Another COVID-19 Thread

[BoSoxGal]

Well at least her mother will be happy for two weeks of Hen’s round the clock company.

[ex-khobar Andy]

To return to Joe's original question. There's a fine line between hoarding / panic buying and being prudent. Living as I do in the suburbs I have two Krogers, one Aldi, a Trader Joe's and a Whole Foods within a couple of miles. There was a Lucky's until a few weeks ago. (Bankrupt; closed most of their branches.) So we usually go grocery shopping four or five times a week because if we're out we can pop in easily. We are trying to be more organized to reduce our social interactions and maybe go once a week. So for that reason we have stocked up. We probably have about double the TP / pasta / rice / Raisin Bran / cat food / cat litter we would normally have on hand. Our little freezer is always full so we don't have room to stock up there.

It was interesting to see the shelves at TJ''s empty on Friday but full again (well not really - TP and pasta sauce and granola bars were all out) for the most part on Saturday.

I don't think that we have crossed the line into panic buying territory but we certainly have a bit more than usual in our pantry. I saw two people in masks when I was out yesterday. I don't know if they were being supercautious or whether they had potentially been exposed and were therefore trying to protect others.

[Econoline]

[Joe Guy]

Those hats are very functional as toilet paper for Trump lovers because they have the ability to stick their heads up their asses.

[Scooter]

[Scooter]

There's a fine line between hoarding / panic buying and being prudent.

Pretty sure the folks shopping at this local grocery store have crossed it.

The meat counter:



The bakery aisle:



These were from a friend; I should have taken a picture of the produce section and pasta/rice aisle of the supermarket up the street, completely empty except for a few sweet potatoes and some packages of those Uncle Ben's microwave-in-the-bag concoctions.

[Bicycle Bill]

This panic buying may turn out to be a blessing in disguise.  Since the shelves are as bare as Mother Hubbard's cuoboard, when they restock it will be with all fresh material, so there will be no need to check the expiration/sell by/"best if used before XX/XX" dates to make sure you aren't buying outdated stock.

-"BB"-

[Scooter]

[BoSoxGal]

Yes it’s such a blessing in disguise when you go to do your weekly shop and there is nothing to buy.

Tens of millions of Americans live paycheck or benefits check to check, no extra money to hoard food and no extra freezer to hoard it in. This frenzy of food hoarding is leaving a great many people with nothing to eat.

I see no blessings here.

[Bicycle Bill]

I'll bet you'll find that they all have smartphones and a cell phone plan, though — and not the so-called "Obama phones", either.  I know; I've been dealing with people who have a cell service plan, are on the hook for a lease because they had to have the latest seven hundred dollar iPhone or Galaxy, and are on the phone to me crying poor about how they are on a fixed income and can't afford their bills long before this corona virus thing came along.

And countless more millions do NOT live hand-to mouth, so what's your point?

Once this "crisis" has passed, the next time you go to the grocery store for your weekly replenishment pick up a couple extra cans of soup or canned chili or an extra pound of pasta... something that you can set aside that won't spoil, go stale, or need refrigeration.  And I'm sure there's some room in the freezer compartment of your refrigerator to pack away an extra pork chop or two or a pound of ground beef.  Do a little of this every week, and before long you will have a reserve of three or four weeks worth of food in your larder.  It's sort of the same way you build up a financial cushion in your bank account ... put in a little extra every payday AND LEAVE IT ALONE; you'll find that it adds up.

But why do I need to tell you this?  You're an intelligent, educated woman; you should have been able to figure it out for yourself.

-"BB"-

[ex-khobar Andy]

I think (or maybe it's I hope) that panic buying is nearly over. Those who want to now have full freezers and six weeks of TP. No-one is foreseeing a total breakdown of society - no water, no sewage treatment, no trash collection, no electricity or gas, armed gangs roaming the streets and neighborhoods - so next week they will buy their normal weekly usage and keep the cushion where it is.

I also foresee that people will revise their shopping habits: I know I will at least temporarily, so I go far less often thus limiting my exposure to possible infection. Some retail companies who are already flagging - JC Penny for example - will not survive this epidemic.

Yes my 401K is down 20%. BTDT. It will be back but a lot of the recent growth - last 2 years or so - was irrrational exuberance. The Fed cutting interest rates to 0.25% is pretty unlikely to have a major effect - the idea is that if money is really cheap people will dump it into the stock market. the major issue is uncertainty and a Fed cut does nothing about that. If Nike closes their stores, of course the suits will still get their salaries but the poor slobs on the sales floor will be out of a job. I know some of them have said that they will pay employees but I don't believe (I hope I am wrong) that will be for very long.

[BoSoxGal]

I work with elderly and disabled fixed (low) income people who don’t have shiny new smartphones and don’t have enough to buy more than a week’s worth of food after paying their rent, utilities, prescription copays, and other basic living costs.

No, I don’t need lessons on household economy or any other basic living skills from a social cripple who is too repulsive to have ever come close to losing his virginity without maybe spending his ‘extra groceries’ money to purchase time with a sex worker.

Someone who clearly lacks all compassion for the way millions are living in true poverty all around his selfish, self-obsessed delusional self.

[BoSoxGal]

About all these 401k losses - everything I ever learned about investing was that when you’re young you put your money in the market, and when you start getting close to retirement age you take it out and put it someplace safer like treasury bonds or fixed income mutual funds.

So many retirees lost so much in 2008 and now retirees are losing again as the market nosedives; are these people who got greedy and decided to stay in a bull market even though they were at an age they should have gone into safer investments?

[Joe Guy]

Was Michael Jackson a prophet? If you wonder whether or not you should be doing something that might put you at risk for COVID-19, ask yourself, "What would Michael Jackson Do?" [WWMJD]

[Bicycle Bill]

.... from a social cripple who is too repulsive to have ever come close to losing his virginity without maybe spending his ‘extra groceries’ money to purchase time with a sex worker.

You know, if I was like certain other people around here I might take extreme offense to a statement like that.

-"BB"-

[Bicycle Bill]

.... ask yourself, "What would Michael Jackson Do?" [WWMJD]

Molest another young boy?

-"BB"-

[Guinevere]

About all these 401k losses - everything I ever learned about investing was that when you’re young you put your money in the market, and when you start getting close to retirement age you take it out and put it someplace safer like treasury bonds or fixed income mutual funds.

So many retirees lost so much in 2008 and now retirees are losing again as the market nosedives; are these people who got greedy and decided to stay in a bull market even though they were at an age they should have gone into safer investments?

The classic formulation is 110 minus age = percentage of stocks in your retirement portfolio. For me, that puts me at 55-60%. Because I’m staying in until probably 70, I’m a bit more aggressive (70ish%), and so far down 10% in my accounts. I’ve been nervous about the stock market since the 2016 election, so I put about 40-45% of my accounts into bonds and cash that November. I have slowly moved some of it back into stocks, so I also didn’t get all of the gain. But I got enough, and I needed to take some “early” profits to ease my mind. I looked at my portfolio again less than a month ago and decided to stand pat. Grateful that I did.

[datsunaholic]

So, today I had to go to the store. I went about a week ago when the panic started here, but nothing was sold out at that point except at Costco when the run on TP and hand sanitizer started. Today, shelves started looking like Florida before a hurricane, something I've never seen here in WA in my lifetime. No bread, only the most expensive meat, hardly any frozen food (mostly waffles and desserts were left, and shrimp), almost all the soups were gone except clam chowder, and even the produce section was looking paltry.

I went personally because I had to get cat food; my elderly trio stopped eating their dry food as it got stale. Figured I get a few items I could eat. As I mentioned on the book of faces, I was behind a woman who was complaining about how people were hoarding and she couldn't get bread, while having 10 bottles of Robitussen DM in her cart.

But that's not the worst of it. My company ordered us to hit up every dollar store in the county to buy as much cleaning supplies as we can find. Sponges, paper towels, surface cleaner, glass cleaner. As much as the stores would let us. I felt like an idiot. The reason is my company provides short-term corporate housing in the form of furnished apartments and we provide housekeeping every 2 weeks. With the pandemic we stopped those housekeeping visits but since we didn't provide cleaning supplies to our guests now we have to. 1500 units in the Seattle area alone, and they are sending the field techs out to raid dollar stores.

See, my company has gone into emergency mode- all office employees were ordered to work from home, including the call center personnel. But the operations department- the warehouse workers, the laundry staff, the housekeepers, the movers, the field techs... well, we can't work from home. They issued us hospital grade disinfectant and a box of nitrile gloves and said, carry on. Still have to go into a half dozen apartments a day, etc. Lunch? Pack it in... except there isn't a loaf of bread left unclaimed in the State. I have half a loaf left and way too much PB & J. No, I didn't stockpile PB & J, one of the perks of going in after a guest has vacated is some of them leave a LOT of groceries behind. Hell, I won't need dishwasher detergent for years.

Anyhow, the dollar store I raided still had lots of paper towels, but like every other store not a single roll of TP to be found. Other stores had no TP or paper towels, it's nuts.

A lot of people still think this isn't a big deal, overblown. Or worse, a bunch of people I know- friends even, still believe it's a liberal hoax, a man-made virus intended to collapse the economy and bankrupt the corporations. Or its made up by the liberal media and spread by the liberal governors to take away our freedoms, make our dear leader look bad so he won't be reelected. Even more are coming out with new conspiracy theories.

And yet, I go off to work again tomorrow.

[Guinevere]

My crazy conservative uncle has bought into the “China sent this to us because they hate our economic strength” conspiracy theory.

[Gob]

No, I don’t need lessons on household economy or any other basic living skills from a social cripple who is too repulsive to have ever come close to losing his virginity without maybe spending his ‘extra groceries’ money to purchase time with a sex worker.

If anyone ever posted something here to you even remotely in that vain, you'd have one of your regular screaming fits and leave permanently again, (for the 17 th. time.)

Grow up a bit.