THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITY OF THOROUGH PREPARATION
According to the 2005 United States Census, approximately 12.5% of the American population is impoverished. That works out to roughly 37,500,000 people who live in households with annual incomes of less than $20,000 for a family of four. At this income level, these people are unable to meet all of their own needs for food, shelter, clothing, and medicine; therefore, many of them rely upon government assistance programs and private charities in order to survive. Millions of these poor families live in run-down apartment buildings in bad neighborhoods. They live there because that is all they can afford. As you might expect, the ones who are gainfully employed tend to perform menial labor in low-paying industries, such as lodging, agriculture, food service, janitorial, entertainment, and transportation. Just think of all the people in this country who work in thankless, dead-end jobs as busboys, dish washers, fry cooks, custodians, chamber maids, ticket takers, ushers, car washers, landscapers, field hands, parking lot attendants, et cetera. These people do not have the disposable income for even the most rudimentary of pandemic preparations. They live from pay- check to paycheck, buying only what they can for daily subsistence. They could not possibly “shelter in place” for more than a week or two, because they simply do not have the resources. These poor people will be among the earliest and hardest hit.
When the pandemic finally does arrive in the U.S., and people begin to practice social distancing, the lowest-paying industries with the highest public exposure will be shut down, and most of their employees will be laid off. People who are not laid off, but are still interacting with the general public, will almost certainly be exposed to the flu and they, in turn, will bring the virus home to their families. Ironically, the ones who were laid off will fare no better. They, too, will eventually be exposed to the flu and will bring it home to their families, because at some point in time they will have to leave their apartments in search of food, toiletries, and medicine. When they do, they will encounter infected people on the street, in public transportation, and in the stores. In very short order, these people are going to cause an enormous problem for the health care system, law enforcement agencies, and every level of government.
Whether or not they are actually sick with the flu, it is likely that several million poor people will be flat broke and starving within a week, so they are sure to pursue every resource possible to get free food. They are going to show up at medical facilities, police stations, government offices, churches, and schools in search of assistance. When they discover that nobody is able to help them, panic will set in and there will be civil disturbances and property crimes (remember New Orleans). Some of these people will merely go from door to door begging for handouts, but others will try to steal what they need from wherever they can. To make matters worse, within a couple of weeks, millions of these people will have full-blown cases of the flu, and there will be no safe means of handling the sick and the dying, or their corpses. Surely, any location with low-rent apartment buildings will be hell on Earth.
Although it might seem reasonable to believe that people at higher income levels will fare substantially better than the poor, that is not necessarily going to be the case. In fact, this same panic-despair scenario will eventually unfold in every neighborhood in the country, no matter what the socioeconomic status: if you are laid off you will re-
Becoming Self-Sufficient for Six Months page 15