Tips from China to "The-Rest-Of-The-World" for Coronavirus Home Quarantine Management.

Recently some friends asked me if I had any tips on preparing for an extended home quarantine period if the virus arrived in their home town/city/state. So I have pulled together some tips and reflections based on my experience here in China (Shanghai) over the last month in the hope that it will be useful for others. Of course, each country and region will naturally have a different situation and the national and local authorities will most likely take their own, local approach, to managing things.

One key lesson we learned, is that if your town or state actually does go into quarantine, it will happen quickly (overnight) and with very little warning. The situation will be extremely fast and fluid and will become very different, with immediate effect.

Here are some tips for what you can do to be prepared and manage through it:

The Medical Risks are Low:

• Specifically, the risk of death is very low, estimated at around 1% to 2%, so catching this thing is not a guaranteed death sentence.
• Typically, those dying are older and/or have an existing, underlying health condition like high blood pressure, diabetes etc.
• Infected kids don’t seem to be dying, so that is really good news
• A lot of people have mild or no symptoms, also good news. But these folks can still spread the virus.
• Many cases are like the seasonal flu, but nobody likes the flu so best to try to avoid it!

Basic Health:

• Have sufficient hand sanitizer and soap and surgical gloves if you really feel the need. These are more important than face masks although face masks may become a social requirement, even if it isn’t necessarily a medical requirement.
• Come up with a routine to wash / sanitize hands after contact with any human-type surfaces outside your house.
• Use a tissue or pen when touching elevator buttons.
• Kids are the weak-link in the chain, so start sanitizing their hands as a routine habit.
• Always sanitize before you walk back into your house after being outside or before you get back into your car. Leave your shoes at the entrance.
• Good idea to have some vaporizing bottles and fill them with Dettol and water mix, you can spray your hands each time you come back inside. Can also spray packages that are delivered.
• Don’t touch your face without washing your hands first (very hard to do).
• If you use prescription medicine or wear contacts etc., talk to your doctor now so you can get a few months of stock.
• Buy 2 digital thermometers
• Get your health insurance in order
• Download an exercise app that helps you work-out at home. A lot of folks used Streak Workout.
• Best tip, stay healthy by sleeping well, eating healthily and exercising regularly.

Local Doctors:

• Look into online doctor consultation services and online pharmacy deliver options. This will be really handy if available.
• Know the local physical locations of doctors and hospitals. Check in with them now about their plans to handle virus patients.

Working From Home:

• Make sure you have awesome internet access
• Make sure you have everything from your office at home that you need for 1-4 months of working from home
• Know how to use the local FedEx etc. from home so documents can go back and forth if needed between employee houses.
• Make sure you download your company’s video con call system on your home device, and make sure it works from home well.

Parenting:

• Be prepared to have your kids(s) at home for 2-4 months
• Most schools will start to deliver online classes, so make sure your kid(s) can access them through a computer or tablet etc.
• Make sure you are connected to your schoolteachers on social media so you can get updates easily.
• Plan that if things go badly, you won’t be able to meet other kids for 1-6 months so you will need to have a daily schedule of stuff to keep kids occupied both individually and more frequently, together with you. Doing online learning from your school (if have) typically needs a lot of parent involvement. This is a huge amount of work!
• There are online resources for kid activities some free, some you need to pay for, but you need to come up with a plan to keep children occupied and engaged and learning.
• Kids needs lots of physical exercise, figure out how to do that every day if you can’t go anywhere public. Maybe backyard? Maybe the local forest or at least a big park where you aren’t near other people. Be aware that play equipment in public parks may be closed to prevent the virus spreading.
• Make sure you have stable and clear family routine, otherwise you will all go nuts.

Money:

• People get furloughed or retrenched during difficult economic times, so be careful with your money.
• Make sure you can access sufficient cash easily.

Food:

• Assuming you live in a developed country, the government will prioritize keeping the food supply chain uninterrupted so don’t go crazy stockpiling.
• You may decide not to go shopping as frequently as before, in that case, you may want to stock-up on some items of frozen food and canned food but again, no need to go overboard.
• Make sure you know how to have fresh food delivered to your house.
• Don’t forget about food for your pet(s).
• Figure out the closest PHYSICAL shop locations (if you don’t already) for buying fresh food, if the delivery service is cancelled or patchy.
• A lot of folks used this time to improve their home cooking and baking skills. Baking bread was a particularly popular activity for kids and adults alike.
• Home quarantine can also be a bit stressful, so watch your stress-eating and stress-drinking. This impacted almost all of us.

Transport:

• If you have a car, keep your gas tank full as your local service stations may have a patchy refueling schedule.
• Be prepared that you may not be able to access all areas of the city as easily as before (assuming some areas or your area is quarantined)
• Public transportation may also be patchy.

Social Media:

• WARNING – social media exposure, especially to groups where individuals are expressing fear and sharing inaccurate medical information, leading to even more fear and misunderstanding, will NEGATIVELY IMPACT YOUR MENTAL HEALTH. So be very very careful on how much social media you allow yourself to consume. Suggest you limit yourself to one chat group and then maybe 1 time per day for only 5 mins. You need a social media limitation management plan, otherwise you will go insane.
• Instead, connect to a local heath channel that you respect e.g. Mayo clinic etc. and just follow that for good advice and tips etc.
• Even better, and much more practical is form a social media group for sharing KID ACTIVITIES FROM HOME. Maybe parents from your local school. Everyone can share art and craft ideas, puzzles, games, learning tips etc. But you need to police the group so that people can ONLY share good ideas. Not a forum to exchange medical gossip and unreliable information. Suggest you have a moderator to monitor and guide the content and remind people of the purpose of the group. If a group member is engaged in fear-mongering, kick them out. 

Mental Health:

• Home quarantine is difficult for everyone. Make sure you have some good mental health support e.g. a friend network or professional support that you can access online and use it regularly.
• Whether you live alone or with others, it is important to stay connected with your wider network. Try to make a calendar of virtual “coffee catch ups” via video chats with your friends. Try to keep the conversations positive and about a range of topics. Don’t get too bogged down talking fearfully about the virus. That is too exhausting and not productive.
• A daily schedule is super important. An unplanned day just grinds on and can wear you down fast. Try to set yourself daily goals or to-do lists to ensure you aren’t sitting on the sofa in your PJs at 3PM, stressed and depressed.
• If you are in AA or similar, then make sure you can participate in meetings via video call. If your group doesn’t have an online tool, help them set it up now.
• Only read / consume high quality news sources. Real news, with professional journalistic ethics and standards, tends to be behind paywalls, while fake news is free. Suggest you actively prune the low-quality channels out of your life now. Very quickly, there will be an incredible amount of misinformation out there and most channels will compete for the most extreme headlines, to win advertising eye-balls.
• Actively help others by staying connected with your friends, especially those who are single and live alone. Being alone in quarantine, can be scary and overwhelming, so do yourself and them a favor and stay in contact. Helping others is a much more productive use of your time.
• Catch up on family communications i.e. contact grand-aunt xxx or distant cousins etc. that you always plan to contact but somehow never do.
• This is the perfect time to sign up to that online learning course you were always meaning to do, but never got around to. Grab the opportunity!