I don't bother. Considerable exploration of these themes is in Dercuano.
- xtiansimon 7y ago
  ‘Mark Jurey's penny stove‘ oh lord! If the virus doesn’t get you the fire you create in your house with this surely will. Not for nothing, seriously do not do this in the house, on top of your non-functioning whatever stove. Maybe in the sink? Or better outside like the backpacking stove it is meant to be used as. I actually have one of these I made from Guinness and soda can. It has absolutely no safety measure to prevent spilling the fuel. Tip that little can over on the top of a regular stove and you have a fire inside your stove. Ieeee
  - kragen 7y ago
    My electric stove is by necessity fireproof, as is my girlfriend's gas stove. If you have a combustible stove (!?) then the sink is a better idea, like you say. Or possibly the bathtub. Or the back yard. This is less of a concern for me because my house is not made from combustible materials. I have in fact had a raging alcohol fire on top of another gas stove due to spilled fuel (for reasons much more stupid than cooking over a camping stove in my kitchen). Things stored above the stove started to burn (more stupidity). But because my stupidity didn't extend to using something like gasoline or lighter fluid, a cup of water instantly extinguished the blaze. Now I have an ammonium phosphate fire extinguisher in my kitchen. You should too.
notabee 7y ago
Local governments and utilities can vary in competence. Best to still have some water storage and alternative heating methods. A good camp stove is handy to have regardless.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

James_Henry 7y ago

I don't know the chances but some of the linked documents go over how the governments should work to minimize service disruptions like these. Of course, it will depend on the specifics of where you live, but I would guess that there are very few issues in this regard through the country.

jerf 7y ago

I don't know more than anybody else. All I can tell you is that I'm not personally expecting that to happen, or at least, no more so than usual. One of the reasons for that is that there's actually multiple phases to this sort of thing. Quarantine is a response you use when trying to completely squash it early, but as the virus escapes quarantine, you go to a different strategy of trying to reduce the virus' effective r0, involving preventing mass gatherings, encouraging self-quarantine, encouraging working from home, etc. Some quarantines may still be part of the strategy, but it's not the only arrow in the quiver. It's not a matter of choosing between "quarantine everybody completely for weeks" or "everybody dies". Broadly speaking, it's reasonable to expect a very high chance that the infrastructure industry will successfully keep transmission within itself low enough that it won't actually catastrophically fail. It's a high priority and everybody knows it. A lot of the work involved in this sort of infrastructure doesn't involve being up close and personal with people. You might want to try to avoid having a plumbing problem in your residence or something, though. I live in an area prone to power outages (a 4 day outage less than a year ago, although that was an outlier), and I haven't been buffing up my "power outage" supplies. I do have them. But I've been filling up my freezer in stages instead for this. To be honest, I don't even expect the stores to completely fail, though there may be a run on them at the beginning. But the stores will be one of the biggest remaining hubs there will be, by necessity. If I can just pre-buy some stuff I would have bought anyhow and avoid having to go there at all during the containment period, it seems worth it. The extra package of toilet paper from Costco isn't going to go bad in the meantime. Let me give my generic "preparation" spiel here: Basic prep is a good idea anyhow. Society is far more resilient against a wide variety of threats when more people can last a week or two of infrastructure outage. Being prepped is the socially responsible thing to do. If this is what it takes for you to set up a bit of prep, ok, fine. It's not panic, it's being responsible. Shoot for not having to go to the grocery store for 2-3 weeks, probably. Buy things you'll use anyhow, which means you're just forward-loading some spending you'd have done anyhow. Don't forget to think beyond food; toilet paper, tissues, medicine, shampoo, soap, etc. (Fortunately most of this stuff keeps even better than food.) No need to panic. But it is a good idea to be ready, because even if COVID-19 never hits your area, someday it's going to be something. And let me emphasize again, I don't know more than anybody else; I'm just saying where I personally have put some skin in the game.

notabee 7y ago
Just to add a bit, don't forget supplies for pets too.

humaniania 7y ago

Extremely low IMO. From what I have read it's like a stronger version of the flu.

Nuzzerino 7y ago
While I don't expect the power to shut off from this, I want to point out that the flu virus doesn't directly destroy heart and kidney cells as COVID-19 does in some of the patients.
koheripbal 7y ago
I cannot believe people are still saying this. It's literally 1-2 orders of magnitude more deadly than the flu, and 5% of the survivors walk away with permanent lung damage.
- humaniania 7y ago
  Where did you see that? I have not seen anything like that reported and I feel like that would be pretty important information https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/as-coronavirus-spreads-many-questions-and-some-answers-2020022719004 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/as-coronavirus-spreads-m...
  - James_Henry 7y ago
    They say in the article that you linked that it looks like 20% of cases are severe and that the mortality rate is around 3% (though that is probably high because we are still early on in the epidemic). Last flu season around 1.4% of symptomatic cases ended up in the hospital and less than .1% of symptomatic cases ended with death. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html As for the 5% permanent lung damage figure, ARDS is found in around 20% of cases with mechanical ventilation for around 12.3% (https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19 https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus-disease-2019-c...) Survivors of ARDS often have decreased quality of life including lung damage and cognitive issues. I wasn't able to find percentages of these issues in covid-19-related ARDS survivors though.

jobseeker990 7y ago

Can you make them in cold water, just takes longer? Not sure. Or heat them in the sun? Sun tea beans??

kragen 7y ago
No, most beans are toxic if not cooked. Some, such as kidney beans, become more toxic if cooked at low temperatures.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

jcranmer 7y ago

Not worth considering. These services generally require someone in the production facility monitoring them 24/7, along with some form of repair crews available 24/7. But, on the other hand, these are services that require 24/7 monitoring, even in the face of blizzards, earthquakes, hurricanes, or other natural disasters that severely impact physical infrastructure, and so they'll have contingency plans for "people can't come into work" scenarios.

gdubs 7y ago
Just a reminder to people living in California that — viruses aside — it’s generally a good idea to be prepared to lose power for stretches.

kragen 7y ago

Build and test Mark Jurey's penny stove design. You can do it in half an hour with household materials, and then you can fry an egg on a skillet over it. (If you have a gas stove, you can put the penny stove on the gas stove to provide the needed air space.) Alcohol is the best liquid fuel to use. It's nontoxic, can be extinguished with water, and serves double duty as an antiseptic and a nonpolar organic solvent. If you store the alcohol bottles floating in a larger container of water, they are inherently fire-safe for storage, although I don't bother. Considerable exploration of these themes is in Dercuano.

xtiansimon 7y ago
‘Mark Jurey's penny stove‘ oh lord! If the virus doesn’t get you the fire you create in your house with this surely will. Not for nothing, seriously do not do this in the house, on top of your non-functioning whatever stove. Maybe in the sink? Or better outside like the backpacking stove it is meant to be used as. I actually have one of these I made from Guinness and soda can. It has absolutely no safety measure to prevent spilling the fuel. Tip that little can over on the top of a regular stove and you have a fire inside your stove. Ieeee
- kragen 7y ago
  My electric stove is by necessity fireproof, as is my girlfriend's gas stove. If you have a combustible stove (!?) then the sink is a better idea, like you say. Or possibly the bathtub. Or the back yard. This is less of a concern for me because my house is not made from combustible materials. I have in fact had a raging alcohol fire on top of another gas stove due to spilled fuel (for reasons much more stupid than cooking over a camping stove in my kitchen). Things stored above the stove started to burn (more stupidity). But because my stupidity didn't extend to using something like gasoline or lighter fluid, a cup of water instantly extinguished the blaze. Now I have an ammonium phosphate fire extinguisher in my kitchen. You should too.

notabee 7y ago

Local governments and utilities can vary in competence. Best to still have some water storage and alternative heating methods. A good camp stove is handy to have regardless.