Quote:
Originally Posted by ArtyMcFly
I don't agree with much of your argument in favour of stockpiling, but I'm especially confused by the above. Why does food production need to increase? Are people suddenly eating much more than usual?
You only need a certain number of calories per day. Whether you buy that food tomorrow, next week, or next month, doesn't change how much food you actually need.
If anything, food production might have to be increased because people are panic-buying food that won't get eaten before its sell-by date, and will therefore get wasted. If everyone just bought a normal amount, at their normal purchasing frequency, there would be no empty shelves at all. (Obviously people in lockdown might need to make larger, but less frequent, purchases. But you don't need to buy twice as much as usual, and twice as often!)
"I'll steal from you now, so that I can give some back to you in an emergency."
I explained in some depth on my previous posts that by people stocking up it has the natural effect of stimulating extra production, something that would not happen nearly as much if people weren't.
I also described how there is a risk of both domestic and international food and other products production and the food and other products supply chain being disrupted if the virus becomes more widespread. If we reach that point then there won't even be enough food and other essential goods available for everyone to last 7 days, let alone for 3 to 6 months.
Also by that point, and even now in my opinion, it would be far more risk to one's health to venture out into a public area such as a supermarket where transmission of the virus through the air, via surfaces (metallic in particular), on the surfaces of fresh food, on food packaging, on the handles of shopping baskets/trolleys etc is all possible.
I think I omitted to include that it is long shelf life food and personal care products that I am saying it is sensible and reasonable behaviour to cover yourself for ~3 months. Of course I am not advocating buying to excess fresh food or food with a short shelf life that would go to waste.
Naturally, things vary from country to country but here in the UK all people over the age of 70 or with underlying health problems have been advised to self isolate for 12 weeks, and all school children (and I think 16+ yrs old students) are now at home, excluding those of key workers.
The PM here Boris Johnson said that he thinks we can get the curve to flatten in about 12 weeks but the following day some scientific experts were more cautionary about it being that soon.
So do you seriously expect for example a husband and wife (or partners) with 3 children at home to exercise some misguided left wing political ideals and go out to the supermarket and buy their regular weekly shop (means regular quantity of goods in colloquial British English) and just hope that a) most other people exercise these same left wing ideals and b) that next week there will be enough in the shops to feed and look after their family.
Of course they won't buy 1 weeks worth of supplies, they will be trying to cover 3 months, perhaps more, and by doing so I will say again that this will stimulate production at a time where 90% of food and other goods production capacity worldwide is probably still intact.
Hopefully that 90% will not crash down too quickly, but if it does then by that point in time there will likely be a big percentage of the population who will have already achieved ~3 months of stores, so then will only need to replenish these stores week by week, or less often than that.
Last edited by Mikey_D; 03-22-2020 at 05:56 AM.