So "Its all panic buying..." fault....

[Hazelnutlatteplease]

The supermarkets have been restricted sale of stuff for over a week. However we still are getting food orders with significant amount missing and some items still completely unavailable.

AIBU to start to question whether the panic buying rhetoric isnt as much about deflecting blame from an ill prepared government as it is anything else.

Jesus christ. Some of you should just move to a communist country where the government just give you an allowance and take care of everything.
They're not our fucking nanny. Everyone crawling out the woodwork to blame everything on them.
"i run my own business and covid happened so.... govt should reimburse me with lost earnings"... NO, it's your problem I'm afraid.

It does show up the limits of the Just In Time system that supermarkets operate on, based on what sells in a usual week.
The JIT system won't work properly if it is based on what sells in a usual week. There are plenty of other factors that affect buying patterns. It should be based on stock levels plus info from point of sales terminals. There is no reason why JIT shouldn't work very well and, if operated properly, supermarkets would automatically be sent exactly what is needed to be replenished.

I know, when my relative worked in an Asda warehouse, they were sent items from the central depot, irrespective of whether it was needed or not. There could be loads of stock but if Asda's buying dept had negotiated a good deal on a product, the store would be deluged with it, even if none of it was selling.

We as consumers have a big part to play in all of this but unfortunately when people have the choice to either be responsible or selfish, there are many that choose the latter and not take heed of the potential impact of their choices.

"It IS the fault of panic buyers."

I'm really not convinced about this. I usually do an online order about once every 6 days. In addition, DH or I pop to our local store at least a couple of times a week to get extra fresh items like berries, milk, bread etc.

However, online shopping slots have been scarce for a while, even before they dried up completely, so my last two shops were 8 days after my previous one (my next one isn't for 2 weeks). The first was before we went into self isolation but I had taken the decision to avoid popping to my local store as much as we were already conscious of the need for social distancing. So, for example, I bought enough milk for the whole week instead of my usual 4 days worth. The second order, arriving in the middle of our self isolation, was even bigger as we needed it to last for well over a week.

I will be going to our local big Tesco on Sunday when I'm out of isolation. Again, to avoid constant trips to the store, I will buy enough to last the full week, or even a little more (unless there are limited items on the shelves).

Also, I usually have breakfast at work at least 3 times a week and tend to buy a sandwich or similar for lunch most days. DH does the same about twice a week. DH takes the DS for dinner after swimming once a week. I usually meet a friend for dinner at least once a week. These are all meals that I now have to buy for, and it's a significant amount. So my shop WILL be bigger. It's not panic buying.

Panic buyers who bought 50 packets of spaghetti were annoying and stupid. But I don't think they're the problem. It's the fact that we all genuinely need more food in the house to get us through a week and to avoid the day to day trips to pick up a few bits and pieces that is causing the shortages.

Gentle stockpiling 😂😂😂 as if they didn’t listen to reason the first time around.

Overall demand only went up 10% according to a Telegraph article I read. It’s our just-in-time distribution model that couldn’t cope.

Many food items are imported from Europe or Asia and further many ingredients in locally produced goods are imported.

Hindsight armchair generals are the best. They can see all the decisions the other people should have made a month ago. Then they get angry at all those other people.

Be a bit kinder to politicians, management of key workers, all those people who have to make decisions in situations of imperfect information, guess work, extreme complexity, unforeseen consequences galore. Bastard hard job to do.

I feel society has been dumbed down by people being in their echo chambers where they are right and everyone else is stupid or evil.

These are complex problems. No one person, leader, committee can organise everything and get everything optimal. That's why free democracies are kind of chaotic but still give the best outcomes long term by far.

So when you on your sofa in your PJs are convinced you have all the answers and the only reason "them" in charge didn't act was because "they" are stupid or evil, well, catch yourself on, all that shows is that you don't understand the complexities.

Stop throwing mud at "them". Support those people in the god awful job of having to make god awful decisions.

Just for accuracy, Take away shops can still open

Yes. but if you used to work and get your lunch at Pret but are now at home you are now buying your lunch from the supermarket.

We are living through exceptional times but instead of trying to just get on with things as best we can some people just love to throw shit everywhere.

Hindsight armchair generals are the best. They can see all the decisions the other people should have made a month ago. Then they get angry at all those other people.

Exactly. It's all very well to pontificate on how the system should work! You can't just change a massively, complex system to something else overnight! The current system is efficient in normal times. No-one could have predicted this sort of emergency sufficiently far enough ahead of time to make fundamental changes to the system. So I say again - WE made this problem of massive overdemand, through selfish, greedy panic buying.

Im not sure why i should be kinder to our politicians...

If i, as a little armchair general of my own home, could listen to Chris whitty's report to government and go "shit 400000 people needing ventilators to 4000 ventilators and 1.1 million deaths. Thats going to disrupt food chains i guess i better keep some food in reserve,"

why on earth cant governments whose job it is to do this things.

Anyone who thinks JIT systems are being run 'too lean' should take a look at how much wastage there is in supermarkets during 'normal' times.

These are, for want of a better word, unprecedented times and you cannot model for times like this. The public's behaviour is unpredictable (and in some cases very stupid and very selfish and at points hysterical). Yes we could have maybe predicted this pandemic, but people buying 180 bags of pasta? No. Before this I think supermarkets had some trust in our judgement.

We had china modelling both impact and management strategies 3 months ahead of us.

And part of a politicians job is to hypothetically prepare.

I think the point is that foresight is better than hindsight.

That there would be a crisis of some sort at some point was easily foreseeable. Difficult to predict when and where. Not difficult to predict that having 5-10% extra stock of long life items in local or regional depots at all times will come in extremely useful at some point.

There have been more localised crises affecting parts of the UK in recent years- flooding, the Beast from the East. Those type of things have affected supply chains and led to empty shelves, so it’s not difficult to extrapolate from that.

Supermarkets and shops used to have more storage than they do now, when chains were smaller/more localised and before transport & logistics systems relied so heavily on technology to keep track of a myriad of moving pieces. Some other countries have less centralized food distribution systems, so more stock from local producers available on shelves, so it is easier to move stock quickly.

And it’s good for people to talk about what’s gone wrong, in order to work out how to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

These are not unprecedented times. Disruption on this scale is not a new thing.

Spanish Flu, World Wars, the Black Death/Bubonic Plague. Never mind SARS or MERS and how they affected other parts of the world.

It’s been a while, fair enough. But virologists have been warning for a good few years that a pandemic was due/overdue.

China = an incredibly different place to the UK. If they modelled based in that I'm sure you'd be very upset, peoples shopping habits are different not to mention the restrictions the 'government' place on them.

The others you list below have no happened in 100 years (bar SARS and MERS which were not true pandemic scale). Do you think they have JIT systems 100 years ago?

It's possible that the government could have done better. My opinion of politicians is pretty low so I'm not defending them, but this was probably their first apocalypse and each choice was between bad and worse.
There have been several points where I thought "I'd have done that differently" but who knows? Maybe I'd have made it worse.

We should learn from this though to do better next time. We need groups of experts paid to consider the next virus, tsunami, earthquake etc and if we are set up to handle it. I'm amazed that we don't already.

Clearly relying on other countries training medical staff to send them here was a mistake. They recently made some changes to discourage people training to be nurses. We should be making it an attractive idea for anyone not working.

Planning hospitals around "just enough beds/staff" won't do. You need spare capacity and if not spare hospitals as such then large buildings that can be used as makeshift hospitals with stored cots etc. (maybe used for other purposes in the meantime) . Also good for floods etc.

How about incentives for supermarkets etc that do NOT practise 'just in time' ordering? You want a buffer to smooth over sudden demands.

China = an incredibly different place to the UK.

It is. It can mobilise a population the size of Europe to help a province the size of italy. From a central government with greater control.

Why does that mean our government should take less notice not more, do more to prepare not less.

These are not unprecedented times. Disruption on this scale is not a new thing.

Hmmm. not sure there's a lot to be learned from the Bubonic Plague, other than how to bury thousands of people in pits. Lets hope it doesn't come to that.

The point is that society today is infinitely more complex than it used to be, so actions are equally complex to decide. There is no ideal position to take when we really don't know enough about this virus, other than it kills people and we have no cure. We also can't easily predict what people will do. I think many of us, including the government, are quite dismayed by the unexpectedly high level of selfish behaviour displayed by our UK society.

I really think we need to give the government a break. They are doing their best in extraordinary times to keep as many people safe as they can, which includes making sure we have some sort of working economy when we get through this. They don't have infinite money - however much we might like to think that. And unless we all want to be begging on the street, we do need to have a working economy.

not sure there's a lot to be learned from the Bubonic Plague

Really? How about

How you need to isolate and prevent the spread of disease when you cant treat it.

How its a good idea to stockpile food in case of disrupted supply chains and not work on a "Just in time" principal.

Maybe the attitude that we cant learn from history or from countries different to us is why we have an utterly unprepared government

How its a good idea to stockpile food in case of disrupted supply chains and not work on a "Just in time" principal

Feel like this would lead to a lot of food waste.

The co that supplies McDs with eggs (50million pa) has a lot of spare eggs right now - but they are delivered in large quantities not boxes of 6. So what to do? I imagine it will get sorted but not instantly.

The farmers who supply the company who supply airlines and cafe chains with milk have had the payments they receive for their milk cut , the airline suppliers have no one to buy their milk. How can the farmer buy feed for his cows now ?
Again, I'm sure this will get sorted but it won't be instant.

I live rural. A local dairy supplied the food industry round here. Now they are selling to local residents, delivering to the doorstep. Yes it is large amounts but for a family it will get used. Milk comes in multiples of 8 litres and eggs come by the tray of 30.

The food is there. The supplier has had to change how they supply. The consumer, me, has had to change how I plan and order. I can't pop to Tesco for a litre of milk. As it happens my particular dairy is good changing tack quickly. Me, I'm also good with change. Many suppliers and consumers are not good with change. Helping the supply chain shift easily to the necessary pattern will be more helpful than Sainsbury stockpiling I think in future.