4120

You can freeze milk.

4121

How big of freezers do you think they have though?

4122

You could be right. China too was slow to respond during the SARS outbreak. They didn’t yet understand the danger and respect the virus. This is something that I feel is happening across the West. We’re a bit like toddlers trying to touch fire. The USA has enormous resources (brains, manpower) to throw at this problem. Once the danger is fully realized we may see the entire country mobilized in ways not seen since WW2.

4123

I dunno, the size of their SUVs?

4124

Oof, the English language is already breaking down.

4125

The manufacturing power exists. The political will (Andrew Cuomo aside) and corporate will may not. There is a lot of talk about corporate social responsibility, but still not enough action.

Take masks and hand sanitizer, two low-tech, easily produced items. I refuse to believe that Americans have lost the capability and the ingenuity to jury-rig equipment to mass produce these and get them into the hands of hospitals that are running out.

Foxconn (the Taiwanese run manufacturer for Apple) has been making a million masks a day since February.

4126

The aftermath of this is going to be huge.

WWII led to a lot of good social changes (and some bad ones, like our current healthcare system)- we might get the same from this.

4127

Organic whole milk, for whatever reason, has a pretty long shelf life. We just bought too gallons, and they expire in the middle of May. They’ll be gone long before then, but it was something we noticed when we started switching our daughter to cow milk.

4128

UHT milk lasts for like six months in room temperature (but obviously should refridgerated once opened). Though I guess it might not be a thing in the US?

4129

No, the US mostly doesn’t do UHT milk.

4130

We had that in the Army, but not sure it is commonly available in stores.

4131

Ah, of course there’s a map showing how polarized UHT is in Europe :-P

4132

Growing up in a family of six we’d go through almost a gallon a day.

4133

My plant received about 60% of our normal orders last week. Cancelled orders began to spike on Thursday. I imagine we will have trouble fully staffing our machines since the schools are closed this week.

Rough times ahead for any small manufacturers.

Part of me would love to work from home and just ride out this plague for a few weeks/months. Another part of me realizes that my company may be in real financial crises soon. No rest for the weary!

4134

I’m learning so much about milk in this thread. I’m not lactose intolerant, but I dislike the taste of milk and have used it primarily for cereal in my life, unless I needed it to cook something really specific (which is almost never for me). This could be a generational thing, too. I can’t think of anyone in my age group (30s) that likes cow milk. Soy and almond milk are far more common sights in refrigerators.

Wouldn’t freezing it alter the texture and give it a weird taste? I guess it would still be good for cooking.

Also, sorry for derailing the coronavirus thread for a discussion of milk.

4135

It does.

4136

They don’t though. At best you have maybe 1 ICU bed per thousand people most places.
It’s probably closer to 1/2 a bed per thousand.

So as long as 0.5% of people need intensive care, we’re great. But the number is more like 10%.
That’s off by a factor of 20. Of course everyone wont get infected at the same time, but if even 10% of the population got it you’d be in trouble quick because that’s still probably twice your capacity.

4137

We went to Food Lion this morning in a nicer part of the city. While the shelves were clearly picked over - there weren’t mass shortages other than TP - and strangely all the organic vegetables and vegan/vegetarian milk/cheese/etc section. The only thing I was not able to find in the store was my pea milk (I am lactose intolerant).

4138

We do have it here in the US, the one I’m familiar with is called “Parmalat”, and I actually bought two cartons of it at my regular supermarket in the preceding weeks, as we’ve been planning ahead for potential self-isolation, buying extra shelf stable stuff with every regular shopping trip. It’s usually in the baking goods aisle, where you also find powdered dry milk and such.

But as @scottagibson said, the US “mostly” doesn’t do it. I’m not aware of any other UHT brands of milk besides Parmalat. But I do buy some organic half & half for coffee that is UHT, even though I didn’t realize it when I first started buying it. I thought it was weird that it seems to stay good in my fridge for over a month, hehe.

4139

OMG I don’t know how you handle them at this point. It’d make me sick just to talk to my parents if they were spouting that.