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Comment by blisterpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

The logistics behind this must be formidable. They would need hundreds of food preparers, all of them tested daily for COVID-19 and of course practicing strict hygiene in prep and packaging.

Still it's probably easier to control than thousands of separate restaurants and food markets, which is undoubtedly their thinking: centralize food distribution to minimize risky contact.

This is a sobering reminder of how dependent city dwellers are on a just-in-time food distribution network; most Manhattan apartments don't have a lot of storage space for an extended hunker down, nor room for a garden and chickens.

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It's literally just all (or close to all?) existing public school cafeterias staying open.

Same cafeteria workers as always, same types of menus.

The biggest change in logistics seems to be that all the meals are now to-go, so goodbye trays, hello bags.

Did public schools previously provide 3 meals a day?

I remember even 20 years ago, it was guaranteed 2 and for certain cases ppl would get an after school meal.

... and hello infection increases as people line up for them.

It's no different from lining up at the supermarket.

In theory everyone's supposed to be lining up 6 feet apart.

In practice... well, NYC grocery store aisles are some of the narrowest corridors you'll ever encounter in your life, and there often isn't even space to line up for a cashier.

So social distancing in supermarkets is a total joke. But the alternative is starving to death, since the grocery delivery services are all sold-out. So people line up for food wherever they go.

Exposed every day picking up meals vs exposed every other week in the supermarket.

Hardly anyone in NYC grocery shops every other week in normal circumstances.

Do you realize most people in NY have very limited storage space in their kitchens, no cars, and only buy what they can carry in 1-2 bags at a time because of that?

I have been in this situation too and yes it's not the convenient thing I'd do by default, but it is possible.

The cars thing I get, but most can carry quite a bit. Storage...you pile them, under the bed, corner etc etc. Whatever. We are living in horrible times

Of course you also need money to buy food for weeks, easy to say to others buy this and that)

Many things have become " just-in-time", production, so much that depends upon things ticking along and any bump like this, sure does start toppeling many a dominio.

I think over the coming weeks, we're going to see just how much of the "essential" part of the economy depends on the "non-essential" part.

For example, a comment in one of these postings on HN was talking about how the manufacture of essential supplies was continuing and robust (even I've made a similar comment some time ago). But... ok... how much of the logistics capacity, the capacity of hauling those essential products from the factory to the final buyer is being impacted? And it's not just trailer cubic feet availability that's at issue... it's are those containers available in the right place at the right time? Greater cubic feet available for essential products in fewer overall containers is still a potential major problem. I have to think that a fair portion of the common carriers are dependent on a mix of "essential" and "non-essential" goods for their business and that some of these common carriers are marginal even during the "good times". Fewer trucks/trains/drivers/etc, mean that getting a truck scheduled to a loading dock on a timely basis is harder, even if available cubic feet for essential goods has risen. If my speculation holds, manufacture of essential goods will be robust, but there will still be shortages at the stores and for buyers simply because shutting down the non-essential has reduced available containers and the bottleneck has shifted to inventory logistics. I can repeat this sort of thing for many different parts of the economy; I went to get a replacement part for a computer keyboard... the company's website said they were closed under county order as a non-essential business.... yet food producers still need to use their computers to ensure they can monitor available shelf-life, etc.

When we see broad pronouncements from politicians and bureaucrats talking about not shutting down essential businesses, I wonder if they appreciate how interconnected the modern economy is and that it doesn't simply break down into "essential" and "non-essential". Perhaps this sort of thing is why I so distrust those that would embrace economic central planning.

I think some of the nuance here is that essential vs non-essential assumes a short time horizon. In the keyboard example, an "essential" service can probably operate with a broken keyboard for some amount of time before it is a major problem.(I hope) lawmakers are not trying to demand who can and can't stay open long term.

It’s a very good time for all of us to start listing our old crap on EBay. Just sold a couple things that have been listed for over a year.

1 was a Xiaomi Android box. Another was a vintage video game.

My intuition is that you are correct that some marginal logistics operators will go belly-up, but I think the end result of that is a lot of equipment becomes available at low prices, and the cost of running a logistics operation goes down. Labor probably also gets cheaper with all the people who have been laid off. Anyone with cash can invest at great prices. So while there would be some disruption, there should be enough capacity to go around.

I have no idea where you got this idea that being "tested daily for COVID-19" is some sort of requirement for preparing food right now.

Nobody is getting tested for COVID-19 unless they are symptomatic, or they are rich and get to bypass the normal testing process.

More importantly, testing asymptomatic people every day is just a gross waste of tests...

Also, the risk of getting COVID from food is very low. You're more likely to get it from people near you standing in line.

> According to multiple health and safety organizations worldwide, including the CDC, the USDA, and the European Food safety Authority, there is currently no evidence that COVID-19 has spread through food or food packaging. Previous coronavirus epidemics likewise showed no evidence of having been spread through food or packaging

https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/03/food-safety-and-coronavi...

Testing daily is science fiction right now. My assumption is that they check the temperature and that's about it.

It’s possible with the 5 minute Abbott machines that are starting to be distributed

Those are meant for doctor's offices because they only do the tests one at a time. They wouldn't be useful for testing an entire group of workers every day unless they have dozens of them. The problem is that the US is only getting 5500 of them.

The ones that they're making at a rate of 1000 per state per week?

They're an extremely scarce resource better used elsewhere.

Makes you wonder if you could pool together a bunch of low-risk samples, and only re-test if the pool comes back positive.

Sounds like a binary search problem, problem is we would need larger samples >:)

Someone mentioned this before, but the problem is the tests might not work due to the dilution of the samples.

It's possible just ensuring the food is hot food that is cooked might mitigate problems.

NYC had a pre-existing large scale school lunch program (more than lunches, they offered breakfast and after-school food too). It has been repurposed.

You could skip the daily tests and stick to normal food preparation hygiene. If food is packaged in standard foil take away containers, it just needs to be heated well enough for long enough to kill the virus (70 deg C, not sure of time). Or cook the food in the container. No salad sorry.

If there's any organization that could do this well, it's the NYC public school system.

Now, it would also be great if there was a way for the city to set up a voucher system to support the local restaurants as well, so that they'll be able to survive this crisis.

> all of them tested daily for COVID-19

That would be nice, but it's absolutely not happening. Even if Cuomo's“screw the rest of the country and give us all the supplies until our peak is past” had gotten a positive response, there wouldn't be sufficient test kits and other resources to collect and process those tests.

It's going to rely on servers not showing symptoms and using PPE and other safety procedures, not daily testing.

The menu lists mostly prepackaged prison food, nothing fresh to prepare

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