Anyway, some positives, for a change

10% less cases confirmed in Aussie today.
China reducing lock downs and travel restrictions,
you can now have a haircut for more than 1/2 an hour (wont worry most on here as they have more hair on their backs and palms than on their heads and many wont take off their tin foil hats for that long anyways)
and Prince Charles has caught it.

Lots of positives My glass is half full, how full is yours?

In Aussie,
March 24th 430 new cases

March 25th 359 new cases

March 26th 123 new cases

Dropping daily even before the so called lock down.
In the days listed above the testing was also increased each day, so even more testing was done with even less cases tested positive.

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lotofwind said..
^^^^^Why not stay home and self isolate, you have already stock piled a good 2 week supply. This is what you bought it all for, so you don't have to go to the shop every day, otherwise the stockpiling is just a waste of time ? And contributed to the reason why these restriction have had to come in the first place, to be fair for all Aussies.

If you are too worried about the chance of getting it if you go buy milk, don't buy milk, I guess for you the choice is can I live without it or risk your families life.

I don't think going to the corner store for some milk is that life and death, but if thats where your at, don't go, you wont die if you don't have milk in your latte

It's not about me, it's about protecting others. It's about everyone needing to go there more often, in effect doubling or tripling the supermarket traffic. It's also a lot more items than just milk, it's a long list of staples. I know families larger than mine that need to shop every day because of the restrictions. Even if it was about me, what would be the point of staying home for two weeks, I'd just be in the store every second day after that anyway. I bought two weeks of basic food gradually because that is exactly what I was asked to do by the government. That meant a few extra items each shop, something the supermarkets could easily cope with. It's not a lot, a fraction of what we would normally eat over 2 weeks, but enough to keep us alive for two weeks if there is a sudden request from the government for us to all stay home. Not so likely now, but at the time there was the possibility of eradication, so it seemed a reasonable request. If the order to stay at home had come, we could have alleviated the problem of the food rush that would have occurred by already being prepared, but not hoarding.

A pack of toilet paper lasts us about three weeks, so good to limit that to one. But if you limit a long list of staple items to less than what the average family would use in a week, that means they need to go more often which does increase the chance of infection spread. Double contact is double spread....that is significant.

I see what you are saying, but if they don't put these limit of 2 3liter milks or 2 loaves of bread etc. , there will be none for you to buy when you go to buy some as its all hoarded, which is what was happening.
I think most of the things people see as "essentials" , have alternatives or aren't really as essential as they think, its just what they are use to having "on tap" and think they will die if they don't have them.

If people think they cant survive for a month or 2 (going to the shop once every 2 weeks) buying 2 of anything they want through out the whole supermarket each visit, they should be re-assessing what is actually essential to survive.
2 of everything you want is tonnes of food and pretty luxurious to other countrys, even out of corona virus times.

Not saying there should be no food restrictions, but I still think that restricting items that you can't actually hoard to below the typical weekly family amount is pointless and counterproductive. Milk and bread fit that description pretty well, and probably meat also. Unless you have a walk-in freezer room at home.

I think the real problem was that the supermarkets did not adjust the shifts of the shelf stackers. If people increased their buying by 20% for example, but supermarkets did not increase the number of shelf stackers, so what you saw was the shelves slowly being depleted over the course of a week, and it appeared there was a food shortage, which then fed the panic buying.

What they are doing now seems to be working well....Coles closing 2 hours early, or in the case of Aldi opening 1-1/2 hours later in the morning, so there is a lot more time to replenish stock. It means that shoppers are now seeing full shelves every day, and the panic has subsided.

I'm still dumbfounded about the toilet paper though....surely the hoarders have enough by now? Yet, all the shelves are still empty in the supermarkets near me. I'm doing what we always do, having one unopen pack in the pantry, but I'm wondering just how much do some people have by now?

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lotofwind said..
If people think they cant survive for a month or 2 (going to the shop once every 2 weeks) buying 2 of anything they want through out the whole supermarket each visit, they should be re-assessing what is actually essential to survive.
2 of everything you want is tonnes of food and pretty luxurious to other countrys, even out of corona virus times.

We had that conversation as a kind of game one night at home. Trying to work out what unusual food combinations would give you all the essential nutrients, or else how long you could survive on a single odd food item, olives for example. I figure a carton of Sara Lee Ultra Cholocate Ice Cream and a bottle of fresh-squeezed orange juice is not a bad start (my two favourite foods). I heard of a guy in the UK who ate almost nothing buy Mars bars and orange juice for years, and apparently was perfectly fit.

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Harrow said..
I think the real problem was that the supermarkets did not adjust the shifts of the shelf stackers. If people increased their buying by 20% for example, but supermarkets did not increase the number of shelf stackers, so what you saw was the shelves slowly being depleted over the course of a week, and it appeared there was a food shortage, which then fed the panic buying.

What they are doing now seems to be working well....Coles closing 2 hours early, or in the case of Aldi opening 1-1/2 hours later in the morning, so there is a lot more time to replenish stock. It means that shoppers are now seeing full shelves every day, and the panic has subsided.

I'm still dumbfounded about the toilet paper though....surely the hoarders have enough by now? Yet, all the shelves are still empty in the supermarkets near me. I'm doing what we always do, having one unopen pack in the pantry, but I'm wondering just how much do some people have by now?

I'm with you on the toilet paper thing, absolutely baffles me.

I think the problem with the stock does not necessarily simply come down to shelf stacking, although certainly a part of the puzzle. A lot of the modern world these days runs on 'just in time' profiles for manufacture/logistics etc and the flow of effects of such. It's highly efficient and Coles and Woolies aren't stupid, they have departments full of people who's job it is to optimise this sort of stuff to keep their day to day running costs to an absolute minimum. The problem with this is, that while in 'normal' times the profile of what stock a particular store needs is very consistent when it all hits the fan...it goes out the window. Then, the problem with the 'Just in time' style of logistics is it does not scale well if you don't have that overhead built into the system, which most won't due the cost. Hence you see quite a big lag between a need for increased supply and it actually turning up in stores.

My take on it anyway.

^^^^ That's it,
No, its not that they had all the stock sitting out the back and not enough shelf packers, there wasn't enough trucks to keep up with demand.
The back areas of coles, aldi, woolies etc are small, they don't have the room to keep a pallet of each item out the back.
They depend on stock arriving from their big warehouses each day.
If there was some sort of disaster that saw all trucks off the road all aldi, coles, woolies would have empty shelves by the end of the following day just with normal buying( no corona panic).

Most shops use "autostocker", when an item gets down to 1/4 of its shelf capacity it is automatically ordered. The idea is when the new carton of say ,20 Palmolive dishwashing liquids, arrives it will fit on the shelf as there is no room to store it out the back.
Sudden increase of demand and each person that come in wants to buy 10 at a time.......empty shelf from the first 2 customers , and they don't store stock out the back to refill it.

They actually have staff who part of their job is to scan overstocks (stock that wont fit on the shelf) each day and investigate why they got it, what went wrong. Its all set up to have as little stock room as possible.

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CJW said..

I'm with you on the toilet paper thing, absolutely baffles me.

I think there are people like me that have sat out the panic buying of toilet paper, and when there is stock there now, will just be buying a few more in case there is no stock, which creates its own stock depletion, which then just keeps it going. It will correct itself over time.

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Harrow said..
.....I heard of a guy in the UK who ate almost nothing buy Mars bars and orange juice for years, and apparently was perfectly fit.

Well, look, I wouldn't say I was perfectly fit.

I mean I could still shuffle up to grab the TV remote from the other side of the room, but I wasn't running no marathon in under 3 hours.

I feel sorry for the guys and girls that work on the checkouts at these big supermarkets, that have to come face to face with thousand of people a day, serving a lot of people that come in every day to buy "essentials" .

About the toilet paper thing.
A truckie in Melbourne busted a factory loading containers full of toilet paper,hand sanitizer, baby formula and so on and shipping them to China.

dont know if the above is true, seen many variations. But....would the seamans union come to the party.

Many years ago in Christchurch an enterprising American Air Force person was based in Antarctica each start of season his Gobemaster would arrive from USA unload 3 or 4 muscle cars, put into storage then off he would go. 7 months later he'd arrive back on way home sell the cars duty & tax free then buy up 3 or 4 vintage cars and send them off to US. after 3 years of this **** going on a word was put to the air freight guys and the refused to load ...NZ heritage leaving our shores is not allowed'.
\right word to union boys may have the same effect on **** going to China.

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Tonz said..right word to union boys may have the same effect on **** going to China.

Our unions couldn't stop West Aussie produce being shipped to Germany during WW1 - and Unions had a lot more power back then!!

Big business and Govt. over ruled the working class

This has been a **** load to read

Installed... now a TP free household!

I was a little dubious, but in practise there's pretty much no difference between one of these $40 gadgets and the full blown $400 ones that I've used overseas. It really hits the spot, (figuratively and literally), and sure has more than enough power to get the job done properly. I actually prefer the cold water spray to a heated one, and who wants lavender mist sprayed on their tush anyway?

I wish I'd done this years ago.

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Harrow said..
Installed... now a TP free household!

I was a little dubious, but in practise there's pretty much no difference between one of these $40 gadgets and the full blown $400 ones that I've used overseas. It really hits the spot, (figuratively and literally), and sure has more than enough power to get the job done properly. Who wants lavender mist sprayed on their tush anyway?

I wish I'd done this years ago.

I see you have some backup paper there in case the batteries go flat or is that for forensic comparison testing?

^^^^ I think I will follow suit. Where did you get that one??

How in the hell did you reach around for the toilet paper?

It must take the same amount of time to get warm water out of it as it does to get warm water to the shower, so I'm glad that you don't mind a cold water wash.
Do you flush first, then squirt or do it the other way round?

What about stubborn dags ?
Then you got a wet dripping ass . What do you do with that ?

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Imax1 said..
What about stubborn dags ?
Then you got a wet dripping ass . What do you do with that ?

Believe me, they don't stand a chance. When I gave it the first test after doing the plumbing, I was expecting maybe a little 12-inch spout. Nope, it hit the wall opposite in the bathroom about 6 foot up. If you turn the dial to full, you could probably do yourself some physical damage.

I've heard some people use a hand towel. I'm just using a single piece of toilet paper to blot the water. (Yeah, yeah, I know - not 100% TP free.)

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cisco said..
^^^^ I think I will follow suit. Where did you get that one??

Just search eBay for 'bidet'. The one I got was a little more expensive ($65) because all the control valves and fittings are brass, not plastic. I'd read a couple of stories where a plastic fitting had cracked and flooded the house, so I forked out the extra $.

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Harrow said..

cisco said..
^^^^ I think I will follow suit. Where did you get that one??

Just search eBay for 'bidet'. The one I got was a little more expensive ($65) because all the control valves and fittings are brass, not plastic. I'd read a couple of stories where a plastic fitting had cracked and flooded the house, so I forked out the extra $.

Be interesting if a fair few of those plastic or even brass ones do break and flood houses dont think insurance will cover any damage lucky everyone is home all the time to be able to shut the water off quickly.

marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0

Woolies said they sold more than double normal volume last week so there is still hording going on or exporting

I finally managed to snaffle some TP this arvo. I bailed up the young fella at coles yesty and had him put some away for me. It was the only way...
Pensioners have no concern for essential workers' needs!

^^^ The local IGA is not putting it on the shelves. Instead, you put your name on a list and they hand it out in order. Stops those that are roaming the suburbs and looks after the locals.

Toilet paper war officially over where I live. There's been excess toilet paper in the aisle for 3 days running, and even tubes of sanitiser. I tried to buy them all of course, but there's still that silly limit of 2 restriction.