Are you doing anything to prepare for a second wave?

[Emlou07]

Historically we are going to get one. Seeing pictures of places rammed is scary.

So if so, what are you doing to prepare? If only to make another potential lockdown a bit easier.

I've been picking up a couple of extra tins a week and some UHT milk. I've also put some bits aside for the kids to keep them entertained.

Just to reiterate - being prepared is not the same as panic buying, although some seem determined to confuse the two.

Many years ago our area, which hardly ever has snow was totally snowed in. Cars were abandoned on nearby roads and the motorway came to a halt with people still inside their cars. It was feet deep outside and no way of getting to shops easily. We had no power and water pressure was very low. Of course the authorities cleared the roads where people were trapped in cars first but we had days of isolation before we could make it to the village shop.

Since then I've always made sure I have a well stocked cupboard. It isn't always possible to pop to the shop, as I used to do before the Great Snow, as we called it.

41% of our businesses are closed and it’s estimated that a third of those will never reopen.

Unless the R rate goes through the roof it is really unlikely we will find ourselves back where we were.

No other country has had a second wave as of yet. And as a pp said - Historic data from a hundred years ago can’t really be applied here.

Haven’t read all the thread but there’s a lot of privilege showing - has anyone suggested what they’ll be doing to help the less fortunate and less privileged this time then? Anyone going to be rallying or protesting or setting up support for those who need it? Or just getting some extra pasta and pesto in for your pantry?

I may prep by increasing my food bank donations. They’ve really struggled in the past 10 weeks in our area, unsurprisingly as our biggest place of employment is an airport and a lot of people are at major risk of redundancy.

@Grumpos I doubt non-preppers are putting more effort in to stock up others, so this point isn’t really relevant.

Sensible personal planning and ensuring you have a well stocked store cupboard should be part of everyone’s common sense preparations given that the government has said future local lockdowns are likely.

Even if there is a second wave you'll still be able to go shopping. There will be no disruption to food supply because there will be no lockdown.
The country can't afford to go on lockdown again so you don't need to prepare because everyone will still have to work. Therefore the supplies will be there.

I don't get why people can't understand why you don't have a two week supply of food in your house at all times

I always keep large amounts of supplies anyway, so no different to usual.

@Grumpos I didn't realise being organised and always have food and other items means I am "privileged"!

For your information we give to the food bank regularly.

@Raaaa unless you are a large family or live in a very small place why can't/don't you have at least 2 weeks of food in the house? Two weeks is nothing

Sorry to spoil your fun op but there wont be another lockdown.
However, people will be able to assess their own risk and stay home if necessary and if you are allowed to wfh etc

You can’t go shopping if you are ill
I was ill
I had hardly any food because I had been ill and couldn’t shop
Could not get any delivered
It’s not unreasonable to have 2 weeks worth of food in your home! Pandemic or not.

Plenty of people do not do an entire good shop every time they shop, they buy fresh food and restock what they have used in their cupboards. If you are a good planner and budgeter you will mostly need top ups of bread/milk and not entire replenishment of everything. Long life items that are cheap like packets and tins are advisable to buy for people on a budget too

[quote Eckhart]@AlternativePerspective

Richard Doll, professor of epidemiology and medicine in the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, wrote this article:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/28/coronavirus-infection-rate-too-high-second-wave

What are your qualifications? You sound like you might just be guessing.[/quote]
Slightly pedantic (sorry) but David Hunter wrote that article, not Richard Doll.

Hunter is also highly qualified- but Doll was an epidemiological superstar who died in 2005. Hunter holds a chair in epidemiology and medicine in Oxford that is named in honour of Richard Doll.

I always keep enough in to last a couple of weeks. We are very rural and if it snows we can be stuck in our village. If supply chains are interrupted it generally takes a couple of weeks to get back to normal. So I never let things run down. I don’t buy loads extra every week. But as soon as I open one bottle of cooking oil, I get a new one in. So I always have a full thing in the cupboard. When you look at my weekly shop it’s not massively different to anyone else’s, I just add maybe one extra thing every so often. Last week I added a bag of frozen chopped onion, for example, which I don’t normally buy. When the last lockdown started we left longer between shops than we normally would, and there were tings we couldn’t get for ages, like loo roll. Didn’t matter. I had them in. I was prepped and so didn’t need to panic buy and even when there were a few rolls left on the shelf I could leave them for someone who really needed them. But some of the fresh food was hard to get and I hadn’t stored that. Onion was what we missed most in sauces etc, so now I have a bag of frozen onion just in case. I doubt me buying one extra bag of onion is going to cause a problem. And I’m slowly restocking on loo roll. Buying a pack of 12 where before I bought a pack of 9 and putting 3 rolls aside.
If something does happen, like another lockdown, or snow, we’ll be fine again and won’t need to panic about going to the shops.

To me that’s the exact opposite of panic buying. No one will run out of loo roll now just because I bought a 12 pack not a 9 pack, but should shops run low again we won’t be contributing to the panic because we’ll have enough here already.

Bog rolls, zillions

On a low budget (which I have been before) you can buy tins and packets to last you. It’s not going to mean you have 2 weeks worth of all the good food, but you can eat something. Beans, tinned veg, frozen veg etc - adding £2-4 of those bits to your weekly shop to give you a small store cupboard is something I have always done. But when I was ill, we ate it all and I couldn’t get out to replace it.

Keeping my stocks up to date and not letting them run low, as always. I've been a prepper for the past 18 months and intend to keep doing that for as long as I'm able.

Anyone who wasn't prepared for the first wave should now seriously think about being better prepared this time round, if possible. Even if we don't have a second wave, it makes sense to have a little extra at home in case of emergencies.

Prepping isn't panic buying. It's a careful consideration of what will be needed if supplies run low, as they did last time, and making sure one is as prepared as one's finances allow. I just add in a few extra items each shop.

Seeing some family next week and then buckling down again.

Let me guess, people will go on about how stupid we are and then name change and disappear when it happens, like at the beginning when it was 'just flu'.

No not really, I don't run my cupboards down so am always a little ahead of myself. Milk is always an issue as we use so much but other than that we have stuff in.

I need to get somethings back up to normal levels but not overly worried. It is the specific items that I need from one particular shop that are more difficult.

I do have a new hat and scarf set though for dd2, they were reduced on the Sainsbury's website so I added them to the order I was doing for dd1.

But looking at all the online butchers and fishmongers etc it is very clear that you have to be relatively well off to be able to afford to shop there. Their prices are extortionate, and you have to buy in fairly large quantities to justify buying from them.

most people can’t actually afford to shop like that.

Our local Butcher is consistently cheaper and far better than any local supermarket.

Anyone who wasn't prepared for the first wave should now seriously think about being better prepared this time round, if possible

I don’t really get what you mean? I wasn’t ‘prepared’... and we were fine. Were able to get everything we needed.

You can buy frozen mince in Aldi for a couple of quid
Also large packs of frozen chicken

I don't understand why you would need to do this, if there is a 2nd lockdown & it's a big if I think it will be much more localised or individuals who are told to self isolate. Why would there be another run on toilet rolls?

We always tend to have 2-4 weeks food/essentials in (come from a remote Scottish island - more than half a lifetime ago - and have not "got over it" yet).

What I have found over the past 10 weeks or so is that we have - probably sensibly - focused on essentials, and I forgot about "extras" - the odd chocolate orange, birthday cards/presents, stamps, batteries, cling film/tin foil, daft stuff - so I have been getting a few extras in lately, just to give a bit more of a "back to normal" feel to things.

We have also put in a subscription order for the dog's dried food, and have a plentiful supply of poop bags. All things we forgot about really. And walking down the road with dog poop in a see-through freezer bag at one point was just grim!

Generally prepared, but not just for covid - we are in a flood area too.

@frazzledfatty

If you were a single parent and you broke your leg tomorrow, how would you get any food? Not all of us have others to shop for us and you can’t get any delivery slots easily where I live

Absolutely nothing. I usually get the large packs of toilet role anyway, and have a good variety of frozen and tinned goods I use regularly.
This time I got the long life milk and have already donated it to the food bank.
Im of the kind set I might not be able to get the food I want, but there will always be something there to make a meal out of.

Even if we have lock down, we’ll be able to get food. The only reason there was an B issue before was due to panic buying so can we learn and just stop it?!