Panic Buying and Price Gouging

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

I'm a little bewildered to be honest. I thought what I was saying would be met with "duh, of course you want to consult experts." But now three people are disagreeing and advocating going on feeling when a world leaders makes decisions that effect the world? What?

 

[Agema]

I'm a little bewildered to be honest. I thought what I was saying would be met with "duh, of course you want to consult experts." But now three people are disagreeing and advocating going on feeling when a world leaders makes decisions that effect the world? What?

A world leader definitely wants to consult experts. Experts can hopefully explain what's going on in relatively simple terms and suggest solutions.

However, stick 10 experts in a room and you'll have 10 different opinions - although several may be broadly similar in various ways. A politician at that point has to make a judgement on what to do despite being less expert than the ten people giving him an opinion. He or she also has to weigh considerations beyond those of the experts, because whatever is done may have effects far beyond the immediate policy. Ten economic experts can give advice on how to grow the economy, but they aren't necessarily thinking about other impacts outside economics, because it's outside their remit.

"Feeling" is as I said above was not the best way for me to put it. But one way or another, a politician has to make decisions with a fair dollop of some sort of intuition or wisdom on top of whatever expert opinion is received.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

Shop shelves are looking pretty bare where I am right now. And it's interesting what people have panic-bought and stocked up on.

Among the obvious stuff like bathroom supplies and cleaning products, there was also severely low stock on breakfast cereals, and - to my surprise - pet foods. All the cat and dog food was almost completely sold out.
Apparently people get worried about not being able to feed their household pooch or feline. Who knew.

@OP Welcome back btw.

Thanks! Good to see you too!

We are still having a terrible time finding all sorts of stuff. Many products you wouldn't even think about being in short supply but are being impacted due to all the staff and trucks being forced to have all hands on deck to focus on the essentials so there is no room on the trucks for other stuff. It will likely be a long time before they can ever get caught up, and then we have to worry about the supply end as well due to people not being able to go to work to make them in the first place. We were worried about the "Automation revolution" taking millions of jobs globally, this likely will make that happen faster as they do not need many people in close proximity to have fully automated factories operational during the crisis.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

I went vegetarian right before this crisis started and getting that fake meat stuff made out of fungus has been incredibly easy it's even been on sale the hoarders never touch it even though it'd be great survival food, it's got protein and it keeps.

The hoarders definitely aren't like preppets or anything they're just grabbing all the tasty stuff that they like lol. Still tons of canned goods, jerky and vegetables here. Just you're favourite cereals are hard to find and toilet paper.

About the only things that make sense to board in a crisis getting bought seem to be flour, rice and longlife ultra heat treated(UHT) milk. We used to buy heaps of UHT milk in boxes before the crisis but now we've been forced to buy fresh milk.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

I went vegetarian right before this crisis started and getting that fake meat stuff made out of fungus has been incredibly easy it's even been on sale the hoarders never touch it even though it'd be great survival food, it's got protein and it keeps.

The hoarders definitely aren't like preppets or anything they're just grabbing all the tasty stuff that they like lol. Still tons of canned goods, jerky and vegetables here. Just you're favourite cereals are hard to find and toilet paper.

About the only things that make sense to board in a crisis getting bought seem to be flour, rice and longlife ultra heat treated(UHT) milk. We used to buy heaps of UHT milk in boxes before the crisis but now we've been forced to buy fresh milk.

For a while around here people were hoarding fresh milk and eggs, of all things.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

I went vegetarian right before this crisis started and getting that fake meat stuff made out of fungus has been incredibly easy it's even been on sale the hoarders never touch it even though it'd be great survival food, it's got protein and it keeps.

The hoarders definitely aren't like preppets or anything they're just grabbing all the tasty stuff that they like lol. Still tons of canned goods, jerky and vegetables here. Just you're favourite cereals are hard to find and toilet paper.

About the only things that make sense to board in a crisis getting bought seem to be flour, rice and longlife ultra heat treated(UHT) milk. We used to buy heaps of UHT milk in boxes before the crisis but now we've been forced to buy fresh milk.

For a while around here people were hoarding fresh milk and eggs, of all things.

Protip for hoarding eggs: the ones in the supermarket are cleaned and cleaning strips something off the shells that preserve the egg longterm but for hygiene you also want the eggs to be pretty clean so saving eggs involves keeping the chicken nest clean so eggs never get dirty in the first place. Plus they last ages buried in a bucket of powdered lime of the right sort.

 

[Satinavian]

Protip for hoarding eggs: the ones in the supermarket are cleaned and cleaning strips something off the shells that preserve the egg longterm but for hygiene you also want the eggs to be pretty clean so saving eggs involves keeping the chicken nest clean so eggs never get dirty in the first place. Plus they last ages buried in a bucket of powdered lime of the right sort.

That is a good tip for the US.

But in the EU (and as for now also in the UK) supermarket eggs are not cleaned and still have their natural protection.