Hoarders Make Me Sick

[NETWizz]

I am so tired of people hording a TON of excess of things.

For example, I have no problem someone buying even 100 rolls of toilet paper but nobody needs 10,000. Then there are folks that went State to State and bought up over 20,000 containers of hand sanitizer.

Today, the same thing happened. I was reading that a hospital was trying Famitodine (Pepsid AC) as a potential treatment for the virus. This particular drug I take 10 mg once daily before bedtime. It completely eliminates my heartburn, indigestion, and upset stomach.

I used to take Zantac, but that apparently causes cancer, so I switched to another H2 blocker. At any rate I legitimately buy it in reasonable quantities for personal use for its labeled use. Mean while all these idiots bought up ALL of it immediately to horde it even though they don't have the virus NOR any of the conditions it treats. Oh, and they didn't buy one bottle... they bought out entire stores.

I DID manage to buy a 25 pack of it from Walmart.com to add to my supplies, but that is not even another month. Hopefully by then the problem goes away and I can order more. Today, I ordered some Tagemet on Amazon because it is the only other OTC H2 blocker in the same class. I kind of remember it worked for me before when I tried it but both Pepsid and Zantac were better.

****

I guess I will adapt and overcome. Regardless, without it I sometimes wake up sick enough to start vomiting on occasion. If that happens I am going to take Zantac to stop it if I must.

I am just so tired of self-ish greedy people. People ignore the quarantine, China let flights go international to infect the entire globe while having Wuhan in quarantine, no TP or paper towels... People bought up all the meat in the grocery stores, and the list goes continues.

We are legitimately starting to experience a food crisis in this country. I never thought that would happen, and it scares me. I never thought that there is the very real possibility that if things do not improve that I will one day go to bed hungry. I mean financially I am not wealthy but compared to 2/3 rds of Americans, I have over 100 times what they have saved.


How are things in your hometown?

 

[sapphirescales]

The government is lying. "Panic buyers" are the scapegoat. The real problem is the "just in time" delivery system, which means that there's less than 2 weeks of inventory on hand at any given time. Locked down for more than 2 weeks? Shortages appear.

I'm not saying that panic buyers don't exist, but they're not the main problem here. Why do you think there's still no toilet paper available on Amazon? Surely the panic buyers have all died down by now. The problem is the entire supply chain has been disrupted. It wasn't designed for everyone to be sh*tting at home 100% of the time. That combined with production disruptions has caused severe shortages.

These shortages aren't going away anytime soon. I'm stocking up like crazy because of this. Panic buyers aren't the problem. The entire system is collapsing. The companies need to re-design the entire system. Unfortunately they're just sitting on their hands waiting for things to go back to "normal" hoping they won't have to invest the money.

I just bought an extra freezer to store meat. Meat shortages are coming big time, and that's pretty much all I eat.

 

[pcpete]

I am one of the people who believe that we are causing way more harm and even death in the long run by closing down the countries infrastructure, including our food distribution systems. This is f-en insane that way we are dealing with it. Some people will die from corona no matter what, but closing down the world is creating worse problems by a whole magnitude.

 

[Sky-Knight]

The data will be in by the end of the week. Solid scientific data from the US is illustrating that the isolation procedures aren't actually helping. Peer review is in progress, and we should start to see changes end of this week or next to confirm all of this. Should it be confirmed... well I don't know WTF the governments will do because people are scared, they have to "do" something. Even if that something is technically useless. (All of this is independent of the fact that the Northern Hemisphere is getting hot thanks to Summer, and colds don't move in the Summer. Our Southern Hemisphere family... God Speed!)

But Sapphirescales is correct, just in time inventory is great, until it isn't. It's OK for the consumer to be just in time, but the warehouses of the world just aren't setup for that. Amazon in particular is really hard hit. Their entire financial and logistical model is collapsing.

The company that's holding up surprisingly is Walmart... But they've been through this before, or at least similar stuff on a smaller scale.

 

[River Valley Computer]

The company that's holding up surprisingly is Walmart... But they've been through this before, or at least similar stuff on a smaller scale.

But this won't continue if the China link reduces or goes away. American-made would be nice but probably remotely possible because of corporate greed.

 

[Sky-Knight]

But this won't continue if the China link reduces or goes away. American-made would be nice but probably remotely possible because of corporate greed.

It's not corporate greed, it's unfavorable trade law. You can thank the red side of our political spectrum for that. The blue side just wants to break the situation differently, neither of them wish to protect the small and medium business as is required for our economy to flourish.

But China? Yeah... thanks Reagan...

 

[fencepost]

Regardless of whether it's panic buyers or anything else (like shifted demand after the removal of the other product), the over the counter pills wouldn't matter anyway. Pretty sure the story I saw talking about this indicated that it was intravenous, more than 10x the dosage of the pills, and obviously without a lot of the other things that go into making an actual pill (binders, etc).

 

[britechguy]

The data will be in by the end of the week. Solid scientific data from the US is illustrating that the isolation procedures aren't actually helping. Peer review is in progress, and we should start to see changes end of this week or next to confirm all of this. Should it be confirmed...

Sources, please? I'd really like to read up on this, and be reading what you've been reading so that we are, as close to literally as possible, on the same page.

Based on observational data from the rest of the world so far I'd be hard pressed to believe that it will be confirmed that "social isolation procedures aren't actually helping." I would not be surprised to find that they're not helping to the extent hoped for. Of course, it also depends on people actually following them and based on what I have actually observed when out in public that's been spotty at best. There seem to still be plenty of people breezing around, sans masks, and getting quite close to others (even if only briefly) which allows for easy transmission of a novel pathogen.

 

[timeshifter]

phew, .... I thought you'd seen my basement office and all the surplus computer gear I've got lying around.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Sources, please? I'd really like to read up on this, and be reading what you've been reading so that we are, as close to literally as possible, on the same page.

Based on observational data from the rest of the world so far I'd be hard pressed to believe that it will be confirmed that "social isolation procedures aren't actually helping." I would not be surprised to find that they're not helping to the extent hoped for. Of course, it also depends on people actually following them and based on what I have actually observed when out in public that's been spotty at best. There seem to still be plenty of people breezing around, sans masks, and getting quite close to others (even if only briefly) which allows for easy transmission of a novel pathogen.

Tell that to New Zealand which is declaring the virus effectively dead. They shut down all travel and ended up with only 19 total deaths. Viruses spread by contact. If you prevent people from having contact it can’t spread. It’s not that hard to understand.

 

[NETWizz]

The government is lying. "Panic buyers" are the scapegoat. The real problem is the "just in time" delivery system, which means that there's less than 2 weeks of inventory on hand at any given time. Locked down for more than 2 weeks? Shortages appear.

I'm not saying that panic buyers don't exist, but they're not the main problem here. Why do you think there's still no toilet paper available on Amazon? Surely the panic buyers have all died down by now. The problem is the entire supply chain has been disrupted. It wasn't designed for everyone to be sh*tting at home 100% of the time. That combined with production disruptions has caused severe shortages.

These shortages aren't going away anytime soon. I'm stocking up like crazy because of this. Panic buyers aren't the problem. The entire system is collapsing. The companies need to re-design the entire system. Unfortunately they're just sitting on their hands waiting for things to go back to "normal" hoping they won't have to invest the money.

I just bought an extra freezer to store meat. Meat shortages are coming big time, and that's pretty much all I eat.

I cannot get a freezer. They are all sold out, and the Government just gave stimulus money, so folks bought up the freezers

 

[britechguy]

Tell that to New Zealand which is declaring the virus effectively dead. They shut down all travel and ended up with only 19 total deaths. Viruses spread by contact. If you prevent people from having contact it can’t spread. It’s not that hard to understand.

I agree. And that's why I am extremely skeptical of anyone who's trying to make the claim, " that the isolation procedures aren't actually helping."

All anecdotal evidence, which is pretty darned persuasive on its own, is that wherever it's been tried, no matter how bad things already were, it significantly reduces transmission among those not already infected.

I don't think even Twain's observation, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics," will occur in this case. Nothing I've read or observed from afar, so far, indicates that social distancing is not very effective in minimizing (not eliminating) transmission.

At this point, though, there is zero hope of containment in the conventional sense of that word in relation to communicable disease. What I'm waiting for, and it will have to wait, is whether serological testing for antibodies is going to reveal that a far larger portion of the population than is currently presumed to have been infected (most without symptoms or minimal symptoms) exists. I sincerely hope so, as this would allow things to begin getting back to whatever the new normal is significantly sooner. I think the USA started doing anything, at all, so late in the game that this pathogen is far more widespread already than suspected.

 

[NETWizz]

Tell that to New Zealand which is declaring the virus effectively dead. They shut down all travel and ended up with only 19 total deaths. Viruses spread by contact. If you prevent people from having contact it can’t spread. It’s not that hard to understand.

Doesn’t work in the USA. Like dummies we let infected folks in and it blew up

 

[britechguy]

I cannot get a freezer. They are all sold out, and the Government just gave stimulus money, so folks bought up the freezers

Odd, you can still get one here. You may have to wait up to six weeks for delivery, depending on the exact model, but you can get them.

Our refrigerator decided to die just two days ago, but it will be about 5 to 6 weeks (if the delivery date is accurate) until the model we want will be here. The gentleman at the shop said that the delivery dates have generally been being given as "worst case" so as not to disappoint. Actual delivery has often been much sooner. He also said that this is mostly due to shipping, not manufacturing. With so much shopping of all sorts from home all of the major shippers are in hyperdrive mode.

 

[Diggs]

how many bats have you exterminated recently?

Bats and their habitat are protected in the states.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I should be clear, isolation as the 50 states have rolled it out and enforced it doesn't work.

Isolation does work, but the US isn't capable of such, and the half measures we've implemented aren't really working.

And China didn't do anything wrong with their bats, the did everything wrong with containment after that, as well as cooking the numbers, lying about it, and generally trying to hide it to such a degree we're all left wondering if they didn't infect the rest of the planet ON PURPOSE.

 

[phaZed]

It's not clear that the virus came from bats, either. Nor the "wet-market". The wet-market incident happened in December, but there are clearly cases from November that have nothing to do with the wet-market.
https://www.livescience.com/first-case-coronavirus-found.html

Now, doctors and scientists are trying to trace the virus back to where it originated to learn more about its spread. If, for instance, doctors can find the earliest cases, they may be able to identify the animal host where the virus lurks

Taking a literal guess that bats are responsible, doesn't make it so.

 

[fencepost]

Regarding isolation not working, I saw some estimates recently that the San Francisco/Silicon Valley lockdown is estimated to have prevented tens of thousands of cases (deaths?) by doing it as soon as they did, but I'm not finding the news stories on a quick search.

 

[pcpete]

maybe isolation is slowing things down or working[IN THE SHORT TERM], but is this going to stop people from getting infected long term? What if complete isolation works, then are we going to stay this way till they make a vaccine in the future? Isolation is ruining peoples lives now and into the future at the expense of maybe saving some lives in today.

 

[sapphirescales]

I cannot get a freezer. They are all sold out, and the Government just gave stimulus money, so folks bought up the freezers

Then you're not looking hard enough. I got mine from Sears (it's a 21 cubic foot upright convertible fridge/freezer so I can turn it into an all-fridge when this is all over), but there are other options. Check out commercial freezers. Those are easy to come by right now because businesses are shut down. You could even go used if you wanted to save a few bucks.

Do you really think that EVERYONE is buying freezers and that's why they're sold out? No. Only a small percentage of people are buying freezers, but that's enough to destabilize the supply chain. Same thing with toilet paper and everything else. Most of the country is too poor to even put good food on the table. They don't have the money to by hundreds of rolls of toilet paper, months (or even years) worth of food, or freezers. I can afford to do this because I'm a business owner, but most people could never do it.