Obligatory Covid-19 Post
Stay safe guys. I feel a little detached from all the disruption since I work from home, but I know this is a super weird time, and a lot of places have moved to quarantine in place protocols because humans are a bunch of dipshits that can’t figure out what 6′ of personal space means. A week ago I went to Chili’s to pick up a take out order, and there were 10 people milling around outside, and another 10 all bunched together in the little To Go closet they have. It took 90 minutes to get my food because apparently the management figured that since the city had told all restaurants in the city that dining in was not allowed for the foreseeable future, Chili’s management figured “Well I guess the amount of to go traffic won’t change and we shouldn’t staff up for some unpredictable rush.”
Ug. Hopefully everyone will start figuring it out soon, but you know what Einstein said; “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
My point is, be safe, and don’t contribute to the general level of dipshittery by being a dipshit. And don’t hoard toilet paper. I just can’t figure that one out. I mean, hand sanitizer, I kind of get, even though regular soap is perfectly fine, but the people hoarding TP are a bunch of assholes. There’s already reports of sewage systems getting fucked up because people have had to resort to using paper towels and those wet wipes for your butt that famously fuck up sewage systems. We’ve got a few rolls left in the house, but a month from now, I really don’t want to have to take a shower every time I pinch one off.
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I live in Japan and have a wonderful butt-washing toilet seats. Don’t even need the rolls I have… Muwahahaha!
Curse you!
From experience, those exist in the US now, and you can buy them online from both Costco and Amazon. Occasionally you’ll still use a single square of TP for just *checking* that the Bidet didn’t miss anything, but it takes about two months to go through a single roll.
And it’s *totally* worth the buy. For one, your drains don’t clog nearly as often. For second, you’re not cutting down trees for your butt. For third, if you get a decent bidet and not one of those stupid cheap ones, they come with all kinds of extra features (heated water, oscillation, dryers, deodorizers, massage functions, heated seats, multi-user saved-settings, self-cleaning, direction control, feminine hygiene sprays, some even sing to you so people don’t have to hear pooping sounds!)
Normal toilet experiences are awkward, messy, and humorously embarrassing (there’s a reason toilet gags exist), but a good bidet feels like getting an spa treatment, and I look forward to spending time on the (home) toilet now as much as I look forward to a hot shower after a cold and dreary day.
Seriously, get a bidet, you won’t regret it.
In Russian there is a word «засранец» (zasranec) — emotionally it’s about the same as English “little fucker” or something like that, but literally it means “someone who shits a lot and in a wrong place”. So… I guess there are too many of those around.
Fun fact. Washing with soap and water is far better than hand sanitizer for protecting you from not just COVID-19 but also numerous other diseases. (This tidbit brought to you by my wife, a nurse in a med-surg unit at a hospital.)
The food bank where I volunteer are using the protocol of hand wash (typical 20 seconds, getting everywhere, re-wash if you touch face or “unclean”) followed by alcohol-based sanitizer. Hmm, work from home fixing client’s computer problems, or head down the road and hand out food to people at the door, because we are not letting them in the building at this time?
yup, the sanitizers are anti bacterial, and that is exactli what sars-co-2 not is :-) Washing with soap is indeed better because it removes fatty substances, and that is what the walls of that virus is very sensitive to. (at least, that is the way it was explained to me)
It also removes the virus/bacteria/germs from your hands and into the sewers. Hand sanitizer just leaves them on your hands and hopefully they are dead/inactive.
The alcohol will destroy the virus (if you scrub for long enough and it’s high enough alcohol content) but the soap will destroy it quicker (and is easier on your hands).
Yep the virus is held together by fat so when the soap dissolves that it all just falls apart.
A nanotech expert describes it here: https://twitter.com/PalliThordarson/status/1236549305189597189 in a way that goes into detail but is still fairly accessible for laypeople.
Hand sanitizer is really just a backup if you are somewhere you don’t have access to a sink and soap (Like if you’re driving Uber, for example) – soap and water does a much better job.
I got lucky, I shop at Costco and had just bought one of those humungo TP packs when the whole hysteria started. As a single guy, I’m good for about another 4 months.
For at least the next 3 weeks my entire country (South Africa) is on total lockdown. The restaurants aren’t just take-out only, they’re shut down completely. We’re not allowed to leave our homes except for vital necessities. Except our government keeps contradicting itself on what counts as “vital”. It’s extremely confusing and stressful.
Why would you need to take a shower everytime you pinch one off? Get a dog. It has a tongue for a reason.
Congrats, I am both laughing and gagging.
We have a 4-month supply of TP; we had it before all this happened. We always do; under normal conditions, it’s cheap enough, and it’s not as if it spoils. And we have a month’s supply of food in the freezer, before we even start on the preserved food in the pantry. The time to prepare for this sort of thing is before it happens.
Yeah, same for me. My reserves typically are for around 4 months as well. I always have a full package of 10 rolls and a package I’m in the process of emptying. Last time I bought one was well before the rush began and now it’s about one month later and I am still confident that my now 3-months-reserves will last easily until all panic buyers are finished butting heads with each other. I won’t start getting nervous until my reserves are down to 1 month, but I really don’t think that the TP is going to remain sold out until June.
I went to get a package at Costco like I usually do when I saw them just put out the “Out of stock” sign. :( . The thing is, I know a lot of them are just reselling the rolls on ebay for $20 a roll.
Yeah, I’m in my third trimester, and my spouse is a truck driver, so last time he was home, we bought a bunch of heavy stuff because weight restrictions, plus some other goods to limit my forays out because I already have circulation issues in my foot, so it thinks it’s great laughs to randomly swell up while driving, especially post-walking-all-over-the-store. Yes, a real riot, that!
At the time, I thought I was almost out of toilet paper, so we bought another pack. I’m still working on the pack I didn’t realize I had, but kinda glad because everyone lost their brains and panicked so hard. I mean, I can deal with washcloths just fine if I need to, but it’s nice to know of one of my older neighbors needs a few rolls, I can spot them some.
Yay for happy accidents!
yeah, those are all sold out too. :-)
Did you get your order to go finally!?
Yeah. I walked past the to go register and went to sit down at the bar by myself. Luckily I brought my Kindle. Got through 1/4 of a book I was reading.
We normally have 2 of the large ‘costco’ sized packages in the storeroom, just because they don’t go bad and when we had small kids they got used up pretty fast, it just sort of continued after they’d grown. One will do us a month and we’d just gotten a fresh one before the foolishness started, so with three and a bit we should be good on that at least.
The average house, containing adults that don’t rely on restaurants or takeout for 3 out of 4 meals, can probably get a month out of just the things in their cupboards, fridges and freezers.
Check yours out and make sample ‘menus’ to see how long what you have would last if used carefully and completely, you’d likely be surprised.
We could go several months on what we already had on hand although we’d likely get tired of biscuits, soup, canned veggies, hamburger and oatmeal after awhile.
The point is you can survive if you have to and if you haven’t been conditioned into thinking the government will provide everything…they can’t and they won’t.
Nobody is going to show up with hot meals on your doorstep after a major blizzard or icestorm with widespread power failures which we regularly have here or floods which we regularly have around us or some boneheads blocking the rail lines to make a political statement and being allowed to do it for weeks, which we just had.
You don’t need to be a ‘prepper’, just be aware of what you have on hand for non-perishables and how to not waste them.
People are assholes… about their assholes…
There’s a whole thing in psychology trying to figure out why people rush to hoard certain odd things in moments of uncertainty. This time, it was “bathroom tissue”.
you mean the talking heads on the telly told us it was toilet paper…and the sheeple reacted accordingly
No, the “talking heads on the telly” thing reported it after it was already a thing.
WHY it was “the thing” is the weird part. After it already was the thing, it will keep itself going just fine (because people actually want the stuff), so all the talking heads did was make it a little worse.
But it happened all on its own. Could be as simple as a few shipments late causing a shortage in one area… bam, off to the races.
I blame Supernatural. In one of the alternate reality dystopias they’ve experienced, Chuck (who *SPOILERS* you find out later is literally God) tells Dean to hoard toilet paper like it’s gold.
That same future was the one where civilization had collapsed after the Croatoan virus infected most of the world population. For bonus points, Croatoan virus is an anagram of “at coronavirus”.
Croatan virus is not an anagram of coronavirus.
Croatan virus is missing an o, has a t, and has an extra a.
In some country toilet paper is an import product only so with the border closed that a very shitty situation to be in, but people are dumb and participate in toilet paper hoarding even near where i live when there is a toilet paper factory in my city.
While we are stuck at home, you should help all of us by releasing “Arch Duke of Dinosaurs II”. It wont stop the Corona virus, but it will keep our minds off of it, and be incentive to “stay at home” (reading)
That same future was the one where civilization had collapsed after the Croatoan virus infected most of the world population. For bonus points, Croatoan virus is an anagram of “at coronavirus”.
Whoops, meant to reply to my own post up there. Really wish you could edit these things.
The toilet paper thing is not a supply problem,it’s a hoarding problem. If people only buy a current use supply, there will be plenty next week. Then the profiteers will lose their investment, and look like idiots to boot.
Actually, it is a supply problem to a degree.
There are basically two markets for toilet paper, and they don’t overlap — the home market and the corporate market. Businesses don’t normally buy the same toilet paper that people buy for their homes. And the demand for toilet paper overall is pretty steady — barring unexpected problems with your digestive system, it doesn’t change much over a week or a month. So the companies _making_ toilet paper, with a pretty stable demand, don’t typically have much excess production capacity.
But now, we’ve got millions of people furloughed or laid off, stuck at home; they’re not using toilet paper at work, they’re using it at home. But they’re not going to be buying industrial toilet paper, they’re going to buy more of what they normally buy in the supermarket. So the shelf stock is going to start taking a hit just from that, and when you throw in panicked buying of everything in sight, it strips the shelves — and because the manufacturers can’t ramp up production easily, when stocks _do_ come in, you get the same “OMG, gotta grab extra to be safe!” shortsightedness that it takes heavy-handed restrictions on the part of the stores to slow, with stocks being bought out almost as fast as they appear. And until the manufacturers can increase production, it’s going to stay like that. But I’d be willing to bet that many of them are hanging back waiting to see if the lockdown gets eased rather than making big investments in more machinery that will wind up staying idle after the demand returns to normal.
The fun thing is that toilet paper in Germany is usually gone, but Kleenex and paper napkins are always available. It’s like the right handers only focus on this abstract concept of “toilet paper” and completely ignore the general idea of “whipe your butt with something”. I bought a 55 cents package of paper napkins and I’m set for a month. And anyway, why is toilet paper so essential? Why don’t they hoard juices and vitamin pills? People are irrational crazies most of the time. Completely emotional with only shreds of intelligence.
This whole situation is basically a mass hysteria. People die from viruses every year, it happens. About 1/76th of people die every year. The WHO predicts a few per mille for this virus and I’m not sure that this will be much more than any other flu season.
Nobody would halt the economy for the child that dies every 10 seconds as a result of starvation and malnutrition under the age of 5.
But let’s see how many businesses don’t survive being closed like that. There’ll be a mass rush of unemployed people.
Btw, I had the usual symptoms. Whoozy head for 2 days, sore throat for 2 days (etched clean with orange juice), then came the snot. Snot’s mostly gone by now. Was it Corona? I’ll never know.
If I could just find my gas mask then I could set an example!
Let’s all watch cloverfield lane so we can build makeshift hazmat suits and don’t get a cough.
The toilet paper is a puzzler, that’s for sure.
But I find that what annoys me more is the sheer number of people who either do not understand what is going on and adjust there behavior accordingly, or worse, choose to run directly counter to precautions. I work in an essential service (food production) and if that wasn’t the case I would be shut up inside like everyone else. But it annoys me that my co-workers and I are out doing this to feed the people who are holding “Covid 19 parties” for the express purpose of spreading it around.
nah, its perfectly reasonable thing on toilet paper, enough people been subjected to post-apoc sci-fi culture where toilet paper is one of holy grails, without understanding that its of that statue due: 1) no running water (at least clean one), 2)no regular paper either, 3) hardly any good cloth either, 4) plants are something you dont likely want near yer butt and 5) animals that have fur might be bit aggressive about letting you wipe your butt with it.
Covid-19 parties? Talk about missing the whole point of “flattening the curve” — which is to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. The assumption is that roughly 70-80% of the population is going to get the disease anyway. If 5% of those getting it need to be hospitalized, then it’s better that that 5% is spread out over a year than they all end up in the hospital over the course of a couple of months. Hospitals might be able to cope if they get that many ICU patients in a year; they can’t if the patients all arrive within a couple of months.
Pretty sure the ‘Covid-19 parties’ are them trying to get herd immunity. Not really a great idea admittedly since it did not work well for the UK, but it’s not actually an original idea either. There are parents that sometimes intentioally make sure their children get chicken pox as children so they don’t get it as adults (when it can be deadlier). The people doing the Covid-19 parties probably are missing the point of the ‘flattening the curve’ plan, which is to not overwhelm health services if a lot of people get sick and get very bad symptoms all at the same time instead of a little at a time, like you said.
Dave… I’m very sorry, but the time has come to cancel my Patreon. I’ve been a huge fan of your work for many years, and have been thrilled to be able to support it. Unfortunately, my province is probably going to go into full lockdown any day now. My wife and I have 3 kids to support (24/7- schools are closed, too), with bills and a mortgage, and we’re cutting everything we can think of.
Hopefully everyone makes it through unscathed, and I can re-add when some semblance of normalcy returns.
Stay safe everyone.
It’s understandable. Everyone’s taking a hit now, and I can’t imagine how things like restaurants and things like bowling alleys and theaters are going to manage. Hopefully we’ll see stuff like federal orders for banks to be cool about mortgages for the next few months, but we’ll see.
I would have thought that SOME smart theater owner would have just started handing out the cheapo masks and gloves with every ticket. It’s not like theaters weren’t already charging extortion-level prices for a ticket. A mask and gloves wouldn’t really hit their profit margin that much. Better than shutting down completely.
That won’t work, actually. Theater prices for the tickets, believe it or not, don’t make them any money. They only just barely prevent them from losing money. If people came in, bought tickets, and watched movies, the theaters would go broke.
It’s when you add concession sales to the mix that they actually turn a profit. The movies are a loss leader to gather the audience in, because when the audience is in, you can SELL THEM RIDICULOUSLY-PRICED SNACKS.
But think about it. If people refuse to buy nachos and popcorn because food prep is a likely avenue of infection, the theater’s going to go into a death spiral. Add in that they’d be blocking or removing three out of every four seats from the theater and they don’t even start to break even on the movies.
Me and the roomie were at walmart the other day, we got to the checkout and there was the 6′ tape line, so we waited til person ahead of us was done. I put my groceries on conveyor and my roomie put his up behind me. Checkout guy got pissed when he found out we weren’t paying together, said my roomie should’ve waited til I was done before placing his stuff on conveyor. We came in together, our stuff was in same cart, we both have to interact with checkout guy, how is roomie waiting going to stop spread of anything? People are just being silly.
Here’s why you and your roomie should have kept apart:
Exceptions make rules harder to enforce. It’s much easier to say “everyone stays 2m from each other” and get it to stick than “everyone except this 5% of people stays 2m from each other.”
While I “hope” America (and the world) makes it through this with acceptable numbers. I see images on TV of places like the poorer parts of India, doing the absolute wrong handling of this.
I suspect that the no touch thermometers and IR scanners are going to be a part of every day life now, much like airport scanners and store metal detectors…
Which is mostly bunk (the thermometers). I’m one of the small percentage of people who normally run low temp compared to the AVERAGE 98.6 F that is being checked. When I run a fever I might REACH that, normally it is closer to 96.8 (which is why I always got it wrong on tests in elementary). Now, it takes no genius to realize if the average is higher there must be people out there who run hot all the time –and are now getting hassled even though they aren’t sick. Also consider, there were plenty of cold and flu varieties out there that aren’t covid-19 so having a fever isn’t a big thing anyway.
I reiterate that people are silly, they’re all afraid of the rona but the past 2 Fridays they’ve crowded into my work for our Friday fish fry, definitely ignoring the whole 6 foot thing. They cram in with other customers and insist on sanitizing their cards or putting their cash on the counter instead of handing it to cashier, but still taking change from same cashier. I fail to understand the stupidity, of course we only have 15 confirmed cases in My county.
The other problem is that 98.6° is a AVERAGE human temp.that means some people run lower and some people ruun higher. So it makes the whole thing BS.
My mom is one of those that normally rum high.
Oh Sydney. Sydney, we all love you. PLEASE never change
The toilet paper thing is from Australia: They import much of their toilet paper from China and were looking at a possible supply disruption.
Panic buying TP in North America or Europe is just because people were being stupid and only looking at the what, not the why.
Extremely unlikely to be an Einstein quote. Attributed to him by an author, long after Einstein was famous, in a remembered conversation, but never actually heard by anybody or written down. In addition the same author changed his story over time about just what was said, with the earlier version mentioning an older understanding about only two infinities, and only in recent times learning that the universe isn’t infinite. Also there is a long history of similar sentiments pre-dating Einstein, so probably made up, like all the Mark Twain and Winston Churchill quotes. And finally, some infinities are bigger than others (number theorists, feel free to wade in).
None-the-less a worthy aphorism.
Right, but for every quote out there, there’s someone saying that the person it’s attributed to didn’t say it, so I generally assume that all quotes are made up or incorrectly attributed and no one ever said anything. But given that the vast majority of attributions are probably incorrect, it’s okay to say whoever you think said it in order to make your point as long as the saying itself is worthwhile.
In some cases, it lends credence to the aphorism if a smart person is credited with it, like Einstein saying something about the infinite universe and not some dimwit like Jenny McCarthy.
Found TP today. I did, however, buy a full 44-lb bag of water-softener salt, and a pack of 24 bar towels, for the Roman / At Sea plan. Now, I haven’t tried this out yet, but … after all this is over with, I may try it just for curiousity’s sake. Because intriguing information and all.
Get two LIDDED buckets that’ll hold a gallon and a half of water. Crush and mix salt into water at a ratio of 0.3 lb salt to 1 gallon water; that’ll get you to ocean-sea saline levels (of 3.5%, or 35g/liter); do this in both buckets. Cut the bar towels in half (because one of those suckers is, like, 14×18, so 9×14 should do FINE); add a fair number (figure your baseline for two(?) days of household usage) into the first bucket. Important: make sure it doesn’t go too high.
Use. Deposit used ones in the second ‘slop’ bucket, immersing them in the salt water so, you know, it doesn’t stink too much. (Note to self: get slop-bucket stick.) Empty slop bucket into toilet and wash cloths as necessary; learn how soon it stinks, and do it a day or two before that. (Two days? Three? Who knows?)
Scrub out slop bucket, prepare new saltwater, ‘refresh’ clean bucket as necessary. Repeat. (I figure keeping one the slops and the other the ‘clean’ one is probably the more sanitary idea, right?)
Plan on always having a month or two of food stockpiled ‘just in case’, and if things are leaning towards ‘problem’, try to stock up before things get crazy, because it’s hard to shop at a store that’s got empty shelves. If it turns out to be nothing and you have extra food, no harm done – call it ‘shopping finished early’.
‘Just in case’ includes: Armageddon, being fired from work (a close second to Armageddon), or a local disaster where donating food to people who are suffering from unscheduled spontaneous homelessness makes all the sense in the world.
Basic math suggests about 1 in 800 people here were infected when I locked my front door, and the number today is now about 1-5%, depending on how good people are with social distancing. I’m expecting it to get rough here in about 3 weeks time – worse than New York is now.
My food will hold out, but my stockpiles are older than a fair number of readers here, and some of the cans are swollen… bother. Food however is food. Unless it kills me.
Then it’s germ warfare.
On a lighter note, medicine in 5 years time will be something on the edge of amazing, a place it would not have reached without some help from a pandemic.
having a rather large garden filled with fruit trees,berrys,potatoes, tomatoes and more. neighbouring ground with chickens where the owner lives further out so we get to take care/use the eggs atm. and a natural water source not that far away…. oh and enough military rations for another 3-4 month if it gets rough… i think i’m prepared…
For the Toiletpaper stuff… well you can always use washrags to clean your after and wash em afterwards if you run out… or use bigger leafs if you preffer onetime usage stuff….
Canadian here. I’m not 100% certain of this, but I was actually given a pretty reasonable story as to *why* the whole ‘toilet paper horde’ was going on.
From what I was told, when the initial Covid-19 Outbreak happened in China, their exports took a bit of a hit. Australia – who apparently get their TP from China – began to suffer a shortage. Panic set in & people began to horde-purchase.
Somebody in North America heard that Australia was running low on TP & they started their own stampede to the market to get their own paper. The mass hysteria snowballed from there.
Ironically, Canada gets its TP from *CANADA*….so we are, in essence, creating our own shortage. Not for a lack of resources, but for our own panic causing us to buy out stocks faster than the companies can produce more.
If this is erroneous in anyway, I apologize. I get my information third-hand from one of my know-it-all coworkers who checks the internet.
Additionally, the TP industry has two main products. Home usage 4ply and commercial usage 2ply, restaurants, office buildings, etc. With a stay-at-home in place, there’s an actual 40%+ increase in home use, and the the market has effectively bottomed out (pun intended! :D ) in the second. So, the manufacturers are still producing 24/7 same as always, but they’re retooling half their production lines to meet demand.
There are other effects from the isolation, the TP is just the most noticeable. I have a friend who is a writer and he’s been reposting from publishers. The online ordering of physical books has increased over a third, but the audio book industry fell 98% nearly overnight. People aren’t driving to and from work, so they’re not buying audio books to listen to.
It’s a little surreal for those of us who do need to get to a physical location to conduct essential work, there’s hardly anybody else out there.
Yup! I have a friend who’s an EMT. Construction accidents, auto accidents and bullet wounds are way down. Domestic abuse victims are up. And with fewer humans running around, the animals are coming out of hiding. There’s deer in city streets in the states, wild boar are coming down from northern Canada, Italy’s canals have swans and dolphins (and crystal clear water!) and the beaches in China are so full of tortoises laying eggs, they could come off the endangered list in less than a year!
I’m considered Essential since I do contract computer work with law enforcement, but I’m doing as much of my repair/update work as I can remotely. I’m still on the road three days a week at this point though.
As far as TP hoarders… We’re in what, the 3rd or 4th week of hoarding now? The local Walmarts STILL don’t have TP! What the hell are people doing? Not even the cheap 1-ply sandpaper brands are on the shelves… I just don’t get it. Thankfully we happened to buy some the weekend before the madness struck so I won’t have to resort to paper towels any time soon. Heh
I worked at a movie theater;
shut down.
No one else is hiring till this blows over, in this area; that includes places that news sites keep saying are still hiring.
Job and Family services claimed to have a special code for Covid displaced employees for claiming unemployment…it keeps being denied.
My tax returns have become all I am living off of; so all *fun* things I had planned for some of it is out the window. The government’s 1200 dollars wouldn’t do much even short term, and now talk of it being delayed for several months…
Per the talk here, I have no idea what is up with the toilet paper thing; I really don’t. I go through maybe four rolls in a month if that, sometimes only two. People are insane. Hell, back when I was almost homeless (had a roof over my head thanks to having before bought a cheap mortgage house), but not much else; and didn’t know dollar stores sold toilet paper I had come up with a number of inventive alternatives, slightly wet cardboard, shower head, standing water and splashing, plastic bag (worst idea), ect…
Just wanted to mention you might want to sign up with food delivery services like DoorDash, Postmates, UberEats, and Instacart – they are still hiring and it’s one of the few places right now that people can actually make money during the pandemic. Just make sure to have a mask and gloves when you’re doing delivery services.
PS – I’m not kidding, I do it sometimes and it’s a good source of extra income.
Toilet paper shortage is mostly because some 40% of it is produced for industrial use, and with people at home, personal usage is up. Unfortunately, industrial toilet paper providers don’t package for home use. Places like Amazon are starting to sell industrial rolls for home use, but even then, deliveries start in May.
All I can say is, it’s scary for me as an Amazon worker. I get to go to work since we’re classed as “essential” even though there’s been unconfirmed confirmed reports that at least two workers tested positive in the building that’s literally attached to mine and shares the same Medical room/staff….
Stay safe, man. Lots of reports out there that Amazon is being real dicks to their employees.
It’s….mixed. They’ve cancelled all UPT(Unpaid Personal Time)deductions and Points for Amazonians and Temp workers, respectively, until at least the end of April now, we’re allowed phones on floor now to keep in contact, and anyone who is diagnosed or otherwise ordered into self-quarantine will get paid for the two weeks of it.
Having said that, not happy that they’re not letting us know when they get positive reports, so people can make an educated decision on whether to come into work or not.
wait, you got takeout from chili’s?
aside from the whole “fake restaurant/everything’s microwaved” thing, i feel like those of us who can should be getting their takeout from the small places that may be barely hanging on otherwise
Toilet paper shortage is NOT the fault of hoarders, but rather of corporate policies of ‘just in time’ deliveries. If everyone suddenly needs a month worth of toilet paper, there isn’t enough at the stores or even in the delivery pipeline. Shortages announced in the news only make it worse.
Companies have to pay tax on unsold inventory, plus they need shelf or warehouse space to keep it all. It makes sense to keep a minimal amount of product on hand when you can normally restock at any time. So, yeah, it’s partially the fault of how our capitalist infrastructure is set up, but… it’s really just the fault of the hoarders.
It’s not entirely due to hoarding, the blame is to be split between hoarders and the toilet paper industry’s “right size factory” mentality. Where the factory runs 24/7 with no room for a quick ramping up of production.
A few of the stores I’ve been to say it’s just not coming on the trucks.
As Dagonell, and others have stated, there’s been a shift in consumption. from industrial (big cores you can stick your hand through) and home use, to pretty much just home use. So even if the hoarders hadn’t hit we WOULD have STILL run out of toilet paper.
As for factories “retooling” to go from making industrial toilet paper to home use. You would need to not only add in a perforation machine, (to make the sheets) you would also need to secure a supply of smaller cores(the tube the paper is wrapped around) or make a machine that makes them. and as Dave pointed out, “tax on inventory” means those machines are NOT just laying around unused.
Industry will NOT on it’s own make allowances for disasters in their production setups, unless the government makes them.
Of course were this the cold war, there would have been no shortage, since back then the government stockpiled this kind of stuff for when the bombs fall. but the stockpiles were dissolved because some idiot(in the civilian government, not the military) didn’t realize that industry doesn’t keep big stockpiles on hand, and said “If there’s a disaster just raid the big box stores in unaffected areas”
On another note, although practical, “The National Strategic Toilet Paper Reserve” just sounds silly.
Finally got a package (of tp) from CostCo, after we got down to 1 (one) roll. I was making plans to use old socks, as I am rather against using my washcloths or showering after every BM (live in AZ). Huge sigh of relief not having to put plan AAW (alternative a– wipe) into effect. All stores have put a 1 package only rule into effect, hopefully until this is over.
Netflix has Explained : COVID19 which I have watched. It goes into the history of the last pandemic (1918) and what we’ve learned since then. I’ve been learning as much as I can about covid19, and if we aren’t careful, we’ll end up with waves of it. Given the pressure to reopen the economy, it’s definitely going to happen here. Pity nobody in the White House can learn from the past.
Hello from a week-and-a-half into July.
The Great TP shortage is over! Now we have the National Coin Shortage… which at least halfway makes sense. With the US economy basically stalled for months and many places accepting only credit cards the flow of coinage is screwed up. Not one I’d have predicted, but sorta understandable.
Sadly, and what is less understandable, is the decision to end the lockdown 3 weeks too soon (by my count). We’re starting to get a fairly good second wave of infection going… and because of this I’m expecting some fairly draconian measures in the next few weeks.
Does NO ONE in government read history books (specifically the 1918 – 1919 epidemic)? They continue to screw around and we’ll get 3, maybe 4, waves before herd immunity gets us past the 60%+ where these things die out on their own. In other words, just about the time a safe, effective vaccine will become available to the public.
Maybe we should go back to using coffee beans for a change… again.
So how many want to bet that this organization has the words brotherhood or order somewhere in there name?
I have now had coronavirus – twice! The first time was before a test was available, by a few weeks (I work where the Navy has dozens from all over the world passing through weekly, quite the hotspot) and the second time was just now. And I’m just getting over the second dose.
This stuff is no joke, it leaves you exhausted and barely functional. I’ve had enough of it.
This shall henceforth be known as the Cora round because that’s what it does.
It’s sad that I had to get most of the way through the post before I realized it was written in 2020 and not 2021. Thanks, covidiots!
i am very creative, but i am also a bit paranoid and I struggle with sociopathic tendencies. Most times I succeed with the struggle and I come across as happy and outgoing, friendly and kind. The mask mandates are hard on me. I think I know what schizophrenics feel like. it does not happen all the time, but sometimes when I’m out in public and everybody is masked up, I have trouble seeing them as human. I am aware of it. so I seem extra outgoing, I talk to everyone. perhaps a bit too outgoing. if it gets really bad I’ll even ask to see someone’s face, which usually quells the voices that are whispering “they are monsters” in my ear.