magnet
4080
People are buying stuff like there’s going to be shortages that will probably be resolved within a few weeks. And there are shortages, and they probably will be resolved within a few weeks.
Of course, the shortages are caused by people buying stuff. But even so, the response is rational. For the same reason that it’s rational to take your (uninsured) money out of a bank if you suspect the bank might fail.
SlyFrog
4081
Well, at some point it becomes a fairly reasonable question of “Are you actually going to be able to use the stuff in a reasonable timeline?”
No one is going to go through thousands of dollars of sanitizer, for example, not for personal household use.
I am a man who would fight for your honor!
… I mean… you have my sword.
About that 1% infection rate in US:
You can also just take the estimates from the other side of the equation (i.e., what would the situation look like with 3.5 Million infected people). Even with the very optimistic estimate where only 5% of the infected have symptoms heavy enough to cause them to contact the health services, the situation would have 175,000 trying to get tested, 35,000 ow whom who would have severe enough symptoms to require hospitalization, and almost 9000 needing intensive care.
No way is the US at 1% infection rate right now. 0,01%, at the very most.
vyshka
4084
Will you be the hero he’s dreaming of?
Canuck
4085
I hate to pass on rumors, but there is a rumor that Ontario is going to declare a state of emergency tomorrow and everything except gas stations, pharmacies and grocery stores will be closed. Just a rumor, but we’ll see what happens.
You can’t time the stock market, but you may be able to time near the peak of the infection locally. The higher the rate of infected people wandering around, the less I’m going to want to attempt a grocery run. There may be a month or so that’s at the height of the peak if we don’t engage in social distancing, where it’ll be really risky to go out.
I’m not saying this is definitely going to happen, but it’s possible there will be a breakpoint where you decide that you’re going to fully hunker down.
RichVR
4087
Depends upon how @ArmandoPenblade handles his sword. :)
Dejin
4088
I think it makes sense to try to have 3-4 weeks of food on hand. You need to have at absolute minimum 2 weeks in case you end up getting Covid or something that you’re not sure is Covid. You can’t go out for that entire time period. But only 2 weeks supplies isn’t enough unless you plan to go to the grocery store every single day to maintain that 2 weeks of supplies on hand. Plus watching the Wuhan expat videos going to the store if you’re city is in lockdown did not look like a good time, so 3-4 weeks on hand makes sense — say get 4 weeks on hand, eat for the week until you’re down to 3 weeks on hand, then go back to the store.
That guy with the hand sanitizer, fuck that guy. Now that’s hoarding.
rei
4089
Alberta is closing all kindergarten-to-Grade-12 schools and daycares to children in the province, shithead Alberta Premier Jason Kenney of the Unlimited Corruption Party said this afternoon.
True but I was responding to the idea of stores being out of eggs, milk, chicken, and pork that @Charlatan mentioned. If you’ve been told that you should limit going out it makes sense to buy in bulk and those are great bulk things to stock up on.
I can understand the impulse to hoard, but I don’t get milk hoarding. It expires relatively quickly compared to the others. Just how much milk are those people planning on using in a week or two?
Went to the grocery store. It was mostly well-stocked, but the TP was gone and the Jack’s Pizzas were also gone.
They brought in a palette of TP while I was there and I couldn’t help myself – I bought two 12-packs. I got the fever!
And I shall stab you with it for earworming me with peter cetera
No stores have run dry because households bought two twelve-packs. Yer good.
vyshka
4095
As long as you don’t get the runs
There is nothing at all wrong with buying a little extra during this time. The problem is when people buy way, way past the limit of what is reasonable consumption, on the apparent assumption that disaster will strike tomorrow.
I think 2 is probably sufficient in a western country, assuming Italy becomes the model of lockdown everyone else uses - grocery store access is still possible every few days. But your method of cycling stored food inventory by week makes a lot of sense, regardless of how large your stash is.
Governor of Mass basically shut the state down. I think we can thank those idiots lining up in Southie.
- If you work for the state. and aren’t essential to the COVID response, you are off for the next two days. My GF works for the state, and the last time I saw someone so happy was during the Blizzard of 78.
- Restaurants are take out only.
- No gatherings over 25 people
- No elective surgeries
- Eliminating the lag on collecting unemployment, and a variety of other government extensions
How…how much elective surgery y’all having over there?
