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Comment by jakear | Hacker News Reader

If this comes to the US my disaster preparedness plans will be seriously compromised...

In theory drive through should be the best possible food mechanism in terms of risk to the workers (and patrons). If they could arrange for contactless payment (already possible, just affix a tap reader to the side of the drive through window), and some way to serve the food while keeping the window closed (a shelf extending out from the window and a policy that they won’t open their window until you close yours?), drive through could be a real solution to pandemic food supply.

Sure as hell beats a bunch of people in the same supermarket breathing all over the produce and right on the cashier.

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>Sure as hell beats a bunch of people in the same supermarket breathing all over the produce and right on the cashier.

going to macdonalds twice a day is definitely riskier than getting groceries at the supermarket once a week. most of the food is packaged, and the stuff that isn't can be thoroughly washed before eating it. even for the stuff that isn't packaged and can't be washed, coronavirus isn't known to last longer than three days, so you can just buy it and let it sit.

contrast that to the multiple different staff preparing your food, which you then immediately stick in your mouth.

That’s true. Really, the ideal solution would be repurposing existing drive through setups for grocery purchases. Best of both worlds.

The trouble is that realistically, it's not possible to get by with a single weekly shop in the UK right now. A lot of supermarket shelves are empty due to everyone buying more than they usually would, and even when they're not there are purchase quantity restrictions that make it hard to get a full week's shopping in.

And Europe as a whole tends to buy groceries every other day, so I'd suspect stores aren't prepared to provide for any degree of bulk buying. Maybe it'll catch on more after this debacle - grocery stores are generally running fine in the US besides toilet paper and the odd other thing being sold out sometimes.

It’s not the stores, imho. From my experience of UK supermarkets in the last week, they’ve basically caught up with most stuff they are directly responsible for or that is produced very close to their needs. Bread is now there, vegetables are there, milk is there. What is dramatically lacking is processed food. I expect that’s because those items have much lower elasticity in their production: if you know you’ll sell X cans of tuna per year, you’ll build a plant that makes X * 1.3 or thereabout; when demand suddenly spikes to 3X or more, there is no time to build another plant (and even if there were, you might not want to invest into something that is probably temporary). Same for meat: you cannot grow extra cows in a couple of weeks.

There is a lot of pressure on supermarkets at the moment which should probably be directed at the larger food industry.

Presumably cows are already being grown at reasonable rates though, they are just redirected to the restaurants. How does that work at the moment in the food industry when the wholesalers can't sell to their customers but still have the products manufactured?

If they have problems placing existing product, they typically ask for public intervention. It’s Europe, the whole agri business is regulated pretty tightly and subsidized to avoid overcapacity issues. Which is just fine, in most years, as it prevents a bunch of unsavory debates between close countries with a history of armed conflict spurred by industrial tensions. It’s the sort of thing that the Brexit saga brought to the surface.

The fact that the sector has not complained in the last month or so, to me says that they are unlikely to have overcapacity issues. This said, most UK restaurants and cafes have shut down only just today, so things might be different in a week.

"which you then immediately stick in your mouth."

Sticking the food into your mouth isn't much of a concern, there's no evidence that covid-19 can transmit "foodborne".

The actual issue is an infected food prep worker contaminating the wrapper or the food itself, you touching the wrapper or the food, then touching your eyes or nose prior to washing your hands.

In theory, so long as one does not make contact with their nose or eyes, except in a shower (after washing hands), all infections can be prevented, besides airborne-based intake? Has it been established that infection cannot be caught by consumption of contaminated food?

You can't prove a negative.

There's not been any documented occurrences of it. But most people probably don't know how they got infected either.

There are definitely foodborne pathogens, this just isn’t one of them (probably).

If covid isnt foodborne, then the produce sitting out at the grocery store is also safe.

But it seems really unlikely that it immediately disappears when it comes in contact with food. "Not food borne" usually just means that food isn't a better conductor of the virus that the average surface is.

The problem isn't that, it's making the food itself in mcdonalds is too risky in terms of infection. You have loads of people in a small space.

Nearly all restaurant kitchens of all types are like this; so I really can't see how any takeout services can operate safely. Maybe very low volume ones with one chef and one person giving out the food. But not sure how possible that is, I assume many require someone preparing food as well as cooking it.

Doesn't this risk exist with all types of food factory?

I think less so. Most other food production is done in production lines with from what I've seen more separation between people. It's also highly automated where it can be, and in huge warehouses in industrial areas, not tiny cramped kitchens with poor ventilation in cities.

What about fresh produce sitting on store shelves, where people can touch and breath on it?

(I say this while eating a hotdog I just got from 7-11)

We’re still buying fresh produce because there’s plenty of it and we don’t have a ton of space to store frozen/canned food. I’ve been washing produce with soap and water for 20 seconds and then rinsing it before eating it. We also roast most of our vegetables so the risk seems small, to me.

I am debating Ordering a pizza right now and I was thinking of putting it in the oven for 2-3minvwhen it got here then store it in a container I have at the house and discard the box as usual.

I see no flaws in this plan.

From what I have been seeing, it appears to live longer on cardboard than other surfaces. In my experience as an immunocompromised person, the cardboard box is the biggest problem.

Dispose of the box carefully and wash your hands afterwards. The pizza is probably fine, though it's fine to cook it a bit longer for good measure too.

You can (potentially) order from a service with contactless delivery to reduce your risk. For example, Little Caesar's will let you leave instructions to leave it on the porch or whatever.

Is it possible to reconfigure the space, perhaps take over some of the dining area?

I doubt it. You need gas supply, water supply, etc. It's not a quick job to reconfigure, plus I doubt many builders/plumbers will be available to physically do the work. I think most operators are just throwing in the towel; probably the numbers don't make sense if you have a dining area that is empty, and I imagine takeaway/drive through orders are down sharply as govt is saying only absolutely essential trips are allowed. Delivery orders were probably up sharply though I imagine.

Also many takeaway places don't have a dining room to reconfigure into.

I don’t think it’s a matter of finding something 0-risk as much as it is reducing risk as much as possible. And I think drive through with 0 contact between patrons and employees helps with that.

I’ve been in crowds just two times in the past couple weeks, both were at grocery stores.

> In theory drive through should be the best possible food mechanism in terms of risk to the workers (and patrons). If they could arrange for contactless payment (already possible, just affix a tap reader to the side of the drive through window),

I don’t know if they support this in the UK, but for the US McDonald’s has an excellent mobile app. You can order and pay using the app. You can pick up by going through the drive through and giving the 4 character order code from the app, or by parking in a spot reserved for mobile order pickup and then entering the spot number in the app and they bring the food to your car.

If you do the latter, and roll down the backseat window while keeping the driver window closed, and ask the person to place the food on the backseat, that should be pretty safe as far as person to person transmission goes.

> ask the person to place the food on the backseat, that should be pretty safe

Certainly sir achoo oh excuse me I sneezed in your car, so sorry, good you thing you have a partition between the front and back seats, oh wait you don't?

Yes, we have this too — well, the order pickup from the mobile app. I assume you have to park up to get the order, but I've never tried it myself.

> Sure as hell beats a bunch of people in the same supermarket breathing all over the produce and right on the cashier

Fred Meyer, at least, allows you to buy a whole list of groceries and they will bag it all up and meet you outside in the parking lot. Not a bad way to limit exposure.

Not everyone has FM, obviously, but I'm sure there are equivalents across the country. I'd start by checking any Kroger or Kroger subsidiaries.

I recall many a Kentucky Fried Chicken and Popeyes in less than great areas having a mechanical container the worker placed food in instead of opening the window. They were for safety, I havent seen them in almost 15 years but im sure some is still using them

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