Hygiene at supermarkets during Coronavirus epidemic

[Nearholmer]

Woodenhead

 

i was thinking more of the coppers who were telling people not to use the ‘non essential’ aisles in shops.

 

The advice wasn’t/isn’t crystal clear though - “you may leave home to buy necessities” certainly has a ring of not being allowed to buy non-necessities about it.

 

Hopefully we’ll never perfect the detail of being ‘locked down’, because it won’t last long enough to achieve perfection ........ hopefully!

 

K

[caradoc]

There is a distinction between unnecessary journeys and unnecessary purchases; On my last visit to a supermarket for essential items, ie food, I deviated 5 yards to pick up, from an empty section of the shop, a railway magazine. Should I not have done that ? I would say (of course) that there was nothing wrong and I would not have considered for one moment making that trip just to buy the magazine. In fact, I normally buy such magazines on trips, mostly by train but sometimes also by bus, to the local centres of Glasgow or Paisley; I have been to neither now for over three weeks, and I have not been on a train for nearly four, which is giving me severe withdrawal symptoms ! And after GWR's diktat in the Class 800 thread I am even hesitant to wander down to my local line to look at, or dare I say, photograph, trains, despite the walk being my one-a-day exercise.

 

I do believe there will come a point where restrictions, which by far the majority regard as vital, and are adhering too, become so onerous, and arbitrary (depending where you live and who your Chief Constable is) that they will fall into disrepute and people will start to rebel against them.

 

 

[petethemole]

If a shop is allowed by law to be open, you can buy anything it sells.

[Baby Deltic]

[Nearholmer]

1 minute ago, caradoc said:

I do believe there will come a point where restrictions, which by far the majority regard as vital, and are adhering too, become so onerous, and arbitrary (depending where you live and who your Chief Constable is) that they will fall into disrepute and people will start to rebel against them.

 

Yes, I’m sure that would/will happen if it went on long enough.

 

People would ‘vote with their feet’ for a degree of social-distancing that they could actually tolerate, and (probably tacitly) accept the risk to themselves and other inherent in that.

 

All law is like that in this country - it’s set at the edge of social acceptability, to prevent people going beyond what the vast majority of people think is acceptable. Set it much tighter than that, and it becomes unenforceable.

 

 

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Once you are out to buy the essentials, the damage is done, you are inevitably inhaling everyone else' exhalations. May as well pick up anything else while in the shop. Best thing you can do is make the visits as infrequent and brief as possible, I am moving to fortnightly now stocks are closer to 'normal'. (Having worked with aerosols and the like, short of a full positive pressure self contained supply NBC suit, there is no complete protection. So the guys at Porton Down are fine...)

[Phil Parker]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

The police interpret what the Government asks of them, I think they didn't get it wrong, it's just factions within Government giving different messages.  One of them doesn't want to be seen as unpopular as perhaps that person has previously attracted unwanted attention last time round in a cabinet role and doesn't want to be seen as a bad guy again.

 

Much of the time, the trick is to go back to the original source and you find things aren't as confused as they are once filtered through the media. A few weeks ago, Radio 2 news overnight flipped between "journeys for essential work" and "journeys for work" several times between bulletins - the government has said you can go to work if it's open and can't be done from home. There isn't a list of "essential" jobs. Several commenters on here have fallen for the same thing.

 

Another recent case was that of a chief constable who said they wouldn't be going through people's shopping bags - which became "We'll be going through people's shopping bags" once it became a headline, even though the correct quote was buried 2/3rds of the way through the story.

 

My take is that it doesn't matter how much we lock down, this virus is always going to exist. Once through the initial spike, managing it will go on forever. Even a vaccine, 2+ years away for most, won't entirely solve the problem as some won't take it, some won't be able to take it. Thus, businesses will have to evolve in the way supermarkets have, to deal with it. I suspect that most are already working out how they can in the same way I'm sure there are plenty of people in the civil service planning to manage return to something like normal.

[woodenhead]

3 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

My take is that it doesn't matter how much we lock down, this virus is always going to exist. Once through the initial spike, managing it will go on forever. Even a vaccine, 2+ years away for most, won't entirely solve the problem as some won't take it, some won't be able to take it. Thus, businesses will have to evolve in the way supermarkets have, to deal with it. I suspect that most are already working out how they can in the same way I'm sure there are plenty of people in the civil service planning to manage return to something like normal.

Thing is, Covid 19 isn't itself the issue long term, it is something that 80% of people can get by with without treatment.  All this lockdown is to protect the health system so as not to overwhelm it and the people who work in it.  No system can cope with overload and no government wants to be the one who allowed it to happen and the consequential impact of the number of deaths that would follow.  In a few weeks conditions will ease a little, then a little more and so on until the restrictions are lifted - all providing the number of cases doesn't spike again threatening the fabric of the health system.

[Bernard Lamb]

1 hour ago, AY Mod said:

It's just my view that if something can legally be sold, can be supplied safely and actually used I think it passed my personal reasonableness test. On the fashion aspect, regardless of gender, I think it's difficult to justify due to the lack of opportunity for use (aside from work and home clothing) and it fails the safe supply angle to a degree when considering how much gets tried on and returned straight away (especially those who selfie it for their social media exposure). I know that is hypocritical valuing the fashion industry of lower value (to me) than the hobby industry but...

You miss the point Andy. There are people I know who dress up in all the latest fashion clothes for coffee meets on Zoom. Some even have backgrounds that can be changed to suit the virtual location. It might seem selfish but if it keeps 'em sane then on balance I can go along with it. I would agree with the comment on returns. That part of the service should be suspended for the duration.

Bernard

[AY Mod]

11 minutes ago, Bernard Lamb said:

There are people I know who dress up in all the latest fashion clothes for coffee meets on Zoom

 

Good grief! Do they do unboxing videos too? S'pose it's just like the 'look at everything I bought at Warley' posts.

[Phil Parker]

 

Spotted on Twitter - this guy did his entire video conference dressed like this and no-one noticed. THAT is style...

[Nick C]

8 hours ago, JohnR said:

Has anyone else found that more people are wearing face masks now - and it seems to be making them feel "invulnerable" and avoiding social distancing in the shops?

That's precisely why the government aren't recommending that people wear them, as they know people will take more chances if they feel protected. 

 

[Nearholmer]

The cynic in me says that another reason that the government is taking such a long time to allow itself to be convinced that wearing masks in public does help reduce spread, if only a little bit, is that there aren't enough to go round the people who desperately need them, let alone those that possibly don't.

 

And, yes, I've noticed that some mask-wearers seem to feel free to breach two metres ......... but then some non mask-wearers do too; its as if about 1% of people are either completely ignorant of the advice, or believe themselves to be totally virus-proof.

 

Would it be bad manners to wear a big badge saying "Watch it - I might have it!", as a deterrent?

[laurenceb]

Got on a bus last week and driver was whearing one, I told him it was a vast improvement. (its ok he is a friend)

[jcm@gwr]

10 hours ago, JohnR said:

Has anyone else found that more people are wearing face masks now - and it seems to be making them feel "invulnerable" and avoiding social distancing in the shops?

 

More ridiculous than that, is the use of masks while driving, whilst alone in the car! 

[Nick Holliday]

7 hours ago, jcm@gwr said:

 

More ridiculous than that, is the use of masks while driving, whilst alone in the car! 

And, to me at least, even more ridiculous to drive around with the windows open. Isn't that going to give some impetus to the air they breathe in, and even wider distribution of whatever they may have breathed out in the vortices left behind?  I know it has been inclemently warm, but most cars have air conditioning.

[adb968008]

On 13/04/2020 at 12:54, Baby Deltic said:

Appearance is everything...

 

 

rearguard action ?

Edited April 14, 2020 by adb968008

[Reorte]

2 hours ago, Nick Holliday said:

And, to me at least, even more ridiculous to drive around with the windows open. Isn't that going to give some impetus to the air they breathe in, and even wider distribution of whatever they may have breathed out in the vortices left behind?  I know it has been inclemently warm, but most cars have air conditioning.

I'd be surprised if the effect wasn't negligible, if it exists at all. But I'm also not at all persuaded about facemasks either, maybe some level of protection if someone sneezes right in your face, and as for stopping spreading, any more effective than coughing or sneezing into your elbow, if you must cough or sneeze?

[Nearholmer]

I can see the logic of wearing a mask in case you’re carrying the bug unawares, because even a basic one will catch bigger droplets and possibly slow-down smaller ones so that they fall to the ground (or your clothes, or the supermarket goods you are looking at!) in a shorter distance.

 

Best bet must be to hide at home if you feel even the slightest sneezy or coughy, but that is easier said than done for a lot of people, given that shopping deliveries are so incredibly difficult to obtain, and with hay-fever season approaching ........

 

Still, the overall plot seems not to be to prevent us all catching it (bordering on impossible anyway) but to slow transmission so that we each get ill in rotation, at a rate that the NHS can cope with, and if masks help control the rate to the right level, let’s wear ‘em (when they exist to wear!).

 

One possibility, of course, is that mask-wearing will slow it down too much, so that it is still grinding its way through us all come winter, which would truly screw things up, because ‘flu will be back by then.

 

Can I please move to another planet?

[Reorte]

I generally go for "need a decent enough reason to do something" rather than "may as well unless there's a good reason not to" - the latter can result in all sorts of absurd behaviours, possibly counterproductive ones (considering a generality there). So when it comes to masks I'd like to see something reasonably persuasive that they have a noticeable benefit over just behaving in a reasonably civilised manner, and that takes into account factors like if you cough or sneeze into your elbow you're facing downwards, away from people.

 

I'd also be a little concerned that it would distract from actually thinking about how it's transmitted in favour of "well it's being seen to be doing something." So for example I'd be more bothered about someone who stays 2m away but still coughs and sneezes in my direction vs. someone who still thinks to turn away to cough or sneeze. The second person has given it a little bit of thought, and I'm still feeling that the whole mask business is in the "seen to be doing something rather than thinking" category.

 

Slow it down "too much" - don't think you can do that! Get it down that low and going back to contact tracing may be sufficient.

Edited April 14, 2020 by Reorte

[Nearholmer]

24 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Slow it down "too much" - don't think you can do that!

It’s an interesting question, or it would be if we weren’t all the lab rats in the experiment.

 

Nobody really yet knows whether it can be kept sufficiently in-check by border controls, contact-tracing and follow-up to permit society to function in any meaningful way until a vaccine becomes available and widely deployed.

 

Maybe China will show that it can be done; maybe it won’t.

 

If it can’t be effectively controlled by contact-tracing, and “lockdown forever” is unsustainable (which it surely must be), then the name of the game will be to attempt to control propagation in a way that allows the NHS to save as many of those who suffer severe affects as possible, which will become far, far harder if it goes on past about October ...... which is why I say what I say.

 

I’ll just keep gnawing the bars.

 

 

[adb968008]

18 minutes ago, Lantavian said:

The masks are not to protect you.

 

They are to protect everyone else from you, just in case you are contagious.

 

People in East Asia understand this.

 

Why don't people in the West get it?

Because Europeans don’t listen to Asians, instead they try to impose their will on each other, North American’s just seek to accumulate.

 

if masks offered self preservation, you can guarentee everyone and his dog, would be wearing them, but that isn’t the case..., only those who have experienced this before are doing it.

 

I understand healthcare workers getting priority, but the sheer levels of hostility towards those who have self procured them, often from overseas, is to me  either jealous or misguided, it should be a personal choice, on personal needs.

Edited April 14, 2020 by adb968008

[Reorte]

33 minutes ago, Lantavian said:

The masks are not to protect you.

 

They are to protect everyone else from you, just in case you are contagious.

 

People in East Asia understand this.

 

Why don't people in the West get it?

 

And the evidence that they do that isn't particularly compelling, especially outside of situations like lots of people crammed in to a bus or train. People in the west understand that argument for them. Perhaps they're just less likely to accept without question, cultural difference. Which is a good thing (if nothing else it also makes potentially harmful quack answers harder to get established). Some are less likely to accept at all, which isn't.

Edited April 14, 2020 by Reorte

[Reorte]

And the only difference there is masks?

 

I didn't think China was in the "no masks" group.

Edited April 14, 2020 by Reorte

[Nearholmer]

Don’t the Chinese wear masks? I thought they did, in which case, case not proven.

 

Added to which, there are a host of ‘confounding factors’ which make that simple conclusion simplistic.

 

But, as it happens, I am in favour of masks in public, on the ‘it prevents me spreading it’  if I happen to have its basis.

 

So, where do I get some without in the process depriving someone in greater need?