@NEStalgia I don’t think it would’ve been as widespread if it didn’t occur around the Chinese Spring Festival. People from Wuhan were already on the move and got out before they locked down the city. In early January I saw Hubei license plates driving around my relatively minor city and likely spreading it to others. So in some ways it just struck at the most misoportune (or opportune for spreading) time. It’s hard to say what could’ve been done because people from Hubei were already on the move from the beginning. Not just Chinese but everyone. Planes, trains, and automobiles in and out of China.
I think there is a valuable lesson that could be learned regarding containment though.
I forgot to get cream at the store last week. I've had such a crazy craving to make Alfredo sauce since. I think about it daily. It's weird avoiding small grocery store trips.
So the big question I have is: Why on earth are people hoarding the food their hoarding now? TP made no sense. There was never going to be a TP shortage until people invented a TP shortage. Now it's moved onto flour, yeast and eggs. Offline has none. Online has none. One by one stores that sell flour are backordered for weeks or months, and out of all inventory. People have hoarded the eggs and they put buying restrictions on them......even dehydrated eggs they sell for "preppers" are out of stock indefinitely, everywhere......why are people running on the eggs?! And flour? People that never baked in the last 10 years suddenly are going to bake a hundred pounds of cakes and breads? Grain was never a shortage in America, the "bread basket of the world" where "flyover country" that the coastal elites loathe do nothing but grow grain all year long. Now suddenly nobody can seem to buy enough flour. What are they planning to do with it all? Eggs? Perishable eggs? How many eggs are they using in the next 4 weeks until they expire?! There was never any threat at all to the egg supply. It's not bird flu, it's not salmonella. The chickens will outlive us. Why are people hoarding powdered eggs. You stockpile that for hurricanes and earthquakes, maybe blizzards, when the power is out and refrigeration or supplies are unavailable for days or weeks. Not a plague. Nobody needs this stuff more than they did a month ago. I don't get it at all. They're starting to limit ground beef and all chicken as well. How are people eating double the beef and chicken they ate just last month? Find, restaurants are down....but that means the supply that usually gets sold to restaurants is now on the market again....... I don't get any of this behavior at all.
Meanwhile I get bit because I generally do buy a lot of this stuff in large quantities because I just make big batches of things and use it all week. So now I can't buy the normal quantities of things I buy every single week because everyone else decided they suddenly need 10x the amount of everything they otherwise never buy.
I can't help but wonder why we're actually trying to save the species at all. Ten million academic degrees and nobody can figure out that the egg, flour, and meat supply wasn't going to be affected at all, and stockpiles them so they can throw them out next month.
@NotTelevision I hadn't heard about the proximity to the spring festival, so that's interesting. That does explain why they had such a hard time containing it in Hubei (you know, after they were down to detaining and forcing retractions from medical personnel that alerted anyone about it...) But still, at that point it should have been easy to contain it in China, or at least "mostly" contain it so that very few other vectors existed and could easily have been detected. I said in some other thread, or maybe thi s one, that common sense never kept up with the aviation age. The easy and fast access to anywhere was ALWAYS a plague in the waiting, and everyone should have understood that from day 1. It's beyond miraculous that this hasn't happened until now, and more miraculous that the first time it happened wasn't a new Smallpox, Polio, or Ebola. But it really ought to be a wakeup call to redefine the very concept of intercontinental travel and cease being so cavalier about it. Traveling from US to Canada is one thing. The connected landmass doesn't really isolate the two places in the absence of air travel. Same for France to Germany travel. But US to France is another and always should have been another level of disease proofing. Yeah, spending weeks in quarantine just to travel somewhere would make a lot of people unhappy.....but it's the way it really should have worked since the 1960s when all this started up. It was a hubris that prevented such controls and restrictions back then as now.
Plus political kit gloves. If the world had, back in December, halted all flights from China, or if it had spread to Japan or Korea by that point, those locations as well, we wouldn't have this massive pandemic now. Sure a few people might have made their way out with the disease, but the result would have been more isolated pockets than the tremendous spread that occurred with business as usual going on. Nobody wants to say "no" to China. You'll offend them, they'll throw a fit, they'll retaliate. So they just crossed their fingers and hoped it works out.....and it didn't and tanked the entire world's economy and took down entire industries with it. They played a gamble with everyone else's lives and businesses simple to not upset Beijing. If the virus broke out in Congo instead of China, you bet they'd have locked it down with restrictions.
But all that is a bandaid and monday morning quarterbacking of a blunder in an industry and concept that was made in the 60's. Instant intercontinental airtravel without restrictions and quarantines should have never been made reality even outside a known plague, armed with historical knowledge that they tend to exist before you know they do. Weeklong vacations in exotic locations would instantly end - nobody would spend weeks in quarantine just to go to an olympics for 5 days. Long term stays elsewhere like yours would still continue - but you'd have 2 weeks or more on either end of the trip still cut off from either society. In a realistic world, the Chinese wouldn't allow you in without that to make sure you're not bringing some undiscovered American plague in, and we'd not let you back without that to make sure you're not bringing some undesovered (or discovered) Chinese plague back. It makes sense. They understood this in the 19th century and acted on it. They learned from the 18th century and before. Then the 1950's happened, we found airplanes, and decided all that old biology doesn't matter anymore now that we had Modernism. Then we built an entire economy around that.
@Woomy_NNYes The real hard part with grocery is in trying to avoid little trips it leads you to have to plan at least 7 days of food to the ounce, and not forget a single thing. That leads to more stress and overbuying than anything for me.
@Heavyarms55 "Evil group cackling maniacally in their basements" is an entertaining mental image even if it isn't how things actually occur. Except maybe with tabloids.
But yeah, I agree on pretty much all of that post. I strive to be an honest person, and the fact that many news publications seem to give the facts with a twist makes me ill. I'm not saying that no honest person exists in journalism, but they're largely drowned out by the rest. Fake news? No. Biased news? Heck yes.
@NEStalgia This morning I went to a supermarket to pick up some bits I actually need, there was no washing up liquid or toothpaste at all. It’s weird what people are buying in panic.
Due to a mix of expecting a baby in a few weeks and likely having to take unpaid leave at work soon due to a virus lockdown, money is quite tight. Bit of a bummer I won’t get Animal Crossing for a while but I’ll get round to it when things stabilise a bit. It’ll be interesting to see the sales figures for it, will they be higher due to people isolating, or lower due to so much financial uncertainty?
Anyone still importing any items from overseas (such as games) with this going on?
Today I recieved some sort of anime branded phone case from Japan that I won on Toreba a little over a week ago, and I know it's probably irrational (especially considering my country probably has more cases at this point, though seemingly not as bad yet in the middle of the country where I am), but after opening it I'm a bit nervous.
Currently Playing:
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@RR529 I wouldn’t worry about it. Maybe a day or two after passenger flights from China to USA were suspended, a coworker had a ups package from Wuhan. Scared her till I explained how biologics work 😂
#MudStrongs
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@Tyranexx indeed, the media created so much of this mess, and will never own up to it. Both in terms is panic, but also in the actual spread to the point of disaster. For 15 years or more they find a few scare to harp on, to embellish the threat. It boosts ratings. It keeps a fearful and therefore manipulatable and controllable public, pleasing their political and corporate masters. Every year a new disease, disaster, storm of the century, enemy group working in secret, a he crime wave, a new bug resistant super virus. Every year is the one your way of life is threatened. The not so bright people believe all of them and panic. These are the people buying toothpaste and toilet paper as though production is ending. This is the majority. Then there's the"smart", "enlightened" people who figured it out that the media makes these threats up and inflates every minor threat into major ones, so they've learned to tune it out and ignore all the dire warnings. These are the people that spread the disease to every corner of the world and are booking their cruise for next week and celebrating budget prices.
The media has cried wolf thrice a year for decades when it suited the financial and control goals of their masters. This time there's a real wolf, but those smart folks aren't buying it.... And it's hard to blame them. Why would you trust the boy that always cries wolf?
@RR529 it's irrational but I'm there too. Why I'm frightened of a box from 300 miles away when there's live virus in my zip code, i don't know. Not to mention, I'm afraid of the thing i got from Germany, yet almost everything else we have came from China...(though we should all fear the Italian stuff....). Japan is probably one of the best places though.
@Glitchling78 yeah, i really don't get the panic buying. Some things, sure, but it's all these things that aren't endangered. Eggs, beef, and poultry?? How much are you eating in 2 weeks more than normal? If you didn't eat 5 eggs a day before, why are you now? Is everyone just eating non stop while a week ago they were going to the gym all the time? It's not about the fact that they're home and before dined out. Restaurants aren't buying the food anymore, so it's still available. How is it so dissappearing? And if you have a mortal fear of running out of toothpaste in an emergency, then why haven't you been hoarding it the past 20 years??
In 7 to 10 days there's going to be trash cans filled with rancid beef and poultry. I'm a month, purified eggs, and in 3 months half a ton of flour.
The toilet paper will be$0.99 for a 25 pack everywhere by July due to oversupply and nobody will buy any of it because they already have to much. Then October round 2 if the virus will begin and the same people will buy another 20 no packs at full price
Maybe the tp is to clean up after eating 50lbs of eggs and beef 2 months later..... Or to clean up after people that never bake get the flour, dough, and soot if the ceiling.
Yeah i don't get the toilet paper thing either. What does the virus have to do with the hershey squirts? That's not even one of the side effects. I just went to a meijer store and the entire TP shelf had been completely cleared. A whole half a miles worth of stock just gone! People are seriously loosing it!
It's gonna be the walking dead before too long! Any suggestions on where i can go to eat the tastiest brains?
@NEStalgia Such is the price of embellishment! Though you can only blame so much of the behavior of the "enlightened" group on the media. Digging for the truth online isn't impossible - particularly when the medical community is recommending these guidelines - but it's certainly buried under a pile of manure sometimes. Not everyone unfortunately has the know how or patience to dig through that.
@Zeldafan79 Depends on the brain. Do you want it full of true knowledge, conspiracy theories, TP, or air?
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