Advising people to stockpile food this early is sure to make the situation even worse.
If the food stockpiling can be spread out so that a lot of it happens before the first local case is announced, then it will ease the burden on the system when the crisis arrives. Buying extra toilet paper at Costco does not stress the system if you do it months before there's a big problem, and it will ease the load during the crisis because you won't be buying toilet paper then. However stockpiling after the run has already begun might not be so useful...
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/specific-groups/hi...
FEMA also recommends you always have days or weeks of supplies stockpiled in case of unpredictable natural disasters. Everyone in my main circle of friends knows you should have a stockpile for this reason, and the lack of one is talked about more as an embarrassment. But online not having one seems more like a badge of honor. Its just weird to me.
Also, if you have grocceries delivered overall demand stays the same. So no additional stress. Also it is way easier to protect and monitor delivery drivers. The group is much smaller than all shoppers.
Fun fact, delivery personnel can only be protected if enough PTE gear is available for them and not horded in someones garage or wherever.
Funny, it occurs that the little increase of radiation in that region really had no significant effect on cancer rates, but those people didn't know that. I still can't explain why government officials keep doing such stunts. Maybe there should be a Wikipedia list for these.
It reveals how leaders think of their constituents - they are not approaching this from the perspective of informing the public on how to best deal with this real but not world-ending danger, instead they are thinking of it in terms of "stopping the cattle from stampeding."
Because the cattle stampeding can actually be world ending. Particularly for the trampled cattle who were likely in little danger from the start.
See also, run on facemasks and other supplies.
All of it actually, as tea is a licensed plant in Turkey.
Completely agree. Telling everyone to go out and stockpile food is just the sort of dangerous, panic inducing rhetoric we don't need right now. Follow recommendations of professionals. No large gatherings, etc. But there is no need to panic. And certainly no need to tell people to behave in a manner consistent with panicked people.
I don't think so. The problem is you don't want people to freak out and overdo it now, and you don't want them to freak out and overdo it in the future if some drastic measures are needed.
I think it would be totally prudent to give people specific sensible things they can do to prepare for the worst case. E.g.
1. Keep an extra week's worth of household consumables and whatever food they typically eat on hand.
Don't go splurge on 100 lbs of rice and pinto beans and two years worth of toilet paper. This isn't going to be a like nuclear war: public utilities will remain online, the water supply will be safe, food will be available in stores. The only possible issue with these products is that people may not be able to go out and buy them as frequently as they're used to.
2. Keep an extra month's worth of prescription medications, for similar reasons.
3. Buy a couple of small bottles of hand sanitizer (like travel size), for use on the go, which will last XX weeks for a typical person. But no big deal if you can't find any since washing your hands works well.
It's a prisoner's dilemma. It's in the interest of the country for the officials to say "don't panic" even if/when the reasonable response it to panic. In an individual interest is to panic before the government says, "panic".
The alternative is, obviously, that cases keep rising until a newspaper leaks on a Sunday night that your government will imminently start restraining you. Is it then time to panic?