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Love in the Time of Coronavirus (#3)


Mlle. Zabzie

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Yeah my mam works in a banking call centre so she sees card bills regularly and she said its crazy. Where usually people are spending say £40-50 in a supermarket that has rocketed to £100+ in the past couple of weeks as more and more people stockpile. I would say stock levels here have fluctuated over the course of the week. The smaller stores in the city centre run out quickly but also get fairly regular deliveries so its kind of pot luck whether you catch them before the delivery has been bought up (rationing to five per customer is not seeming to help in Tesco). The big Asda near me is pretty crazy though, I haven't seen a pack of toilet roll on the shelves for over a week. Same is true of pasta and rice (weirdly not noodles though). Yesterday when I went the tinned aisle was stripped almost bare, as was the meat aisle. I didn't even bother looking for sanitiser, that has been gone for ages already. 

Fortunately I was able to buy tea bags though. Small mercies! 

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3 minutes ago, Triskele said:

None of these stores are running out of booze, are they?  Asking for a friend.

I have 5 bottles of gin, a bottle of vodka and a bottle of spiced rum so I'm all set. I tell myself it's for killing bacteria and keeping me healthy... 

Booze aisles over this side of the pond seem pretty normal though, not low stock or anything. 

Oh, home baking aisles are also very sparse. 

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50 minutes ago, Triskele said:

None of these stores are running out of booze, are they?  Asking for a friend.

I was chatting with a friend in the Dominican Republic and he says there’s no beer to be found (except some shite called Coors, but it’s not beer) and no rum to be found, and most other alcohol stocks are down 70% or more. After sneering at the CV-19 fears for weeks, people finally took notice!

Actually, I think people in various places have taken notice because of Italy.

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3 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

Just stopped at the grocery store, I have never seen it this crowded or cleaned out of stuff. It wasn't just the stuff you'd expect - all the fresh produce was pretty much gone, baking goods aisle was empty, the only meat available was expensive cuts like short-ribs and full rib roast.  

Pretty much every single cart was overflowing; I heard people being rung up for $400+ constantly.

The staff looked exhausted, and the fact that we eliminated single-use plastic bags in NY seemed to be part of it.  A lot of people were just putting everything loose back into the cart.  

Both the gas stations I passed had lines of vehicles waiting to fill up.  I mean I know it's 430 on a Friday but I've never seen it like this.  I'm wondering if part of it is that there are tons of people from NYC who have second country homes up here and they bailed out of the city for a bit.  

 

I'll add to that. People were all over the pasta stuff last week. Today I went to the gorcery store to buy some stuff I needed to cook over the WE (surprise surprise I am not a hoarder), so for me it was just 2 packs of Bulgur (yes, one spare I am hoarding horribly), a bottle of Auster sauce, and some milk. Anyway, not here to discuss my cooking shopping habits. Stuff people bought like crazy over the past two weeks was disinfection lotions (saw a sign at the cash out lane "we are restricting the sale of hand disinfection fluid to three bottle per customer") and TP.

The TP bit really does my head in. I just end up wondering, if our civilization was to come to an end over corona, all documentation of this period would get lost over time. What would an archeologist in likesay 500 years make out of it. So they discover the ruins of what was one a metropolis with over a milion inhabitants. At the excavation site they carefully make their way into what was supposedly a housing unit. Instead of finding a treasure chamber filled with gold and art, like their predecessors from early 20th century did in Egypt, they find homes filled with packs of toilette paper, next to a mumified body sitting on a porcellain throne.

I guess it's jsut me who spends their time with those thoughts, and it also shows me utter lack of qualification as a prepper.

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31 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

The TP bit really does my head in. I just end up wondering, if our civilization was to come to an end over corona, all documentation of this period would get lost over time. What would an archeologist in likesay 500 years make out of it. So they discover the ruins of what was one a metropolis with over a milion inhabitants. At the excavation site they carefully make their way into what was supposedly a housing unit. Instead of finding a treasure chamber filled with gold and art, like their predecessors from early 20th century did in Egypt, they find homes filled with packs of toilette paper, next to a mumified body sitting on a porcellain throne.

I read somewhere that one possible reason for the toilet paper panic rather than other items in the shops is that because it's such a bulky item that it's very obvious when there's less of it on the shelves than usual.

I went grocery shopping at lunch time. As far as I could tell the only thing that had run out was hand sanitiser, there was definitely less toilet paper on the shelves than usual but there was still some.

54 minutes ago, Werthead said:

One NBA team is continuing its season by...playing future games on console.

That would be an interesting idea. The Premier League carrying on via FIFA. The F1 season carrying on via F1 2019 (although the teams will grumble about the 2020 cars not being represented).

I wonder if the sports channels are suddenly going to get into e-sports since there's very little else they can show at the moment?

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I don't know if it's true everywhere, but I saw a tweet that the local Asian grocery stores near me are almost entirely fully stocked and have very few customers. I know they don't have all the same brands folks are used to, but being able to get the essentials, avoid the 45 minute lines that the regular supermarkets near me have right now, and supporting local businesses that have been getting hit pretty hard makes it seem to me that going to one should be a no-brainer for folks still needing supplies.

 

Also, on the topic of gyms from before. If the Cross-Fit gym in the building across the square from me is any indication, they aren't being affected at all by this yet.

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For all of the teaching profession suddenly having to do "distance learning":

https://anygoodthing.com/2020/03/12/please-do-a-bad-job-of-putting-your-courses-online/amp/

~~~~

Much more seriously though. it is so sharply painful and sad to see older fellows now standing in the supermarkets, with a bag, looking with utter bewilderment at the shelves, having no idea of what to prepare.  I keep thinking that like some of my much older male friends who aren't married and live alone and always eat in restaurants, they have no idea how to take care of themselves, much less prepare meals, no matter how much they love eating and food.  And it breaks my heart.

What do they do?  They buy two rolls of toilet paper because that seems the thing to do.

Again, my heart is breaking.  This shouldn't have ever been the case.

~~~

@Fez It would never occur to these people driving up in their Ranger Rovers at our local TJ's to go to China Town.  For one thing, there might not be room for their oversized.  OTOH, since China Town has been shunned, ya, probably there is room.
 

Every other outlet such as they are in my neighborhood are far better stocked with every essential than TJ's because EVERYBODY thinks TJ's is for some reason superior. When by all my own hands own experience of shopping and cooking it is far not so -- though high fat and nutty stuffs are less expensive.

 

Fez

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1 hour ago, Zorral said:

For all of the teaching profession suddenly having to do "distance learning":

As a high school teacher myself, a few of my older colleagues have been joking that online learning better not go too well! Schools in Sydney have not shut down but obviously preparations are being made in case that happens, so a lot of intensive work is going into beefing up our online offerings. Some of the older staff here are worried that this is going to be a Trojan horse for pushing all manner of technological pedagogy, some of which have very thin evidence.

 

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8 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

I have 5 bottles of gin, a bottle of vodka and a bottle of spiced rum so I'm all set. I tell myself it's for killing bacteria and keeping me healthy... 

Booze aisles over this side of the pond seem pretty normal though, not low stock or anything. 

Oh, home baking aisles are also very sparse. 

Wait until they close the schools, and parents realise they’re going to be stuck indoors with their kidd for two weeks, with no cinema etc...

The booze shelves will empty then.

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35 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Wait until they close the schools, and parents realise they’re going to be stuck indoors with their kidd for two weeks, with no cinema etc...

The booze shelves will empty then.

I already know one lawyer who's expecting an uptick in divorces if we get whole city lockdowns.

Just had dinner with my brother's family. I'm a single bachelor so the idea of lockdown doesn't bother me in the slightest. He's got three young kids - but luckily he's in a good situation in that they just bought a house with a big backyard, and he's a schoolteacher as well so if school's off he can just stay home with the children.

I can't imagine how disruptive it would be for the rest of the world.

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1 hour ago, Jeor said:

I already know one lawyer who's expecting an uptick in divorces if we get whole city lockdowns.

Just had dinner with my brother's family. I'm a single bachelor so the idea of lockdown doesn't bother me in the slightest. He's got three young kids - but luckily he's in a good situation in that they just bought a house with a big backyard, and he's a schoolteacher as well so if school's off he can just stay home with the children.

I can't imagine how disruptive it would be for the rest of the world.

I do a lot of work in funds and I'm kind of surprised we haven't had investors pulling out. In fact for the upcoming close at the end of April it looks like we might have the most investors yet

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