[Closed] Panic buying because of Coronavirus - genuine question

Nope. We've always got enough in for a week's worth of food, and Occado can bring us enough for another week.

I haven't done any panic buying, but gradually built up my little stockpile over about a month starting in January. Reckon my lot can last a good few weeks, perhaps longer, without having to visit a shop.

At the moment I'm shopping once a week instead of the normal few times to top things up so I don't dig into it before I have to.

I don't think we'll get to a situation where the shops are completely shut, but there is the possibility of supply chain disruption if this thing gets going. Obviously if it doesn't, that's great, nothing will be wasted.

so, just to be clear.

you are asking if you should panic buy to avoid panic buying?

I've not bought anything I wouldn't ordinarily buy, but there is a concern at the back of my mind that it's not going to be an option when I do need it.

A lot of talk about panic buying, and we see videos of fights online. but I'd take a guess that the vast majority of it is just down to people buying one or two packets extra of this or that, just in case it's not there next week. Which seems perfectly sensible in all honesty.

No.

The thing is, there is no problem with supply within the UK at the moment, so once everyone has bought a cupboard full of pasta, the shelves will be full.

Many food producers are putting extra shifts on to cope with demand. This is fine for short shelf life items as the retailer will be stuck with them, they go to landfill, producers make more,

I know a bog roll producer who is making it large at the moment with mad demand, but he is expecting a big slump once the panic is over as "people only have so many craps in a year"

No

Its stupid idea, don't get drawn into it.

I think the supermarket delivery services will be put under quite a bit of pressure if a lot of people suddenly decide or get told to head home and stay there. Whether they will be able to provide a reliable service, particularly if their pickers/drivers also head home, is an interesting question.

I've often wondered if the hoarders have really thought hard enough about what would happen if the shit really hit the fan and insufficient supplies were available for the whole population. As in not just shortages of certain things but genuine calorie and essential FMCG shortages.

There seems to an assumption that they'll be able to sit quietly at home for a month using up their 320 bog rolls, 30kg of pasta and sauce while the rest of the population starve and quietly rue their lack of preparedness.

you are asking if you should panic buy to avoid panic buying?

Well yes, I kinda covered that in my post.

Nope. We’ve always got enough in for a week’s worth of food, and Occado can bring us enough for another week.

Again, I covered this in my post - our online shop had many substitutions and some unavailable items and, given the way things appear to be going, I don't see it getting any better. But then I am not posh enough to shop at Ocado.

my wife has just posed the question about buying a few cupboard items ‘just in case’.

I had the exact same conversation with my wife this morning. We're both of the same opinion. Don't see the need for the panic buying, but also don't want to be the fools sat at home with nothing after all the doom mongers have emptied the shelves.
I suggested a couple of bags of pasta or rice and a bit of extra tinned stuff might be a good idea. With three kids though it'd all be eaten within a week anyway. I'd need to fill the garage with food to last them any decent amount of time.

It also conflicts with our current attempts to declutter and clean the house as we get ready to try and sell it. Viewings could be a bit awkward when they open a door to a room full of baked beans and loo roll.

Noticed a few things as being unavailable with our online shop this week, but hardly likely to be going hungry so not bought any extras to otherwise fan the flames of panic.

In contrast, our online shop came through with everything ordered, including toilet paper, didn't really occur to me that it might not.

I'd not even thought about ordering anything extra. An enforced diet might do me good anyway!

I'm fitting spikes and flamethrowers to my SUV to help me fight for the precious resources when western civlization collapses next Wednesday

Has anyone genuinely started panic buying yet

No, absolutely not. There are no shortages because of lack of production, only because of people.

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it

I'm stockpiling beer and whisky.

I've no idea what's coming but I ain't facing it sober!

In contrast shops here have plenty of stocks, we seen some panic buying last week but thankfully it’ll be months before those tools need more bog roll.

I've been fortunate enough to find myself the owner of a collection of tinned food, toilet rolls and weapons. No need to go and buy anything.:-)

I have no idea why anyone feels compelled to buy 400 packets of pasta, 200 packets of rice and 300 rolls of bog roll.

just wtf is wrong with people?

The shops aren't closing.
If you have to isolate you can get shopping delivered.

Quite a few STWers were posting they'd stockpiled tins and dried foods etc a week ago before we called it panic buying.

Personally, I don't know what you'd call it. Friday evening just gone was my usual weekly shopping time. My local supermarket was out of anything Paracetamol based (inc Calpol) This was a bit of a pain because I had a 5 year old with a fever plus my Wife and I were both feeling rough (Daughters school has Hand Foot and Mouth doing the rounds at the moment).

When I finally found somewhere with Calpol I bought 2 bottles because there's 10 doses of Calpol in a bottle (2.5 days worth) and Hand Foot and Mouth usually lasts a week because I didn't want to risk not being able to buy anymore 2 days later. Is that panic buying?

I’ve been fortunate enough to find myself the owner of a collection of tinned food, toilet rolls and weapons. No need to go and buy anything.:-)

My immediate image is that you are the new curator of a really, really bizarre museum.

Our weekly onLine shop arrived without Lasagne sheets and yoghurts even though available on the online screen the night before.
According to he guy delivering it, it had calmed down from last week “there’s only so much bog roll people can store at home” but there is still no hand sanitiser, paracetamol and most types of dried pasta at the store he picks up from. Everything else is normal he said.

If you have to isolate you can get shopping delivered

He also did briefly say something on the lines of ‘don’t know what will happen if drivers start self isolating under government advice’

Made me smile

Pretty sure that today marks 4 weeks since someone on the corona virus thread (kerley?) reckoned that in 4 weeks we'd all be sorry for not panic buying.
I don't think we are.

Pretty sure that today marks 4 weeks since someone on the corona virus thread (kerley?) reckoned that in 4 weeks we’d all be sorry for not panic buying.
I don’t think we are.

Yup and he’s been doing it for 3 weeks before that. 😂

‘don’t know what will happen if drivers start self isolating under government advice’

Yeah but all the 'Just Eat' and Deliveroo people are on gig contracts so couldn't afford to self-isolate even if they were nearly dead. So I intend to live on Pizza and kebabs and just get them to leave it outside the front door.

You hoarders can keep your rice and pasta

Panic, panic, panic. Its like some crap channel 5 late night straight to video movie.

Whatever you do dont buy loo paper, apparently the cardboard rolls in the middle are made of recycled stuff in China. So your going to infect your bum if you wipe it.

Ive taken to skidding along my lawn doggy style to clean myself, you cant be too carefull. I have stocked up on extra petrol for my chainsaw to defend my property for when the virus mutates everone into a zombie.

Hang on, isnt Pasta from Italy.......................da da da ! There is a connection.

Yeah but all the ‘Just Eat’ and Deliveroo people are on gig contracts so couldn’t afford to self-isolate even if they were nearly dead. So I intend to live on Pizza and kebabs and just get them to leave it outside the front door.

Good luck with that, the rumours regarding how they handle the food are bad enough before they were potentially carrying a virulent virus.

Personally, I don’t know what you’d call it. Friday evening just gone was my usual weekly shopping time. My local supermarket was out of anything Paracetamol based (inc Calpol) This was a bit of a pain because I had a 5 year old with a fever plus my Wife and I were both feeling rough (Daughters school has Hand Foot and Mouth doing the rounds at the moment).

When I finally found somewhere with Calpol I bought 2 bottles because there’s 10 doses of Calpol in a bottle (2.5 days worth) and Hand Foot and Mouth usually lasts a week because I didn’t want to risk not being able to buy anymore 2 days later. Is that panic buying?

The one thing I did consider buying, is a box of paracetamol. As it happens, Aldi's shelves were completely empty of paracetamol. I often don't have any in the house, tend to do my shopping on a daily basis and buy stuff as and when I need it.

But you know, it's forecast that you have a roughly 50/50 chance of becoming ill in the coming weeks or months, it's a completely sensible thing to have in the house. In that respect it's no different to the thousands of people out buying Turkeys the week before Xmas. It's not panic buying, it's preparing for an event.

There's a large spectrum here, with plenty of people in a genuine panic, but we all sit somewhere within it thinking about various levels of preparation. And as it's an unplanned event, unlike Xmas, the shops, supermarkets and suppliers are all unprepared. It's not an issue created entirely by feral members of society as it's usually portrayed.

Just been in Didcot Sainsburys. Very quiet. Not too many gaps on the shelves and customers outnumbered 2:1 by staff.
No jam doughnuts. Had to compensate with trip choc muffins.

Nothing here. I'd just de-cluttered the kitchen, so not filling it up with stuff we don't need. I did buy 160 packets of cat food last week, but the cat's have already eaten half of it (got 5 hungry mouths). I have a few tins of soup in. The de cluttering did end up with a rather large jar filled with pasta we didn't know we had.

Bought a load of drill bits in Aldi last night, joked with the checkout lady that I wasn't stockpiling, but she said, well at least you could build a bunker.

Ive taken to skidding along my lawn doggy style to clean myself, you cant be too carefull. I have stocked up on extra petrol for my chainsaw to defend my property for when the virus mutates everone into a zombie.

You think if the zombies find out you’ve been doing that on your lawn they’re going to go anywhere near your house?

We bought 54 bog rolls and 3 kilos of pasta the other week because we were close to running out.

But, we shop in Costco, and that's the sizes they sell.

Seeing as panic effectively triggers a fight or flight response, leading to your immune system shutting down, enjoy your panic based last supper. I'm chilling out.

Just cleaned the kitchen, top to bottom. Ran out of kitchen cleaner...

Can I use kitchen cleaner as a hand sanitizer 😱🤔😁😁😁

I've built a huge pyramid out of Oxo cubes.

Tesco ran out of Rioja and substituted with Malbec instead last Friday.

Its a sick and twisted world.

In contrast shops here have plenty of stocks,

I think the places in the country where you are seeing a lot of empty shelves are populous urban areas where people in small flats / bed sits / shared houses don’t have a lot of cupboard space and would usually shop little and often rather than doing weekly shops and having plenty of freezer and store cupboard stuff.

Those kinds of neighbourhoods are of course very densely populated so it only really takes a small shift in buying patterns - like aiming to more have than a couple of days worth of  stuff in your house - to make a big difference to the stocks in local shops. Those shops themselves will often be on a smaller footprint and hold less stock.

It doesn’t mean the people elsewhere in the country are behaving any differently - just that the effects of behaviour are more obvious in some places than others.

I’ve built a huge pyramid out of Oxo cubes.

I’ve built the Oxo Tower out of pyramid teabags.

I’ve built the Oxo Tower out of pyramid teabags.

That's not, strictly speaking, stock piling

That’s not, strictly speaking, stock piling

Ohhhh

My immediate image is that you are the new curator of a really, really bizarre museum.

I am, the contents of my neighbours garage are quite something, who else has a black powder cavalry pistol, the manual and spare parts catalogue for a 1939 Triumph motorbike and a nazi map of the Normandy beaches.

Er'indoors is quite suggestable (so long as the suggestion doesn't come from me) so she ordered some additional tinned things on the interweb shopping, that was about it.

I think it's great though, It's prompted lots of apocalypse discussions at home and I've been trying to encourage my kids to think more laterally, and keep asking them what they would actually need in order to survive the collapse of society.

So Far my eldest daughter has suggested firewood and matches, my youngest just said "Meat!" with no further explanation... I think they'll be just fine.

@cookeaa Your kids didn't say 'bikes' as an essential. Disown them now !

my youngest just said “Meat!” with no further explanation…

Better keep an eye on him, that sounds like the early stages to me. Has he started groaning recently? Salivating while staring at your head?

I am, the contents of my neighbours garage are quite something, who else has a black powder cavalry pistol, the manual and spare parts catalogue for a 1939 Triumph motorbike and a nazi map of the Normandy beaches.

Is your neighbour Indiana Jones?

Mrs M has been stockpiling shoes but that's not new behavior.

On the basis of the confirmed case rate in the UK today of 6.7/1,000,000 might be a bit early to panic buy. Better to wash hands, follow official.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Still got tins in the bunker from the Bird and Swine not a bad boozer on quiet.

I can understand the stocking up on food in some cases. The moment you get told you need to isolate yourself from the world for 2 weeks is not really the best time to do a big shop to make things more comfortable.

I am sure the media reporting the panic buying doesn't help as it just goads others into following suit with the mentality of 'if they are buying it all there will be none left for me'.

I have enough bits and bobs to last two weeks in the freezer, who knows I may lose a bit of weight if I need to stay at home for a couple of weeks but right now I am just buying what I need at my usual cadence.

The moment you get told you need to isolate yourself from the world for 2 weeks is not really the best time to do a big shop to make things more comfortable.

As there is no other possible way to buy goods for example a relative?

mariner: leather shoes could be useful though...

Some years ago, there was a drought in northern Namibia. The Himba people were suffering badly from famine. They don't use numbers to count the years; instead they name them after memorable events. The year of the famine is known as "The year that the men got so hungry they ate the women's skirts" (or something like that).

Just to clarify, the Himba women's (minimal) attire is made of animal hide.

I have enough bits and bobs to last two weeks in the freezer, who knows I may lose a bit of weight if I need to stay at home for a couple of weeks but right now I am just buying what I need at my usual cadence.

Yeah, if it was only me, I wouldn't be too bothered but it's the two hungry yet fussy 10 yr olds and all their packed lunches I am most concerned about. I will eat pretty much anything myself and would find it a good way to make me use up stuff hidden in the depths of the freezer.

That’s not, strictly speaking, stock piling

Stop bouilloning him.

So you’re panic buying for your kids?

[edit] ah just read your op again, not yet, you’re just in a panic about whether to panic buy. No, it really isn’t the zombie apocalypse the media would like us to think it is.

ah just read your op again, not yet, you’re just in a panic about whether to panic buy. No, it really isn’t the zombie apocalypse the media would like us to think it is.

Apart from the 500g packet of macaroni, no, no panic buying yet. I did buy two geometry sets at lunchtime although I did strictly only need one set.

Most of the cheap pasta on supermarket shelves are empty but the slightly more expensive ones are all there ... 😒

Better keep an eye on him

Her...

Eldest is a borderline veggie who dislikes spicy food, youngest is the polar opposite, I cannot quite fathom it TBH.

Judging by our kitchen shelves, MrsTH has been panic buying and stockpiling tea for the last 2 years.

I had to go to Costco on Monday. We genuinely needed bog roll along with the monthly nappy and dried fruit supplies. They let the plebs in at 12:00. They ran out of bog roll at 12:05. People were stuffing their trolleys with paper towel dispenser refills, industrial rags and serviettes. It really was a lesson in the complete ignorance and 4kwittery of our general population. Bring on the plague!

I've not panic bought anything my only concern would be if the only things left on the shelf were Vegan foods!

Not done any panic buying as such but over the last week or so I have revisited the Cooking on a bootstrap brexit list from jack monroe.

Made sure I have the usual store cupboard staples
Pasta,
Rice,
Herbs n spices
Tinned veg
Beans
Spaghetti
Etc etc
No excess on loo rolls, sanitizer paracetamol etc though, just my usual monthly shop last week

As long as I have plenty of beer and a few jazz mags I'll be happy.

few jazz mags

Are we expecting the internet to be affected by the virus?? 😳

you are asking if you should panic buy to avoid panic buying?

No he is asking if he should panic buy to avoid death by starvation. Why don’t you people understand this 🙄

you are asking if you should panic buy to avoid panic buying?

No he is asking if he should panic buy to avoid death by starvation. Why don’t you people understand this 🙄

To ease your mind just buy as you see fit at least help the supermarket to clear some old stock out ... 🙄

Are we expecting the internet to be affected by the virus??

Contingency plans.

My local Morrisons hasn't had bog roll on any of my visits since last Friday. Today they had signs up restricting the quantities each shopper can buy and there still weren't any left at 4:40.

The charity shops are full of paperbacks if it gets too bad.....I recommend Dan Brown for normal movements and Jeffrey Archer if it gets a bit sticky...

Just been in Lidl in Stirling. Either there's no panic here or everyone is dead, plenty of stuff. Also managed to buy a pack of paracetamol in boots earlier. All varieties in stock except the 49p stuff. Plenty of their own brand stuff though.

I've got about ten kilos of huel currently.

Maybe a slight panic but I usually buy more when I run down to about 3kg anyway as the shelf life is so long.

Tempted to buy a 15kg sack of kibble for the pupper.

Not really panic buying I don't think though.

Why are people panic buying pasta? It's just carbs.. A month on that yi you won't be looking to bright lol

So, a slightly contrary view; we have had a steady built up supply of non perishables, paracetamol etc in prep for a worst case brexit. I know the country would do something so the nation doesn't starve but it is still my responsibility as a father of 2 kids to make sure we are OK and don't need to rely on outside help. When things started looking a bit virus like we started topping up the supplies again. Not stuffing multiple packs of bog roll into the trolley but gradually building up again. I recon my family would be OK for a month without leaving the house if it came to it. Panic buying or responsible?

I posted on another thread t'other day, but my local Sainsbury's have sold out of chopped tomatoes. But only non-Italian chopped tomatoes!

I wasn't aware that the humble tom could catch the Covonia (please come back Ainsley Harriot) virus.

I wouldn't call it panic buying, but I did a tins shop after work in Lidl on Monday and hoarded them in my work locker, just need to remember to unusually take my rucksack in to get them home... Or buy a tin opener to put in the locker. 😈

Has anyone else noticed that whilst the dry pasta has been decimated no one is buying pesto or sauces?

Making a meal reasonably tasty goes out the window when daily mail inspired shop clearance starts, it would seem.

We do a "big shop" every three weeks or so whether we need to or not, so our cupboards are bulging by default. We won't starve even if we have to resort to baked beans on pasta or something. Wine, on the other hand, seems to disappear rapidly after purchase so that's my only real concern.

few jazz mags

I had no idea it was still possible to buy such things.

Is your neighbour Indiana Jones?

Well there is a large chest I haven't opened yet, maybe it's The Ark of the Covenant