How sure are you about that? In my large Texas city, grocery stores have been packed all day every day for like 2 weeks. How long can out country operate at such capacity before supply shortages start? Stores are already unable to keep shelves stocked.,.
The real concern would be if the outbreak were to suddenly sideline huge amounts of truck drivers / pilots / etc.
But many 'non essential' or 'seeing less demand' warehouses are shutting down / not busy, and that frees up a lot to focus on other things. Also truck drivers are now allowed to exceed their usual maximum driving hours ... and they are moving fast traffic wise.
As far as truck drivers and etc I'm seeing warehouses isolate drivers where previously the driver was not isolated. They're providing them an isolated room and etc to limit contact between delivery point personnel or warehouses.
Logistics in the US is strange, surprisingly low tech sometimes, but also very flexible industry. Outside still fairly flexible as well.
I'm counting on some disruption. Even during isolation these people are basically walking infection vectors because of the nature of their jobs - loading/unloading (touching and breathing on) goods carried across the country. And I doubt we currently have the PPE for them...
Similar for toilet paper in stores. Previously you spent 8-12 hours at work using your company's supply, now you have to use and buy your own. The in-home usage per day has pretty much doubled and shifted to retail.
And the base work, day care, and restaurant usage has plummeted. That's the thing about logistics and supply, a person can only use so much toilet paper for example. Once you've delivered 4 or 5 times the supply necessary for the population of a city, you're wasting effort. There is a distribution problem in that supply node, not really a logistics problem with the system.
We have distribution inefficiencies in many of our "supply nodes", no question. But these are not inefficiencies that airlines, or even traditional freight companies, can solve.
For example, Andrex (apparently Cottonelle in the USA) is owned by Kimberly Clark, which also sells commercial products.
You've missed one possible mitigating factor. Many people save their more... erm... resource-demanding toilet activities for home. ;-)
> Public latrines date back to the 2nd century BC. Whether intentionally or not, they became places to socialise. Long bench-like seats with keyhole-shaped openings cut in rows offered little privacy.
Or from https://ask.metafilter.com/235727/Have-humans-always-sought-... :
> When I lived in China, I had the experience of using many, many public restrooms which were basically just a big concrete trench in a room. Occasionally there would be small dividers but not always. So practically speaking, pooping would sometimes be quite the communal activity.
> I have a child who could not poo if someone was in the room or he was being watched, so a soon as he could move for privacy, he did. ... Many other kids will at least need to avert their eyes and at least pretend they have some semblance of privacy. Others will let go while grinning at you.
FWIW, my 3-year-old son loves to watch me poop, and will run into the bathroom when I need to go. And I let him, and don't find it difficult to poop.
I do have a hard time getting a sense for how much is "rooted in genetics" beyond the simple fact that we are living creatures.
Some people are scared of flying. Others are not. This cannot be a direct result of genetic selection, for obvious reasons.
Some children love certain foods, while a sibling does not. This too cannot be explained by simple genetics.
So given examples like the Romans, and Chinese and (again from the second link) "About a billion people -- 15% of the world's population -- practise open defecation" and "In the Samoan house there are no walls... the beaches are used openly as latrines." - how meaningful is it to say it's 'rooted in genetics', any more than we can say that at some level English is rooted in genetics?
Now, it's probably true that on average the share of food consumed from restaurants has dropped, but the sector isn't closed down.
Yeah, but the office was buying it at Costco too, and now they aren't. The total demand for TP hasn't increased, it's just shifted. Once everyone has a stockpile at home, they won't buy it anymore.
Same with food. The restaurants were buying it and now consumers are instead. The demand is shifting but the level is the same.
You're right for TP though. Imho that was simply a reaction to people understanding "you might have to be quarantined at home" as "you can't go out or get things delivered during that time, ever", and preparing adequately. Once they have their stash and/or realize that quarantined doesn't mean post-apocalyptic head-for-the-bunker, they'll relax and return to normal rates. It's important to quickly stock the shelves though, empty shelves make people nervous, and they'll overreact when they're nervous, buying more than they need ("the government and companies can't handle this situation, better stock up") and thus increase the problem.
I've stuck with a relatively conservative 2-3 week supply of noodles and rice, and the kind of toilet paper supply I'd normally buy anyway but where I'd previously be ok with waiting until I had a couple of rolls left before reordering. But that is mentally more effort than just panic-buying - I'm ok with 2-3 weeks because I've kept a close eye on supplies and know I can still top up, but if I'd just panic bought everything I could get my hands on I wouldn't have needed to put the effort into keeping track.
And even millions of people trying to be similarly restrained but accounting for the reality that others aren't still has a massive negative effect.
Overall I agree with you that it needs to bottom out soon, though. And I also very much agree about the psychological effect of keeping shelves look stocked.
office depot delivers TP with the copier paper and kleenex. IME that's been more common than costco for any business large enough to have an office manager.
Logistics has a built in circuit breaker. Whether you're talking about military use cases or civilian use cases. At some point, you will just have too much on the ground. No more will fit. At that point, it's a question of distributing the oversupply of what's already there in a fashion appropriate to the purpose of the day.
In any case I bought a couple weeks worth over a month ago when I saw what was coming.
Maybe they'll provide better units we can actually discuss on.
> However everyone is probably stocking up on bananas and potatoes and fresh meats which will start to go bad after a week.
I doubt people are overbuying bananas too much, but more importantly meat can go in the freezer and something is wrong with your potatoes.
If grocery stores sell faster, and so requested more resupply, you'd just see more 18-wheelers on the road and more freight-trains passing through. Neither "infrastructure" of which is operated anywhere near its capacity.
And as for farmed foods you can't just flip a switch when everyone is panic buying. Unless you mean to say we throw away half of the harvest under normal conditions.
The supply chain for food is complicated, to say the least, but one of the things about food is that we’ve been working on extending shelf life for the past hundred years, and transport food globally, and it really shows. You can buy apples at the supermarket right now, even though they went out of season in October. If you had to think for a moment about when “in season” is for apples, well, the reason why you had to pause and think is because the modern supply chain gives you apples year round. The only way it can do that is by having a massive stockpile of shelf-stable apples which are sourced from both hemispheres.
As a matter of details, people aren’t really eating more or less, we’re just getting different foods through different channels, and the long & complicated supply chain takes a while to switch over. I just want to emphasize again that the supply chain is a real beast. Because of the nature of the beast, it has to have excess capacity, because it is just so damn inefficient.
> And as for farmed foods you can't just flip a switch when everyone is panic buying.
There’s enough slack in the supply chain to absorb panic buying, if you wait it out. Anecdotally, panic buying is drying up in NYC and we’re getting closer to steady state.
There's only so much over-buying the average household can do before the pantry is totally full. Give it another week or two and things will be much better.
A “grocery store” that you’d just call that is defined by a partnership with one or a number of domestic distributors.
There’s a different type of store (without a coherent name—it’s usually either “[country] import store” or “[culture] food market”) which is defined by a partnership with a specific import business (where that importer is in turn defined by their relationship to an export business in a specific country—though they may be re-exporting goods that were already imported there from elsewhere!) The supply chain for these companies is constrained by the logistics of international shipping, which means it’s more profitable to just specialize in one particular 1:1:1 logistical pipeline, rather than many.
The remote Alaskan grocery stores are really the latter type of store. They’re US import stores! (And a real “grocery store” in such a part of the would would just sell, like, seal meat. And maybe hydroponic hot-house vegetables, if they ever bother doing that.)