Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[garbon]

And I thought I was struggling as Amazon has essentially turned me into a Morrisons shopper*.

*Bulk of Amazon Fresh items are from Morrisons.

[The Brain]

And I thought I was struggling as Amazon has essentially turned me into a Morrisons shopper*.

*Bulk of Amazon Fresh items are from Morrisons.

My God!

[garbon]

And I thought I was struggling as Amazon has essentially turned me into a Morrisons shopper*.

*Bulk of Amazon Fresh items are from Morrisons.

My God!

Languish does seem conflicted on Morrisons.

Tesco's mid-market. Aldi, Lidl, Morrisons and Asda are the really cutprice supermarkets with varying quality.

I suspect your exposure to environmentally friendly, free-range everything may be directly linked to finding Tesco's awful and shopping at Waitrose

One thing about supermarkets that we need to bear in mind is that each individual shop is now tailored to the area it serves. I was mystified a few years back, for example, when I saw Morrisons being extensively slagged off for being shit. The one at Preston docks being quite a good store. I then went on a tour of the North-East and shopped at several Morrisons' over there.......well, they were pretty poor. So, in Preston, for some mysterious reason, the local Lidl is better than the local Aldi. I theorise that it is due to the clientele. In both these stores roughly half the shoppers are foreigners; but in the Lidl they are workers of various types (well organised respectable working class in the main) whereas the Aldi is in the university district and has lots of students shop there.

Waitrose is very weak up here as we have a regional chain, Booth's, that fills that niche and has the additional advantage of being "Northern".

I shop at all these places, and M&S as well, but that is mainly to get me to do lots of walking. If it wasn't for the exercise I guess we would use Booth's for 90% of our purchases. They have stuff like the £14 a small bottle balsamic vinegar that are essential to our modern lifestyle 

I recognise all of them except the bottom one.

Iceland is a big chain that's everywhere, but as the name suggests, isn't really a proper supermarket, it specialises in frozen stuff. Cheap one. So if you lack time/money/desire to cook, you go there. We have stopped going to the one close to us a while ago. It's ghastly, really.


In my eyes, Morrisons and Sainsburys are largely the same. Acceptable if you don't have anything else closer, but no great.

ASDA is slightly better than those two, but largely the same category.

M&S is good for clothing but for groceries it's expensive with very little choice or variety. Seems to be cashing in on old people who have never gone to any other store in their lives.

Waitrose is the "high end" of supermarket chains. I am not sure if it's policy but I have never seen a non-white clerk (at least mingled with customers) at a Waitrose, ever. They are expensive but usually (far from always) the quality mostly matches the price.

TESCO IMHO is the best middle ground on quantity, quality, and price. It doesn't mean it's anything special, but in a closely matched race they come out front at least in the areas I have lived in.

Lidl isn't very good in terms of choices but they carry a lot of more "continental" stuff which is great, I won't mind once again living close to one of them soon. It is generally looked down upon by the natives.

Ohhh, I love these games. 

Iceland: Food/selection is meh...the one I've gone too doesn't seem dirty/crappy.  Just blah. 
Sainsburys: Also meh, but the best source of go-to Greek yogurt, and probably the best bakery cookies I've encountered.
Morrisons: I'd put it a notch above Sainsburys.  I like their pasties above others.  Actually sells a deli-made refrigerated veggie-combo pizza that doesn't have sweet corn on it.
M&S: Good.  Limited selection, but the store definitely has the modern/super clean atmosphere down pat.  Their vegetarian Kiev's are money.
ASDA: Walmart in the UK.  Fair selection/meh.
Waitrose: Items are expensive, but their atmosphere/feel does not reflect that at all.  Way too limited fresh bakery items (at the store here, anyway).  But does have some harder-to-find select items.  Ice cream selection is above average (yes, this is important  )
Lidl: Fair, cheap, and the one I go to is nice and clean.
Tesco: Very meh.  Just very meh.
Aldi's: Haven't been to one yet...from the outside, looks very much like it is for poors.
CoOp:  Between the Tesco Express and the mini-CoOp market, I go to CoOp much more.  Item quality seems way better to me.  They had a veggie pizza with a cheese that had a lemon-y tinge to it...was soooo damned good.  Their store-brand ice cream is also perhaps the best overall quality I've encountered so far.

[The Brain]

I'm conflicted af.

[Sheilbh]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/17/coronavirus-england-lockdown-shops-parks-social-distancing

I think I agree with her point but for different reasons.

It reminds me of the theory of determination which comes up in all the time in politics. The President could turn around x foreign crisis if they just have the will/determination to do it etc. No UK government could "maintain" a lockdown. I think, to be honest, you need to be China to "maintain" a lockdown through an act of government, because of the tools to enforce that will. The UK has very few police compared to even most European countries (who normally also have gendarmes or something similar).

You need the people to maintain lockdown and that requires buy-in from them. In part that's because they either understand intuitively why they should do something, or it's been explained to them, and it depends on the government's sort of authority/legitimacy. You follow their rules because you believe their instructions and you believe that they are right to be giving them. I think that's easier going into lockdown because it is in the context of a crisis so everyone watches the press conferences; leaving lockdown the crisis has peaked, fewer people watch the press conference so don't hear the explanations. Also there will be changes that seem counter-intuitive that need to be explained for people to trust them - in the UK the best example I can think of is schools (which the government has really fucked up) because they are thing people want kept closed the longest, but the evidence they are one of the safest things to open early. That needs to be explained and I think the governments comms have been really, really bad. So that means people don't even understand the instructions far less buy into them to follow.

But also I blame the response to the Cummings issue far more than she does - I think that was fatal for government authority/legitimacy to give instructions to the people. I think people from all backgrounds and of all political beliefs felt that was one rule for them and one rule for the rest of us, which they didn't feel before. So, given that, why should we do a thing you say?

So we're in a position where the instructions and reasoning isn't clear - I couldn't tell you what is and isn't open at the minute. I don't know. I think I know the rules about gatherings, but that's about it (and again I find the comms failure astonishing for an operation that is all about campaigns - which are always hammering home clear, repeated messages). But not only are the instructions not clear, we're not taking the government's risk assessment at face value any more. So instead everyone is making their own risk assessment on how to behave and what to do, in the context of instructions that aren't even very clear.

I don't think it's that the government can't or won't maintain lockdown because no government could, with our resource and sort of enforcement capability. But I think they've hugely undermined the political/decision-making bit of us all maintaining lockdown.

Separately I don't know if Western countries will be able to go back into lockdown. What's happening in Beijing is really interesting and, I think, really important: lockdown re-imposed on various neighbourhoods, over 1,250 flights at Beijing Airport cancelled. And obviously Chinese numbers are difficult so we don't know the scale of the outbreak. But I feel in Western countries I don't think we'll get that kind of compliance again unless we're in as bad or worse a situation than March. Maybe with enough local information (not going to happen in England) we'd see buy-in for localised lockdowns but I'm not sure.

So far, across Europe, there have been no second waves but it will be very interesting to see if anywhere in Western Europe actually has to re-impose lockdown and how that works.

Of course one point that I actually find very annoying in that article is her being out of lockdown and her dad in North Wales being in lockdown isn't a "geographical disparity" in what people are doing. It's because Wales has a different government. This is a devolved matter - but that is why we're so bad at decentralisation. Different results are seen as somehow unfair, postcode lotteries or geographical disparities which are bad things, not different decisions taken by local governments, which, I think are good. It's like comparing New York and Florida, or Madrid and Cadiz and saying different lockdown experiences are because there are geographical disparities.

[garbon]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/17/coronavirus-england-lockdown-shops-parks-social-distancing

I think I agree with her point but for different reasons.

It reminds me of the theory of determination which comes up in all the time in politics. The President could turn around x foreign crisis if they just have the will/determination to do it etc. No UK government could "maintain" a lockdown. I think, to be honest, you need to be China to "maintain" a lockdown through an act of government, because of the tools to enforce that will. The UK has very few police compared to even most European countries (who normally also have gendarmes or something similar).

You need the people to maintain lockdown and that requires buy-in from them. In part that's because they either understand intuitively why they should do something, or it's been explained to them, and it depends on the government's sort of authority/legitimacy. You follow their rules because you believe their instructions and you believe that they are right to be giving them. I think that's easier going into lockdown because it is in the context of a crisis so everyone watches the press conferences; leaving lockdown the crisis has peaked, fewer people watch the press conference so don't hear the explanations. Also there will be changes that seem counter-intuitive that need to be explained for people to trust them - in the UK the best example I can think of is schools (which the government has really fucked up) because they are thing people want kept closed the longest, but the evidence they are one of the safest things to open early. That needs to be explained and I think the governments comms have been really, really bad. So that means people don't even understand the instructions far less buy into them to follow.

But also I blame the response to the Cummings issue far more than she does - I think that was fatal for government authority/legitimacy to give instructions to the people. I think people from all backgrounds and of all political beliefs felt that was one rule for them and one rule for the rest of us, which they didn't feel before. So, given that, why should we do a thing you say?

So we're in a position where the instructions and reasoning isn't clear - I couldn't tell you what is and isn't open at the minute. I don't know. I think I know the rules about gatherings, but that's about it (and again I find the comms failure astonishing for an operation that is all about campaigns - which are always hammering home clear, repeated messages). But not only are the instructions not clear, we're not taking the government's risk assessment at face value any more. So instead everyone is making their own risk assessment on how to behave and what to do, in the context of instructions that aren't even very clear.

I don't think it's that the government can't or won't maintain lockdown because no government could, with our resource and sort of enforcement capability. But I think they've hugely undermined the political/decision-making bit of us all maintaining lockdown.

Separately I don't know if Western countries will be able to go back into lockdown. What's happening in Beijing is really interesting and, I think, really important: lockdown re-imposed on various neighbourhoods, over 1,250 flights at Beijing Airport cancelled. And obviously Chinese numbers are difficult so we don't know the scale of the outbreak. But I feel in Western countries I don't think we'll get that kind of compliance again unless we're in as bad or worse a situation than March. Maybe with enough local information (not going to happen in England) we'd see buy-in for localised lockdowns but I'm not sure.

So far, across Europe, there have been no second waves but it will be very interesting to see if anywhere in Western Europe actually has to re-impose lockdown and how that works.

Of course one point that I actually find very annoying in that article is her being out of lockdown and her dad in North Wales being in lockdown isn't a "geographical disparity" in what people are doing. It's because Wales has a different government. This is a devolved matter - but that is why we're so bad at decentralisation. Different results are seen as somehow unfair, postcode lotteries or geographical disparities which are bad things, not different decisions taken by local governments, which, I think are good. It's like comparing New York and Florida, or Madrid and Cadiz and saying different lockdown experiences are because there are geographical disparities.

I don't think she actually is trying to suggest the government should be doing some sort of authoritarian crackdown to make sure we are all locked down. That feels more like a bone you have to pick with...maybe someone else?

Of course one point that I actually find very annoying in that article is her being out of lockdown and her dad in North Wales being in lockdown isn't a "geographical disparity" in what people are doing. It's because Wales has a different government. This is a devolved matter - but that is why we're so bad at decentralisation. Different results are seen as somehow unfair, postcode lotteries or geographical disparities which are bad things, not different decisions taken by local governments, which, I think are good. It's like comparing New York and Florida, or Madrid and Cadiz and saying different lockdown experiences are because there are geographical disparities.

Only insofar if the differences in regulations/experiences are as a result of sound policy making tailored to the circumstances in each location. Otherwise, you are just back to whether or not the government is competent in the policies it is outlining.

[Sheilbh]

I don't think she actually is trying to suggest the government should be doing some sort of authoritarian crackdown to make sure we are all locked down. That feels more like a bone you have to pick with...maybe someone else?

Mainly Cummings

This isn't an issue of the government being unable or unwilling to maintain lockdown. It's a collapse in the government's authority/legitimacy.

Only insofar if the differences in regulations/experiences are as a result of sound policy making tailored to the circumstances in each location. Otherwise, you are just back to whether or not the government is competent in the policies it is outlining.

Sure - only England is leaving lockdown in the way "we" are. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are all taking a more cautious approach (which in my view is correct). So non-essential shops are still shut in Wales and might reopen at the end of the month/early July, the Welsh don't mind how many people gather but they can only be from two households (outside obviously) and you should only go within 5 miles of your home for any outdoor activities or meetings, the earliest schools in Wales will re-open is 1 July. In general in Wales you should still only leave your home if you have a reasonable excuse.

I don't know about how competent the governments in the other nations have been, but there are also quite big policy differences.

[garbon]

Mainly Cummings

This isn't an issue of the government being unable or unwilling to maintain lockdown. It's a collapse in the government's authority/legitimacy.

Because they were unwilling and/or unable to prevent that collapse?

[Zanza]

They quarantined another huge meat packing plant here that has 7000 employees and produced 20% of all meat products in Germany. 400 of the first 500 tested were positive.

[Tamas]

UK is still having around 200 deaths a day. I guess at this stage a steady manageable flow of mysery and untimely death of many of us is the best we can hope for.

[mongers]

All good points.

It does absolutely feel like only people who (and whose employers) choose to are still maintaining a semblance of distancing/lockdown measures.

Indeed, a good article, I too have some of the author's concerns.

And the final sentence Garbon highlight seems a good summation of where we are.

[viper37]

They quarantined another huge meat packing plant here that has 7000 employees and produced 20% of all meat products in Germany. 400 of the first 500 tested were positive.

It's a vegan conspiracy.

[Admiral Yi]

First day of shopping since the plague hit.  Sporting goods store and book store, both in the local megalomall.

Very interesting contrast.  About 20% masks at the sports store, about 95 at the book store.

[Caliga]

First day of shopping since the plague hit.  Sporting goods store and book store, both in the local megalomall.

Very interesting contrast.  About 20% masks at the sports store, about 95 at the book store.

Trumpists are mostly illiterate? 

[Sheilbh]

Scotland's moving into Phase 2 - their whole approach seems a lot more controlled and competent. But this does highlight the policy differences between the nations:


Kind of interesting that they are allowing sports again behind closed doors given the Scottish Premier League has already tried to cancel their season. It's now becoming a huge issue because, unlike in France, there is the possibility of sport resuming. Cynics would point out that the SPL have already received all their TV money for this season and start a new deal in the Summer. Not been following closely but it all looks very chaotic.

Also in another example of Scotland noting the mockery south of the border and adapting, they've picked up the concepts of "bubbles" but are calling them "extended household groups". Just like they slightly adapted "stay alert" to "remain vigilant" (while Wales went with the slightly more threatening "stay local" as their slogan ).