This week there have been too many empty shelves in supermarkets. There is no problem with the food supply. Some people have decided to buy large stocks for no particularly good reason, leaving little or no choice of product for those who arrive later.
Today when I visited in Wokingham it was more orderly, thanks to supermarket decisions to limit purchases to 2 or 3 only of each item. This simple piece of rationing has helped, and could always be toughened further if people still persist with excess purchases.
There will be overall some additional food buying through shops, as many of those meals previously eaten in works canteens, restaurants and fast food outlets will now need to be replaced with meals at home. This does not of itself stress the food supply, but it does require reorientation of the deliveries from the suppliers to restaurants to the supermarkets.
I would ask people to behave responsibly, with thought for others who also need to buy their daily food. Those who did buy too much for stock can make amends. They should now spend the next week or two living off the stocks they bought up instead of going back for more. It would be unforgiveable if they let the food in stock go to waste as it went out of date, or because they on reflection decide they don’t like rice or pasta or whatever that much after all.
March 19, 2020
No particular good reason? The entire media and political class are engaged in massive scare mongering to further their own agendas and daily threatening people with quarantine for an unknown length of time. There is a very large chance that supply chains, and the entire economy, will be toast in the near future. I’d say anyone that doesn’t buy as much food as possible is foolish in the extreme.
March 20, 2020
The panic buying is not sensible in any circumstance. Quite frankly, the media coverage has been sensationalist, scare-mongering bilge pumped out to serve the masters who pay them!
zorro
March 19, 2020
The government says self isolate for 2 weeks if infected.
That means you need at least 2 weeks for food put aside to comply with those rules.
Very simple.
Now you are saying people are bad for doing what the government advises.
Reply No, not so. Read what I wrote. Fine to have two weeks supply if you have to stay in for two weeks and eat it all.
March 20, 2020
People seem to be going in the shop every day to buy two weeks supply – absolutely no need. It will do people some good to lose some weight anyway!
zorro
March 20, 2020
“Today when I visited in Wokingham it was more orderly, thanks to supermarket decisions to limit purchases to 2 or 3 only of each item.” That appears to have absolutely no effect in Sainsbury’s Winnersh, Wokingham.
“I would ask people to behave responsibly, with thought for others who also need to buy their daily food.” Suggest you visit Sainsbury’s Winnersh, Wokingham at 06:30 in the morning, before the store opens at 07:00 and try to get that message across to the queue outside. According to two members of staff today, the loo rolls were all gone in a flash, if you pardon the expression.
At 10:30 this morning – no loo rolls, no eggs, no flour, no biscuits, very little meat, or fish of any description. Not an orange in sight. Lots of green bananas though. And the freezer was bare. Apart from a pint of milk that a customer had dumped.
The message is not getting through. Perhaps because family member A with symptoms may need to stay home for 2 weeks, feeding the whole family who also need to stay in for 2 weeks even though A is the only person with symptoms. What happens to the whole family if family member B then develops symptoms, just towards the end of that 2 week isolation? Does the whole family then need to stay in for another 2 weeks? And so on.