Hacker News Reader

Comment by bArray | Hacker News Reader

Just spoken to an Italian friend, apparently they got a few hours notice before this was enforced (much more kept under-wraps than the previous quarantine of Northern Italy).

Expect other Western European Countries to follow this pattern as the number of cases increase [1]. I would specifically be looking at France, Spain and Germany as potential next candidates.

If people here haven't already, I would recommend not leaving your shopping to the last minute and to stock up on a few extra supplies to help not exhaust the local food-chain when people do start panic buying.

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

View on HN

> much more kept under-wraps than the previous quarantine of Northern Italy

Without that irresponsible leak, and the irresponsible reaction of people trying to "escape", this total lockdown would probably not be necessary.

People sometimes are right shits.

> Without that irresponsible leak, and the irresponsible

> reaction of people trying to "escape", this total lockdown

> would probably not be necessary.

The leak was far from ideal, but I still think Italy would be in the same situation. I suspect there were already an un-contained spread in the South before the lockdown in the North.

> People sometimes are right shits.

This is still true, but I am not so sure they can be completely blamed. When people are scared they act irrationally and this should be incorporated into any plan.

Yes we were told by Conte, the Prime minister, around 21.30 (march 9th). Goes live at midnight

People in the UK have already been panic buying, mostly pasta and toilet roll AFAICT

It’s probably a good thing honestly. Better that people panic buy now, when the disease is still rare, than later when it isn’t. There’s only so many toilet rolls that a person needs.

Yes, surely it’s better to have a slow rise in demand for food while supply chains are still intact, rather than having a sudden panic when it gets worse.

> mostly pasta

Sensible choice all things considered. I think instant noodles are also a pretty good bet, I personally make a noodle soup with vegetables to bring up the nutrition a bit. I would also add frozen vegetables to the list as it keeps for ages and balances out most meals, whilst still being quite good for you.

Rice and a good rice cooker. Plenty of big 4.54kg packs of California-grown Nishiki rice on the shelf in Sainsbury's last time I checked.

I like pasta too, but don't eat as much as I used to. Rice is so versatile!

> Rice and a good rice cooker.

I like rice, but am concerned by the number of people who don't wash it (arsenic) [1]. Then you have the issue of reheating/leaving to cool [2].

With the amount of idiocy going around it seems like a massive risk. Pasta is very difficult to mess up, worst case you're just going to get some crunchy or over-boiled pasta.

[1] https://www.recapo.com/the-doctors/the-doctors-diet/the-doct...

[2] https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/food-and-diet/can...

I eat a lot of rice and am now worried, but man, [1] is just a random blog that looks like it's a fake news website. The author blurb just says she married the love of her life in 2012. Uh, how is that relevant?

It's the kind of article/site like one you'd see taking a graph of the effects 2011 Japanese quake on currents across the world, and claiming it to be a graph of how radiation has reached California...

[1] looks like a spam blog.

After researching it, the arsenic isn't "fake news", and I would trust the BBC to actually have asked real experts [1], [2], and their recommendation is:

> Now, some ways of cooking rice reduce arsenic levels more than others. We carried out some tests with Prof Meharg and found the best technique is to soak the rice overnight before cooking it in a 5:1 water-to-rice ratio.

> That cuts arsenic levels by 80%, compared to the common approach of using two parts water to one part rice and letting all the water soak in. Using lots of water - the 5:1 ratio - without pre-soaking also reduced arsenic levels, but not by as much as the pre-soaking levels.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-38910848 [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2F1MDzyW55pg97Tdpp...

While you're prepping, lentils, dal (dried split peas), and dried beans, are all very shelf stable proteins. Pair with hard skin squash and pumpkins, which also keep for a while, and of course rice. Powdered butter is a shelf stable fat, also nuts though they're more expensive.

Even if you don't use it now because food supply chains don't end up majorly affected, this kind of stuff is handy to have around in case of an a more immediate emergency.

The toilet roll thing seems to be everywhere (Germany is full of "why toilet paper!" outrage as well), but do people really panic buy so much? Toilet paper is an item you buy once every few weeks or months, depending on household size, it's very high volume per unit of money so shops stock just enough to satisfy an even random distribution of individual buying times. Now if all of a sudden, triggered by news, a considerable number of the people who would otherwise be in the market for a fresh pack sometime in the next few weeks decide to stock up a bit earlier there will inevitably be a brief but highly visible local shortage everywhere. Stocking up a bit earlier is far from panic buying, but due to the low price per volume of this specific product the result (empty shelves) will easily give that impression. This might admittedly trigger some second order panic buying effects, but that's not the effect of a coming virus, is the effect of people setting empty shelves.

I believe that the world is mocking a phantom.

A reason to buy a little extra would be simply to avoid going into populated areas (i.e. shopping). I think shopping is a very likely place to contract a virus given the number of times people handle the same items without washing them (think trollies, baskets, food on shelves, checkout machines, etc).

That said, toilet paper in general has been driven by media hype 100%. I think I remember some early stories where idiots purchased tonnes of it and emptied the shelves. I think the reason for toilet paper being purchased so much is because of it being randomly reported on in the beginning and that it's so cheap. A person on a modest income could easily purchase an entire shelf of toilet roll, whereas you're unlikely to see such things with higher cost items that have to be consumed within a certain time.

The truth is that they don't have the bidet.

It seems irrational, but it allows people to feel like they are doing something in the face of a threat that they cannot control.

This reminds me of the phenomenon where a slowdown in traffic on a road causes all of the cars to bunch up. And then after the blockage is gone, the bunch up continues to cause more cars to bunch up and the slowdown exists long after the issue is gone. It seems like the fact that toilet paper is gone causes people to buy it whenever its available which causes it to be gone.

I see this on I88 outside of Chicago all the goddamn time. Takes a little bit of aggressive driving to get past it, but eventuallually you'll find a point where there is a mile gap in the left lane, becausr people dont accelerate after a slowdown. Its fruatrating and caises me easily 10 minutes per day. I'm fine if you want to drive below the speed limit, but move put of the way (I'm talking people driving 45 in a 60 zone, when prevailing traffic wants to run 85). Holding up traffic is technically illegal, even if you're exceeding the speed limit, but in practice, its seldom enforced.

Its not entirely peoples fault. There is a delay between when you see space ahead of you and when your car accelerates. You also have to wait for the car in front to move far enough away for you to have a safety gap. To avoid this issue, everyone has to accelerate at the same time, but since you can't know if/when/how fast the person in front will accelerate, you can't possibly plan this without putting yourself at a huge risk of crashing in to the back of them. There are plenty of traffic simulations that show this same effect happening even with simulated, non distracted, rule following drivers.

You might find this interesting:

https://math.mit.edu/projects/traffic

It’s basically a normal occurrence in dense traffic.

The only way to solve this problem is as you reach the slow zone add a bigger gap in front of you, and leave that gap there until the zone is over.

> I believe that the world is mocking a phantom.

I think you're right for the most part, but in Australia there have been videos/pictures of people overloading shopping carts with enough toilet paper to last a family for years. These people are out there but it's hard to tell if they're in significant numbers or just a few idiots. I think we needed a little bit of panic a lot sooner to smooth over these bumps, but most people did not heed the advanced warning that China gave us.

Seeing the same thing happen across different cultures over very different kinds of crises I came to the conclusion that this has to be a Freudian slip of the fact that people subconsciously care more about being able to keep their rear end tidy than eating.

It has been explained a few times that its more related to the fact that stores stock only just enough toilet paper to keep up with demand which is usually almost perfectly regular. Even if everyone just grabs one more bag than they normally do, its enough to totally wipe out the stores.

Where as with other things, you could grab a months supply of cans and pasta and there will still be so much left, as well as the fact that not everyone is grabbing the same kinds of foods so the hit is spread over pasta, rice, flour and a huge range of canned food.

well the other reason is that if you bulk buy things like milk and bread it will be gone off within a week

The box milk you buy in Europe can keep about a year when unopened. That stems from a combination of aseptic packaging and UHT pasteurization. I just peeked at a few containers in my house and they have expiration dates around early July.

Australia has had every supermarket totally cleared of toilet paper for 2 weeks now. Long life foods have had unstable availability as well. At least everyone will be stocked up while the supply chain is still fine and before any real issue comes up.

We've had police guarding TP in Brisbane for a few days.

Wait what? I know there have been police called to stores but what do you mean guarding? Are they literally standing in the store watching the TP?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com