CDC outlines what closing schools, businesses would look like in US pandemic

I'm assuming it's the increase in people working remotely, thus having to use tools like Zoom and Slack to communicate more effectively with their teams.

We are witnessing a massive geopolitical event. This could be a chance for the U.S. to reassert it's global hegemony - China has been brought to its knees over this virus, and a critical weakness of globalism has been exposed, the dependence that comes with offshoring too much production. This could drive the return of manufacturing jobs to the U.S.

Rumors abound in China about party members openly criticizing the government, including a petition signed by 2500 academics and professionals demanding free speech. Iran is also in full blown crisis after seeing its first case only 3 weeks ago. Two of the U.S.'s primary enemies are in "wartime conditions" dealing with 2019-ncov.

This is not just another flu. This is not SARS of MERS, this is well into Spanish Flu territory and it will test the modern geopolitical establishment and the resilience of human government. At the very least it will define a generation.

Edit: check the CDC's Twitter. They've suggested that individuals ,including with families, start preparing "across all sectors" saying "disruption to everyday life might be severe". The steady stream of silent downvotes I've been receiving for a few days is a testament to how far people are willing to go to deny unpleasant realities. This is why there are panics and bank runs and why the stores will be empty in cities across the U.S. in the next week or so. It's already happening in Italy.

No, they do almost nothing once they become moist.

That's a surgical mask

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.