"Bare shelves in Coventry and Nuneaton supermarkets as coronavirus fears surge"

[dutchman]

Tesco introduce NHS browsing hour on Sundays



Tesco has announced stores will now have a designated hour for NHS staff to purchase their food shops.

On their website, they say that staff will be able to use a large store an hour before the usual opening times in a bid to help them get the food they need during the coronavirus outbreak.

Many people feel this hour is needed due to the recent increase in stockpiling, as people are concerned they may be isolated in their homes for long periods of time, so are purchasing extra food and products.

However this has led to the elderly and some NHS staff unable to get what they need, as by the time they arrive the shelves are empty.

Tesco has agreed to allow NHS staff in their large stores an hour earlier than the general public on Sundays.

The designated hour will start this weekend on Sunday March 22 in the hope that now everyone can have access to the food they need during these unusual times.

In order to enter the supermarket, you have to bring a form of ID with you to the store, such as your NHS card.

The supermarket giant have also asked non-NHS workers to be respectful of this and stick to the usual shopping hours.

[Melisandre]

I read the news where a female nurse was in tears over this surprising what a ladyship tears get you. I am surprised as they get a card to get into Costco warehouse abling them to buy in bulk normally the place is full with nhs staff.

[dutchman]

Do they not have staff canteens in NHS hospitals any more?

[Melisandre]

They must have as I recall in the news a while back the canteen in the science part closed because of a mouse being spotted in the canteen they had to get the service in to eradicate them. These are the benefits they get working there. I know for a fact they are offered a card to go to Costco warehouse as my grandsons ex girlfriends mother a nurse had one because she was a nurse.

There is a large cafe where you can buy a full dinner or not sure if it's a subway as well then a coffee shop clothes shop M&S also a news agents in there.

https://www.coventry.ac.uk/the-universi ... -benefits/

[dutchman]

If there was a mouse in the staff canteen at Rugby St. Cross I know one nurse who'd eat it!

[rebbonk]

Stockpiling is primarily a problem fuelled by the press and the government

Stories designed to discourage the practice have the reverse effect – and both the government and the media need to change their approach.

Don’t think of an elephant.

That simple game illustrates the challenge that governments across the world face in discouraging people from stockpiling in the wake of the Covid-19 downturn. If the government tells you not to do it, then they are spreading the notion that people are, in fact, stockpiling, and that perhaps you should do it.

(You shouldn’t, by the way: supply chains in and out of the country remain in perfect working order and will continue to do so. There is no meaningful prospect that Covid-19 will prevent the flow of food into the country. In a hypothetical scenario in which the flow of food in the country were interrupted, you would not want to have a large backlog of food in any case – the violent mob justice meted out to those suspected of hoarding food during the Second World War is a good example of why.)

I think stockpiling partly reflects a failure of governments. In the countries where stockpiling has happened, it has been most severe where government messaging has been muddled or inconsistent, which has led to a fall-off in trust. I have written about that at detail on the NS website and elsewhere, however, and wanted to instead focus on another aspect: the media coverage of stockpiling.

Stockpiling is a difficult topic for the media to cover because it’s a lot like a run on a bank. A bank running out of funds and becoming insolvent is a serious issue that is of public concern but the act of reporting it can trigger copycat behaviour. It can also, if wrongly reported, actually trigger a destabilising panic.

A similar trend may be taking place as far as stockpiling is concerned. It’s true that some supermarkets were experiencing visible shortages – but what some supermarket staff, both on the ground and in back offices believe, is that the initial run of shortages was driven not by selfish but sensible behaviour. Take, say, the smaller supermarkets outside most major train stations: your M&S Foods, Sainsbury’s Local or Little Waitrose or whatever. These are the supermarkets of choice for full-time professionals who do most of their food shopping on an ad-hoc basis and whose dinner plans are often driven by texts with their partner or conversations via a WhatsApp group.

These supermarkets are built, supplied and staffed around the idea that the clientele will buy say, a couple of “ripe and ready” avocados every few days, a single packet of mince, a bottle of wine every day, and a pint of milk one or twice a week.

What many people at these stores think happened at first is that the customers at these stores changed their habits to prepare for two weeks in self-isolation, which was too much for these smaller outlets – but because these areas are also rich in people with access to social media accounts, or are places where journalists with large followings live, pictures of empty shelves were quickly uploaded and then broadcast via the mainstream media.

It was only at that point that genuine panic and stockpiling started to spread. To put it in simple terms: a problem confined to the Tesco Metro by your nearest train station spread to the big out-of-town Sainsbury’s because of stories designed to stop people panic-buying. And it's not clear to what extent we are even talking about significant amounts of panic-buying.

That impression from the shop floor is confirmed by the overall figurs – yes, it sounds like an awful lot to say the United Kingdom has spent an extra £1bn on food to eat at home in the past three weeks, but the United Kingdom spent £94bn on food in the course of 2019 – a little under £8bn a month.

When you consider that millions of people have been told to reduce their social contact and work from home and are having to calculate on the fly a) what they will need to eat for lunch, b) what extra evening meals they might have had at a friend’s or a restaurant c) make sure they can do the right thing and go into immediate self-isolation for two weeks, I am not convinced that the argument that stockpiling in the UK is primarily a story of selfishness and panic. In any case, as the retail economy moves away from supplying restaurants and pubs, the supply of food into shops will flow with even greater speed than it is now.

There is undoubtedly some panic, but just as many of the banks that were caught in the panic of the global financial crisis were in fact solvent, it’s not the underlying story here.

What should we do differently? As I say, it’s a challenge. The Little Waitrose in Vauxhall running out of food is a story and I don’t think we as journalists should pretend otherwise. Perhaps we should take a leaf out of another book: the Samaritans’ guidelines on how to report suicides. A suicide can, undoubtedly, be newsworthy and it should be covered. But the Samaritans’ guidelines, now near-universally observed in the media, are a good guide to balancing that public interest angle without spreading fear. Perhaps as a start we ought to always mention in any story about stockpiling that the delivery of food into the UK continues as normal?

There’s a role for the government here, too. Bluntly, one of the things that Boris Johnson has failed to do is impress upon much of the press that this crisis is a very different time, and while the policy and philosophy-based scrutiny that the opposition parties are largely doing very well should continue, it’s not helpful for the press to ask him to put a specific figure on when this may be over (though also he should have the sense to say so rather than give a specific figure).

But a code of conduct on how we report stockpiling has to come from either the industry or from civil society (as supermarkets and government have incentives to lie to us), so the challenge of stopping stockpiling is one for the press as well as governments.

Source: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2020/03/stockpiling-primarily-problem-fuelled-press-and-government

Reasonable summary I thought

[dutchman]

People piling trolleys with a year's supply of toilet rolls is not preparation for 14 days of self-isolation.

[rebbonk]

People piling trolleys with a year's supply of toilet rolls is not preparation for 14 days of self-isolation.

Social media is awash with pictures of these muppets.

It appears that many are breaking the packs up into smaller units and selling them at inflated prices. Such lovely people!

[rebbonk]

Quick dash round Tesco just before lunch today. Again, I got everything I actually needed.

Naughty me, I spotted a bargain on tinned fish and bought a tin for my store cupboard! - My sole item of stockpiled food to date.

I was intending buying dog and cat food, but most of the shelves were empty. Had I been pushed, I could have found something for them though. I have a week's supply in so I'll wait until my next visit rather than buy expensive small packs. Pets at Home are only along the way if push comes to shove.

Soap and toilet rolls were totally absent, but there was plenty of alcohol.

[dutchman]

I managed to get everything I 'needed' on Saturday but it meant substituting a lot of unhealthy items for healthier ones.

Would have bought a fridgefull of microwave burgers if I'd known McDonalds were going to close, they've probably all gone now.

My total spend was double what it normally is but that included items I haven't bought in a long time.