[teshier-A]

How about "Follow official recommendations" instead ? In France Macron made a show of going to the theatre urging people to live normally (within the new regulations, e.g. no mass gathering above a certain size).

Advising people to stockpile food this early is sure to make the situation even worse.

[whatshisface]

>Advising people to stockpile food this early is sure to make the situation even worse.

If the food stockpiling can be spread out so that a lot of it happens before the first local case is announced, then it will ease the burden on the system when the crisis arrives. Buying extra toilet paper at Costco does not stress the system if you do it months before there's a big problem, and it will ease the load during the crisis because you won't be buying toilet paper then. However stockpiling after the run has already begun might not be so useful...

[hef19898]

And supplies stop coming to region after the first case why again?

[bcrosby95]

It helps reduce the number of potential exposures. For those with a high risk factor, the CDC actually recommends stockpiling.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/specific-groups/hi...

FEMA also recommends you always have days or weeks of supplies stockpiled in case of unpredictable natural disasters. Everyone in my main circle of friends knows you should have a stockpile for this reason, and the lack of one is talked about more as an embarrassment. But online not having one seems more like a badge of honor. Its just weird to me.

[hef19898]

So we went from "everybody should stockpile" to " high risk people should stockpile" and "general FEMA and similar guidelines may have a reason". Which sounds a lot less dramatic already, doesn't it?

[lliamander]

If you get sick, the recommendation is to quarantine yourself. If you do not have a stockpile of food already, how will you be able to keep quarantine?

[hef19898]

By calling people in your social network, offline not online, to go grocery shopping for you? Just an idea that popped to my mind, I am sure there are other means. If just someone would have started, you know like company or so, a kind of service that would allow you to order food online and they deliver it to you...

[egeozcan]

These kinds of stunts are happening everywhere, with governments left and right oriented. My parents remember how everyone was panicked because of the Chernobyl disaster in Turkey, how Cahit Aral (then Turkey's industry and trade minister) drank tea in front of the cameras to prove the Black Sea region, which produces most of Turkey's tea, wasn't contaminated, and how Turgut Özal (then Turkey's PM) commented that radioactive tea tasted better (huge sigh).

Funny, it occurs that the little increase of radiation in that region really had no significant effect on cancer rates, but those people didn't know that. I still can't explain why government officials keep doing such stunts. Maybe there should be a Wikipedia list for these.

[whatshisface]

>These kinds of stunts are happening everywhere, with governments left and right oriented.

It reveals how leaders think of their constituents - they are not approaching this from the perspective of informing the public on how to best deal with this real but not world-ending danger, instead they are thinking of it in terms of "stopping the cattle from stampeding."

[bilbo0s]

If the danger is real but not world ending, then stopping the cattle from stampeding is the appropriate priority.

Because the cattle stampeding can actually be world ending. Particularly for the trampled cattle who were likely in little danger from the start.

[lliamander]

Waiting until things actually get bad before giving people permission to take reasonable precautions is only going to make stampede worse.

[Aeolun]

Respectfully, but I don’t think ‘the public’ would take reasonable action if it was smacking them in the face.

See also, run on facemasks and other supplies.

[hef19898]

All the more reason to try it anyway.

[anticensor]

> which produces most of Turkey's tea

All of it actually, as tea is a licensed plant in Turkey.

[jbay808]

I'm glad I stockpiled food before I got sick. Otherwise I would have had a much harder time quarantining myself.

[lliamander]

Thank you.

[vkou]

The official recommendations are insufficient and are more concerned with optics than actual public health. The US is a great example of this, where the official infection numbers are quite low, because only a small fraction of suspected cases are getting tested.

[bilbo0s]

>Advising people to stockpile food this early is sure to make the situation even worse.

Completely agree. Telling everyone to go out and stockpile food is just the sort of dangerous, panic inducing rhetoric we don't need right now. Follow recommendations of professionals. No large gatherings, etc. But there is no need to panic. And certainly no need to tell people to behave in a manner consistent with panicked people.

[Seenso]

> Telling everyone to go out and stockpile food is just the sort of dangerous, panic inducing rhetoric we don't need right now.

I don't think so. The problem is you don't want people to freak out and overdo it now, and you don't want them to freak out and overdo it in the future if some drastic measures are needed.

I think it would be totally prudent to give people specific sensible things they can do to prepare for the worst case. E.g.

1. Keep an extra week's worth of household consumables and whatever food they typically eat on hand.

Don't go splurge on 100 lbs of rice and pinto beans and two years worth of toilet paper. This isn't going to be a like nuclear war: public utilities will remain online, the water supply will be safe, food will be available in stores. The only possible issue with these products is that people may not be able to go out and buy them as frequently as they're used to.

2. Keep an extra month's worth of prescription medications, for similar reasons.

3. Buy a couple of small bottles of hand sanitizer (like travel size), for use on the go, which will last XX weeks for a typical person. But no big deal if you can't find any since washing your hands works well.

[tomp]

> No large gatherings, etc. But there is no need to panic. And certainly no need to tell people to behave in a manner consistent with panicked people.

It's a prisoner's dilemma. It's in the interest of the country for the officials to say "don't panic" even if/when the reasonable response it to panic. In an individual interest is to panic before the government says, "panic".

The alternative is, obviously, that cases keep rising until a newspaper leaks on a Sunday night that your government will imminently start restraining you. Is it then time to panic?