On March 14, 2020, we started our self-imposed voluntary quarantine to protect ourselves from COVID-19. I started this blog to document how things went during the self-quarantine period.
At the rate things are going, a new pandemic may bring us full circle before year-end. The threat of a deadly, quick-spreading version of mpox is now considered “a global public health emergency,” with the first cases being found outside of Africa, in Sweden and Pakistan.
Mpox, a disease in the same family as smallpox, was formerly known as monkeypox. Someone decided that name was politically incorrect, so they shortened it to mpox, even though the disease was first found in monkeys. I guess the politically correct police assume we’ll all forget what the M stands for.
A vaccine for mpox has shown some positive effect, and 50,000 doses were sent to Africa. That’s unlikely to be enough considering there have been more than 17,000 suspected or confirmed cases so far in 2024. It is also unclear how long it might take to ramp up production and how many people would willingly take yet another vaccine after negative experiences with the COVID vaccines.
It is also not clear if people who have received a smallpox vaccination, either when they were children or as members of the military, would be protected protected against mpox.
A Deadlier Version
The current type, or clade, of mpox spreading through Central Africa and the Congo is more deadly than the clade that spread from July 2022 to May 2023, including a few cases that manifested in the U.S. More deadly means a higher percentage of its victims die. Worse, it appears it may spread more easily, possibly from person-to-person via droplets that can survive on flat surfaces, like the flu, rather than only through sexual intercourse or other forms of intimate contact, which was the case with clade II.
Data from the Congo appear to show a higher proportion of deaths are among children age 15 and younger. That will make it a particularly scary illness for people with children.
This contrasts with COVID-19, which killed older adults and left the young largely unscathed. Imagine an illness like COIVD but where twice as many people die, more than half of whom are children. Now picture a time when children’s hospitals are overflowing and the death rate grows five to ten times higher than COVID. Reports show about 19 million people in the U.S. got COVID in 2020 and 385,000 died. Now imagine instead 4 million people die.
You think the medical system was overwhelmed in 2020? It could be worse if an mpox pandemic reaches those heights. You think the government overreacted to COVID? Imagine what they will do if five times as many people are dying. During 2020 and 2021, people continued to work at their “essential jobs” because, well, they were considered essential and they wanted to make money. How many will still show up for work if their chance of death increase tenfold? Or if working endangers their children’s lives?
Past Quarantines
Throughout history, sick people have been quarantined to keep them from spreading their disease to healthy people. (Think of lepers colonies, for example.) During COVID-19, the government took the opposite approach and quarantined virtually everyone. We were supposed to “trust the science,” but it appears this approach was based on an assumption or a guess, not science.
It started with “two weeks to slow the spread” and grew into restrictions that lasted years.
If you look at what governors like Tim Walz and Gavin Newsome did during COVID, you’ll get an idea of length to which these power-grabbing leftist politicians will go to exert control of the governed, all in the name of public health. I don’t think as many Americans will fall for it next time, but if there are far more times as many people dying, many of them children, people may be happy to have the government tell them what to do to “stay safe.”
Beat the Rush
Let’s assume there is a three- to six-month window before mpox reaches these shores in sufficient quantity that it forms pockets of disease that grow beyond the ability of local health departments and the CDC to control. That gives us preppers time to prepare for the next quarantine.
Based on what we experienced last time, consider stocking up on toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and food so you can survive a lockdown or a self-imposed quarantine in which you don’t leave the house for weeks or months. Your food preps should include flour, sugar, yeast, and other baking items so you can bake your own bread.
If you don’t remember all the panic in early 202, here’s a text my daughter sent me when I encouraged her to go shopping right away.
“Went to the grocery store to get some stuff on your list. I was at Aldi when it opened at 9 a.m. Line around the building to get in. Apparently, Walmart down the road ran out of pasta, sauce, tp and MEAT!!! Aldi ran out of stuff but got a truck in overnight. People are nuts, so I stocked up on meat as well as cans of soup, chili, veggies, pasta, rice etc.”
My wife and I had plenty of food and toilet paper on hand in 2020, but we found lacked junk food, snacks and chocolate. We have since changed our food storage accordingly. We also needed to stock more baking mixes, from blueberry muffins to brownie mixes, so we could reward ourselves with something beyond soup, pasta, or canned meat served with rice. We also wished we had more games and books.
Remember Lockdowns?
Think back to your personal experience during the lockdowns. What worked for you and what didn’t? What do you wish you had done differently? If you have kids, are you ready to go back to online school? Plan and prep accordingly beca8use school closures and lockdowns could happen again, as could martial law.
If you fear being locked down again or prohibited from going to work or to church, consider moving to a red state or into a rural area where such restrictions are rarely enforced.
Self-Quarantine
As I stated in the beginning of this post, we willingly went into a self-quarantine period at the beginning of COVID when little was known about the illness. We stayed home, and when my wife became desperate for fresh vegetables and dairy products, we used curbside pickup, which was brand new at the time. I even postponed doctor’s visits to stay out of places where I might get infected.
Would I do it again? Absolutely, especially for a disease that might be worse. I enjoyed the privacy of staying home and the lack of pressure of not working. I did a huge amount of reading. These days, I enjoy getting snowed in on our mountain because it means we have to stay home. I’d look at another pandemic as an excuse to stay home. My wife would like is less well as she is a more social person than I. Still, if people were growing sick and dying, I think she’d stay home.
But going into quarantine willingly differs from being forced to quarantine when you are perfectly healthy. As I said then, make your own risk assessment and do what you want, or what works for you.
Other Issues
As bad as the virus was, the lockdowns, home schooling, government financial giveaways, rent stoppages, and other government-imposed programs probably caused more long-term harm than the illness. Chief among these are:
- Damage done to small businesses forced to close
- Economic damage done to individuals who lost their jobs
- Economic loss to landlords who could not evict tenants who refused to pay their rent
- Social and developmental damage to children who could not go to school or even play with other kids
- Physical damage to structures and business damaged in civil unrest and “mostly peaceful protests”
- Long-term side effects of forced vaccinations and the economic harm done to those who refused vaccination
- Long-term damage done to police departments after “defund the police” became a popular mantra
- Government spending programs and policies that led to inflation
Heading into another pandemic, I would not want to be a landlord or own or work in a restaurant, gym, theater, or other venue in which people gather. The safest jobs are those in which you can work online, at home, or alone outdoors.
My Plans
As I previously reported, we’ve slowed our prepping so my bank balance can recover after buying the solar power system. I may buy some more canned chicken, chocolate, and a few baking mixes, but we’re not doing anything this far in advance to prep for an mpox pandemic because our preps are already at a high level. I’ll keep monitoring the situation, track the disease as it spreads, but I won’t be too concerned until it makes inroads outside New York and Los Angeles.
If the government has learned anything, they’ll stop inbound flights from countries with the outbreak and refuse to allow entry to people who have traveled from areas with large outbreaks. I expect this will happen eventually, but probably too late to do any good. There are plenty of good reasons not to travel overseas right now; mpox is just another reason to avoid international travel.
Pakistan has already started screening travelers from mpox. If Pakistan can do so, why can’t we?
Prep, Don’t Panic
It is too soon to tell whether mpox will be a global pandemic that rivals or exceeds COVID. Mpox might disappear as fast as it arrived. It might not be as deadly as feared, or spread like the flu. But it does bear watching and should be on your prepping radar. Make a few basic preps, as discussed above, and be ready to act before the masses if it appears to grow worse.
UPDATE: About four hours after this article posted, a story from the Epoch Times ran on ZeroHedge that gave some interesting numbers on a vaccine. The article reports the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention wants 10 million doses of the vaccine and the manufacturer of this particular vaccine says it can produce 2 million by year-end. The article also confirms my conclusion, stating “Children and adolescents are disproportionally affected by mpox in the ongoing outbreak in Africa.”
