I never stopped my COVID routine so I'm not really doing anything different to prepare but I am at least a little prepared. Going to buy one of those emergency 5-gallon buckets of dehydrated food this time around though, like next time I'm at a bulk food not as shit hits the fan.
I haven't put much thought into if it is overblown because realistically I'd prefer to see a big fuss over nothing than to see people sit back with a beer while their neighbors die. So I'm not going to treat it like we're overreacting I'm going to be pretty serious about things.
Already got a box of N95s and a stick with nails hammered into it to beat the next motherfucker that tries to accuse China of this one when it's just plain, raw, yankee greed and shitty living qualities for the livestock they 'raise'. Plus a healthy smattering of those same yankees being absolutely brickshittingly ignorant.
I'm not super worried, but I did buy a few extra groceries. We do not have the public trust in public health agencies to manage a pandemic. I still wear N95s at the store, I have more boosters than my entire social circle combined, and I don't trust a damned thing the CDC says at this point. I "followed the science" and trust scientists. But I don't trust the CDC and If I don't, why would anybody else?
I remember them telling us covid was low risk, that it would be contained, and not to panic. That masks didn't work, that there was no reason to buy them. And that it wasn't airborne despite evidence piling up for months. I remember the Surgeon General going on tv and telling us to wrap a t-shirt over our face as an effective mask. They took years to update their mask guidance, last I checked they still suggest surgical masks despite N95s being widely available and vastly more effective.
I remember them turning down millions of tests from the WHO so they could release their own, only to release tests that did not work and had to be recalled. That costs us weeks when days mattered. I remember the FDA going after a scientist in Seattle who offered free covid tests against FDA policy, threatening any scientist who dared to offer free local covid testing when CDC had a backlog measured in weeks. In fact, I remember the CDC fumbling at basically every possible point in the pandemic's trajectory from day 1 until present day where they release boosters right after the peak of infections, after everybody has already gone back to school and everybody's gotten sick, and when the boosters do arrive not only are they late and meaningless, they are an entire strain behind.
I remember them publishing "studies" with such poor scientific rigor that my 5th grade science project would blow them out of the water. One in particular the CDC used to prove masks work, which they absolutely do, and they went on a whole media tour touting this study, was a case study with two hairdressers. One hairdresser wore a mask and one didn't. The one who wore masks didn't infect any patients, while the maskless one did. Except this proved nothing at all because on average, most people are not infectious. Even if neither of them wore masks, it was a completely expected result. Absolute hot garbage science from the agency that is supposed to be the best at it in the world.
Fuck 'em all, that entire agency needs to be replaced.
I remember them telling us covid was low risk, that it would be contained, and not to panic.
I agree a lot public health management really fucked up in a big way, and we could have handled even the initial response a lot better. But in their defense, these statements had been true of every other overblown novel contagion in the past century. In the past couple decades there have been a few diseases which were touted as the new global pandemic and they came to very little (on the grand scale, not saying they weren't serious for the people who suffered them). I also agree the mask shit was totally mishandled.
I think it's impractical to call for a full-blown reaction to every new disease out there. Unfortunately then reacting to stuff when it does become big will take at least some time.
Personally wouldn't currently advise anyone to "prepare" for it in any way beyond how they should already be as standard - Just always have a few days worth of canned food, supplies and masks.
I lived through Covid without a car, taking public transport for all my transit needs, it was mostly fine, but I was so isolated as I didn't want to risk visiting my parents out of fear that I would infect them, I also never really did anything interesting and mostly sat home.
I now have a car and if shit hits the fan again would actually be able to get out and see stuff, I am talking nature, abandoned places and just being able to see new stuff would be so much better for my metal health.
I am not really doing anything to explicitly prepare, and Sweden managed quite well all things considered.
