Panic Buying Of Dunny Rolls

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.

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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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.

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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.

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" .

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.

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.

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

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?

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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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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.

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

^^^ 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.