Covid-19 and the madness of crowds

Just heard from colleagues in India that all shops are shutting for the weekend. In Chennai it seems to be ALL shops, in Bangalore it appears smaller food shops are excluded. That's guaranteed to create a stampede today I would imagine.

npjnpj wrote: The UK is asking thousands of retired doctors and nurses to return to help tackle the emergency. Seeing that the virus is especially dangerous to the elderly, this seems a bit ... irresponsible? But then again I'm sure that especially nurses get enough money stuffed up the wazoo to happily get ill and die in service to the community.

In the States, the NJ governor has asked doctors with suspended licenses to help out . Not sure that will help.

progaardvark wrote: Blacksword wrote: Our supermarket shelves are now empty. Most supermarkets have brought in new rules to allow the elderly and disabled priority to the stocks early in the day, which is a good move. They're also doing this in my neck of the woods in Pennsylvania. First hour goes to senior citizens, then the rest of us. Some sections of the supermarket are empty or mostly empty. They ran out of eggs yesterday, but new shipments came in today. Haven't seen toilet paper on the shelves since the end of last week. Fortunately my wife ordered an 18-roll pack from Target the week before this all started, so good for awhile (hopefully). No infections in my neck of the woods yet, but it's certainly knocking on our door. We've been treating this as if it's spreading (which it probably is from asymptomatic individuals). I hate going to the stores right now because there are a lot of people not getting the message of social distancing. Scary news of the day: CDC reported that of the 508 hospitalized in the U.S., 38% were in the age range of 20-54.  Good news of the day: China had no new infections in the last 24 hours.

I went to local supermarket at 8am today, out of curiosity, to see how much the stock had diminished in the first hour of opening. Stocks of fruit, veg, meat and forzen foods were quite good, but all the toilet paper and dry pasta had gone, as well as most of the bread and eggs. There had been an overnight delivery and all of the shelves fully stocked apparently, and the old's had cleared them out in one hour! There won;t be another delivery until after hours tonight.

Tapfret wrote: progaardvark wrote: Good news of the day: China had no new infections in the last 24 hours. If my math is correct, and the Chinese government is telling the truth about their lockdown timing, sounds like we are about 3 weeks from turning the trend around.

The Dark Elf wrote: Tapfret wrote: SteveG wrote: If them commie demcratz really did take away their guns, where would they put approximately 75 million guns. On the moon? Being a gun owner since the age of 11, I find at absolutely laughable. Never once thought any government entity was coming after my guns. It's a pretty snowflakey concept, as that particular faction loves to accuse their nemeses of. I've owned the same Browning Citori 12 gauge since the 80s. Democrats go hunting, we just don't need an AR-15 with a bump stock to shoot up whole flocks of ducks and geese.

Edited by Tapfret - March 19 2020 at 18:16

It seems like owning a bidet is as strange to an American as a civilian owning a gun to a European.

Tapfret wrote: SteveG wrote: If them commie demcratz really did take away their guns, where would they put approximately 75 million guns. On the moon? Being a gun owner since the age of 11, I find at absolutely laughable. Never once thought any government entity was coming after my guns. It's a pretty snowflakey concept, as that particular faction loves to accuse their nemeses of.

SteveG wrote: What I want to know is where did Jose get those flushable wipes. Some shady dealer in a back alley?

Blacksword wrote: Our supermarket shelves are now empty. Most supermarkets have brought in new rules to allow the elderly and disabled priority to the stocks early in the day, which is a good move.