General / Off-Topic The safest place

[Robin of Spiritwood]

Coronavirus and shopping for supplies: Getting to the bottom of the toilet paper shortage

Empty shelves are caused by a fundamental shift in demand for a certain kind of toilet paper for use at home, as well as kinks in the supply chain.

www.usatoday.com

Getting to the bottom of it.

 

[Synkreto]

Govt to provide 50,000 households with plant seeds

Fast food restaurants are closed and people are being told to stay indoors, and given these conditions, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley advised that people cook at home.

guardian.co.tt

Serious question.
Is there a food security problem developing?

Ah well...only about 50% of the FoodSupply are generated in country ...just some ppl. forgot about that when they thought it a good Idea to go alone . And, contrary to prior assurances, it turns out Big Brother across the pond can not really be counted on. At least not in this time of crisis . Not a security Problem ( or did I misunderstand your question ? ) . UK can't feed itself .

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

Ah well...only about 50% of the FoodSupply are generated in nation for a while...just some ppl. forgot about that when they thought it a good Idea to go alone . And, contrary to prior assurances, it turns out Big Brother across the pond can not really be counted on. At least not in this time of crisis . Not a security, but a supply Problem ( or did I misunderstand your question ? ) . UK can't feed itself .

Keep seeing references to "grow your own food" all over the media internationally.

A food crisis looms as coronavirus forces farms to stay idle and countries hoard supplies

The coronavirus outbreak could affect food security as the global pandemic disrupts labor availability and the supply chain.

www.cnbc.com

Food shortage looms in Philippines amid coronavirus quarantine

MANILA (PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - Faced with a looming food crisis as the financial assistance promised by the Philippines government has yet to reach them, people in various parts of Luzon are left to their own devices to stave off hunger. Read more at straitstimes.com.

www.straitstimes.com

Food shortage looms in the country – Kenya News Agency

www.kenyanews.go.ke

UK facing food shortages unless more people take jobs on farms

A major drive to hire fruit and vegetable pickers has had thousands of applications, but fewer than one in five are following through.

metro.co.uk

How to Stop a Looming Food Crisis

Trade restrictions are breaking supply chains, and coronavirus lockdowns are preventing laborers from working on farms. Countries need to step back and stop panicking.

foreignpolicy.com

My country is handing out seeds for people to plant.
Clearly, they think something is going on.

 

[GJ51]

But all we look at is maps with big red blotches...

Nothing else matters

Or so I was told some time ago...

I wonder if anyone will develop a site that tracks deaths due to supply chain collapse?

Certainly not if the numbers are bigger than the COVID-19 map

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Can't hop on board with that one, chief. I'm too much of a filthy humanist to support that sort of action. For a long time, collectivism and globalism seemed like adversaries, but a lifetime of learning has driven home to me that the union of human cultures and societies is an inevitability. We are now living in the last age of isolation and separation. We fight it. We wave flags harder. We lie to ourselves. Harder. We proclaim our individuality and superiority from and over one another more indirectly but also louder. It doesn't make a difference. One way or another, cooperation, packaged any way you like it, will emerge as our ultimate state of baseline interaction.

Don't abolish. Reform. Improve. Overhaul. Work. The days of abolition as a solution to that which we construct and which vexes us, despite our construction of it, are over. Hiding from one another is no longer an option for this species, no matter how corona our viruses get.

I'm all for international cooperation but unfortunately the WHO is and has been for some years submerged in corruption and under considerable influence from China.

 

[metatheurgist]

I see that Forbes have found the key to good Corona response.
Have a female leader.

They list:Mette Fredriksen (Demark), Angela Merkel (Germany), Tsai Ing-wen (Taiwan), Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand), Erna Solberg (Norway) and Katrín Jakobsdóttir (Iceland).

This virus obviously hate men. On top of favouring female leaders, it kills almost three men for every woman.

Not fair.

Not that I like the guy running my country at the moment but the fact is that Australia is also doing extremely well. So like many articles circulating atm people seem to be ignoring inconvenient facts to push an angle. Like that terrible bit of fake news that tried aligned all the previous plagues to xx20 to claim that there's a plague exactly every 100 years.

To bring this back to the OP (which seems like a life time ago) the Top 2 safest countries were Australia and New Zealand, both with minimal deaths and cases, both looking at possibly eliminating the virus internally, both not coincidentally listened to the best medical advice and locked-down early.

We are also getting a run on seeds here not because there are any potential food shortages (we produce 3 times as much food as we need) but because bored people who aren't allowed to go the shops are starting to garden and grow their own crops. We also produce more bog roll than we need but that didn't stop that insanity either.

If the economy actually stopped to the extent that the supply chain might collapse, we could always break out that terrible socialism idea and supply food to people because we can, not because someone wants to rub 2 shekels together. Wooo, there's a scary thought.

 

[Good Whiskey]

influence from China

Almost 1 in every 5 human beings is Chinese, and because they aren't all rice farmers or soldiers any more (as if at some point they all were), they (and their government) are increasingly involved in almost everything on this planet. Does this mean we should cut funding to everything involving China? Because China? I'm so confused about what people think the practical, adversarial posture should be and how that should ultimately play out. This pandemic has made that question more relevant than it was before, and it has always been relevant.

 

[Morbad]

I wonder if anyone will develop a site that tracks deaths due to supply chain collapse?

Certainly not if the numbers are bigger than the COVID-19 map

Those numbers were very likely to be bigger than the direct COVID-19 deaths from the moment COVID-19 containment failed, especially in poorer, more fragile, areas. Those figures will be presented as the results of a failure to act sooner and more decisively in response to a budding outbreak, mostly with good reason.

And yes, there will be maps.

I'm all for international cooperation but unfortunately the WHO is and has been for some years submerged in corruption and under considerable influence from China.

We still don't have any alternative to the WHO and we still need Chinese cooperation for forewarning and containment efforts of anything that originates in, or passes through, China.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Almost 1 in every 5 human beings is Chinese, and because they aren't all rice farmers or soldiers any more (as if at some point they all were), they (and their government) are increasingly involved in almost everything on this planet. Does this mean we should cut funding to everything involving China? Because China? I'm so confused about what people think the practical, adversarial posture should be and how that should ultimately play out. This pandemic has made that question more relevant than it was before, and it has always been relevant.

Oh well if you don't think it's an issue ask Taiwan. Oh the irony of the WHO's apraisal while China was obfucating access of WHO and CDC researchers and had suppresed information early on in december. I presume that your omission of my rest of the quote settles the corruption issue...

 

[Shinji Ikari]

We still don't have any alternative to the WHO and we still need Chinese cooperation for forewarning and containment efforts of anything that originates in, or passes through, China.

I never implied we had an alternative, then again, the first cues of human to human transmition came from Taiwan, in any case, forewarnings are useless now.

 

[Good Whiskey]

I presume that your omission of my rest of the quote settles the corruption issue...

Of course. Corruption is an issue on every level of every society. It as an intrinsic component of social and economic engineering.

What are you? New?

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Of course. Corruption is an issue on every level of every society. It as an intrinsic component of social and economic engineering.

What are you, new?

I supposed you'd understand that when stating X organization is corrupt, it means X is more corrupt that it may first appear, in any case, this is how bad it is.

WHO division leading coronavirus fight poses 'unacceptable' risk to organisation, audit finds

The division leading the global response to the coronavirus outbreak is so chronically underfunded it poses a "severe" level of hazard to the World Health Organisation, audits reveal.

www.abc.net.au

 

[Good Whiskey]

I supposed you'd understand that when stating X organization is corrupt, it means X is more corrupt than it may first appear

I think you misunderstood the point I was making. There is a measure of corruption and inadequacy in all large human endeavors. The midst of a pandemic is the worst time to "find the culprit", because there isn't one, only right action going forward. The whole Chinese influence thing is such a broad topic anyway. Again, 1 in 5 humans are Chinese. That country has significant influence in this world, and it is growing. We can't simply trash every international effort or body because they're involved.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

I think you misunderstood the point I was making. There is a measure of corruption and inadequacy in all large human endeavors. The midst of a pandemic is the worst time to "find the culprit", because there isn't one, only right action going forward.

What are you on? I'm not blaming anyone.

The whole Chinese influence thing is such a broad topic anyway. Again, 1 in 5 humans are Chinese. That country has significant influence in this world, and it is growing.

Therefore...

We can't simply trash every international effort or body because they're involved.

But I didn't say that...

 

[Morbad]

in any case, forewarnings are useless now.

For COVID-19 possibly, but this not likely to be the last pathogen to emerge from China. Even with good leaks and espionage, China's assistance and access, however begrudging, is desirable.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

For COVID-19 possibly, but this not likely to be the last pathogen to emerge from China. Even with good leaks and espionage, China's assistance and access, however begrudging, is desirable.

Of course it's desirable, the issue is their reluctance to do so, at least on the first stages of the pandemic.

 

[Morbad]

Of course it's desirable, the issue is their reluctance to do so, at least on the first stages of the pandemic.

Yes.

So how does the world convince them to be more open, rather than alienating them?

 

[Shinji Ikari]

So how does the world convince them to be more open, rather than alienating them?

To be honest I don't think they can be convinced, China was on better terms with the US when the SARS epidemic broke out and they did the same deed, one thing is for sure, ignoring the issue or cheering them for their misdoings is no good.

 

[Good Whiskey]

What are you on? I'm not blaming anyone.

...

But I didn't say that...

I am referencing the suggestion in this thread that the WHO be abolished because of corruption and influence, not your post specifically. I should probably have been clearer about that.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

I am referencing the suggestion in this thread that the WHO be abolished because of corruption and influence, not your post specifically. I should probably have been clearer about that.

Oh no, the WHO should not be abolished.