4 ms·

Nothing money or waivers cannot solve, as long as masks are being made and China allows export. I doubt Germany, USA, Italy etc care about chartering dozens of

Nothing money or waivers cannot solve, as long as masks are being made and China allows export. I doubt Germany, USA, Italy etc care about chartering dozens of planes just for that.

luckylion 7y ago
I'm not so sure. We have an ongoing toilet paper crisis that is in it's third week now and the government is unable or unwilling to do anything about it, despite ensuring everyone that there's plenty of toilet paper somewhere in some storage of some company. If a somewhat trivial problem like coordinating a few trucks is beyond their ability, I have no hope for coordinating planes and import/export. You might say "but that's toilet paper, who cares", but empty shelves in super markets in Germany are a great way to make people remember the past and go into panic mode. What people do right now is buy masks individually from Chinese vendors on Amazon, and they are getting shipped. If you want them quickly, you can pay for airmail. China can deliver, but for some reason, Germany doesn't take them.
- dgellow 7y ago
  Where do you have a toilet paper crisis? In north Germany at least shelves are refilled all the time. I’m back from groceries, Edeka, Lidl, and Rewe had all their shelves full.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    Friends from Berlin tell me they still have empty shelves, so do the super markets in (western) Hamburg. They get refilled every few days early in the morning and are empty an hour or two later, only to sit empty for another day or two. It's gotten so bad where I live that Aldi has apparently decided to just give up and use the space for potting soil. The pasta shelves are re-stocked though, as is bread. Berlin isn't quite there yet.
    - Zenst 7y ago
      Cause and effect, it will settle down in week or two and those who overstocked won't be buying more and those who are responsible and now short due to the hoarders of panic are slowly getting back to normal. But certainly an insight into the culture and humanity of some people. Alas we have a society that seems to always see good responsible people suffer at the hands of the irresponsible.
      - luckylion 7y ago
        I believe that the important lesson is that when government steps back, people will resort to ingrained behaviors, and "stock up when a crisis begins" is one of those. The wrong answer to that is to limit the amount anyone can buy, because you're just increasing the crisis-feel. The right answer is to make sure that people calm down, and the easiest way to do that is to demonstrate that the supply of goods is not affected. You do that by adding a fleet of trucks to transport goods to super markets and add a temporary night shift to re-stock shelves. If people see that there is no shortage, they will calm down. The opposite is happening, you have (local, temporary) shortages and some politician who hasn't bought their own groceries in the last decade says "I assure you, there are no shortages", while everybody sees the empty shelves on a daily basis.
        Zenst 7y ago
        Bit like the ban effect, like many a record seen sales increase down to the aspect that some radio or other avenue deemed to ban the record. Equally, once many heard news of something was being brought up, the net effect was to drive others into panic and drive them to do the same. Panic begats panic. So you start to enter into the aspect of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_psychology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_psychology
    - dgellow 7y ago
      I'm in Hamburg, only spaghetti and hand sanitizer are still sometime missing in my neighborhood. During the past 2 weeks you could see some empty shelves depending on the time of the day, but it seemed to be temporary, due to the rapid increase in demand. But now that people filled their shelves, I guess that store supplies are back to normal.
  - stevenwoo 7y ago
    In America,I’m in Silicon Valley so people have money and space in their relatively large houses to store lots of stuff. Stores did not limit purchases early so there was panic buying early even here. Popular stores like Trader Joe’s and Costco have lines out the door for several hundred feet (they limit the number of people inside and everyone outside is six feet apart) but less popular grocery stores/green grocers do not based on my limited excursions on bike. Now purchases are limited but still some items run out because it takes more time for someone to stock items on shelves versus people just pulling it off.
    - dgellow 7y ago
      Makes sense. I didn't consider that people in the US have way more place at home to store food. And I understand that people don't have grocery stores that close to their house/apartment, so they fill the car as much as they can.
  - Zenst 7y ago
    Same in UK, least form my experience - was a blip and all those who overstocked now saturated and with that, not an issue - just the run hit supply chain demand and gave the impression of a shortage when it was only a short-term shortage due to panic buyers over-stocking. But people worried about non-fire safe cladding seemed equally happy to fill their homes with flammable paper - the hypocrisy of madness plays out in many ways.
- adrianN 7y ago
  People aren't pooping more than usual and toilet paper production is not lower than usual. There is just an irrational run on toilet paper. There is no crisis.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    There may be enough toilet paper somewhere but it's not where people want it: on the shelves. People aren't rational actors, and by saying "they don't really need toilet paper", you're not solving the issue that is people seeing empty shelves for toilet paper, bread and soap and thinking that the system is failing. You don't want the public to become nervous, ever. Nervous people make terrible decisions. And for a government to look uncaring/impotent is the way to make the population nervous.
    - nicoburns 7y ago
      It doesn't really make sense to increase toilet paper production though. There's no long-term increased demand, so the problem will probably sort itself out in a couple of weeks once everybody who has been panic buying already has a stockpile.
      - luckylion 7y ago
        The trust damage will be done by then. It's like a stock market crash because of some irrational behavior. Sure, "it'll sort itself out in a few months", but you'll have companies going under, mass layoffs etc by then. Also, I don't know whether they'd actually need to increase production. According to super market chains, they have more than enough but it's in their storage centers and they have issues/aren't prioritizing getting it into the stores.
  - Zenst 7y ago
    Exactly, it's akin to a run on a bank - if all account holders of any bank withdraw all their money at once - NO bank would cope with that. Though a run on toilet paper just hit the supply chain, so you get these bumps. Come mid to end of summer, there will be a surplus of toilet paper due to the run of panic buyers fueling panic buyers all over-stocked.
- hef19898 7y ago
  My personal theory is, that the German entity tasked with procurement has no idea how international commerce works. I saw a intriguing change in conversations I had over the last couple of days. First it was, like, no need, we got this. Just yesterday I found a call for an offer from the Armed Forces procurement department in my Inbox, while you now find direct contact details for these kind of things online. Not sure what happened, but there sure is a change in how authorities are approaching this.

Nothing money or waivers cannot solve, as long as masks are being made and China allows export. I doubt Germany, USA, Italy etc care about chartering dozens of planes just for that.

luckylion 7y ago

I'm not so sure. We have an ongoing toilet paper crisis that is in it's third week now and the government is unable or unwilling to do anything about it, despite ensuring everyone that there's plenty of toilet paper somewhere in some storage of some company. If a somewhat trivial problem like coordinating a few trucks is beyond their ability, I have no hope for coordinating planes and import/export. You might say "but that's toilet paper, who cares", but empty shelves in super markets in Germany are a great way to make people remember the past and go into panic mode. What people do right now is buy masks individually from Chinese vendors on Amazon, and they are getting shipped. If you want them quickly, you can pay for airmail. China can deliver, but for some reason, Germany doesn't take them.

dgellow 7y ago
Where do you have a toilet paper crisis? In north Germany at least shelves are refilled all the time. I’m back from groceries, Edeka, Lidl, and Rewe had all their shelves full.
- luckylion 7y ago
  Friends from Berlin tell me they still have empty shelves, so do the super markets in (western) Hamburg. They get refilled every few days early in the morning and are empty an hour or two later, only to sit empty for another day or two. It's gotten so bad where I live that Aldi has apparently decided to just give up and use the space for potting soil. The pasta shelves are re-stocked though, as is bread. Berlin isn't quite there yet.
  - Zenst 7y ago
    Cause and effect, it will settle down in week or two and those who overstocked won't be buying more and those who are responsible and now short due to the hoarders of panic are slowly getting back to normal. But certainly an insight into the culture and humanity of some people. Alas we have a society that seems to always see good responsible people suffer at the hands of the irresponsible.
    - luckylion 7y ago
      I believe that the important lesson is that when government steps back, people will resort to ingrained behaviors, and "stock up when a crisis begins" is one of those. The wrong answer to that is to limit the amount anyone can buy, because you're just increasing the crisis-feel. The right answer is to make sure that people calm down, and the easiest way to do that is to demonstrate that the supply of goods is not affected. You do that by adding a fleet of trucks to transport goods to super markets and add a temporary night shift to re-stock shelves. If people see that there is no shortage, they will calm down. The opposite is happening, you have (local, temporary) shortages and some politician who hasn't bought their own groceries in the last decade says "I assure you, there are no shortages", while everybody sees the empty shelves on a daily basis.
      - Zenst 7y ago
        Bit like the ban effect, like many a record seen sales increase down to the aspect that some radio or other avenue deemed to ban the record. Equally, once many heard news of something was being brought up, the net effect was to drive others into panic and drive them to do the same. Panic begats panic. So you start to enter into the aspect of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_psychology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_psychology
  - dgellow 7y ago
    I'm in Hamburg, only spaghetti and hand sanitizer are still sometime missing in my neighborhood. During the past 2 weeks you could see some empty shelves depending on the time of the day, but it seemed to be temporary, due to the rapid increase in demand. But now that people filled their shelves, I guess that store supplies are back to normal.
- stevenwoo 7y ago
  In America,I’m in Silicon Valley so people have money and space in their relatively large houses to store lots of stuff. Stores did not limit purchases early so there was panic buying early even here. Popular stores like Trader Joe’s and Costco have lines out the door for several hundred feet (they limit the number of people inside and everyone outside is six feet apart) but less popular grocery stores/green grocers do not based on my limited excursions on bike. Now purchases are limited but still some items run out because it takes more time for someone to stock items on shelves versus people just pulling it off.
  - dgellow 7y ago
    Makes sense. I didn't consider that people in the US have way more place at home to store food. And I understand that people don't have grocery stores that close to their house/apartment, so they fill the car as much as they can.
- Zenst 7y ago
  Same in UK, least form my experience - was a blip and all those who overstocked now saturated and with that, not an issue - just the run hit supply chain demand and gave the impression of a shortage when it was only a short-term shortage due to panic buyers over-stocking. But people worried about non-fire safe cladding seemed equally happy to fill their homes with flammable paper - the hypocrisy of madness plays out in many ways.
adrianN 7y ago
People aren't pooping more than usual and toilet paper production is not lower than usual. There is just an irrational run on toilet paper. There is no crisis.
- luckylion 7y ago
  There may be enough toilet paper somewhere but it's not where people want it: on the shelves. People aren't rational actors, and by saying "they don't really need toilet paper", you're not solving the issue that is people seeing empty shelves for toilet paper, bread and soap and thinking that the system is failing. You don't want the public to become nervous, ever. Nervous people make terrible decisions. And for a government to look uncaring/impotent is the way to make the population nervous.
  - nicoburns 7y ago
    It doesn't really make sense to increase toilet paper production though. There's no long-term increased demand, so the problem will probably sort itself out in a couple of weeks once everybody who has been panic buying already has a stockpile.
    - luckylion 7y ago
      The trust damage will be done by then. It's like a stock market crash because of some irrational behavior. Sure, "it'll sort itself out in a few months", but you'll have companies going under, mass layoffs etc by then. Also, I don't know whether they'd actually need to increase production. According to super market chains, they have more than enough but it's in their storage centers and they have issues/aren't prioritizing getting it into the stores.
- Zenst 7y ago
  Exactly, it's akin to a run on a bank - if all account holders of any bank withdraw all their money at once - NO bank would cope with that. Though a run on toilet paper just hit the supply chain, so you get these bumps. Come mid to end of summer, there will be a surplus of toilet paper due to the run of panic buyers fueling panic buyers all over-stocked.
hef19898 7y ago
My personal theory is, that the German entity tasked with procurement has no idea how international commerce works. I saw a intriguing change in conversations I had over the last couple of days. First it was, like, no need, we got this. Just yesterday I found a call for an offer from the Armed Forces procurement department in my Inbox, while you now find direct contact details for these kind of things online. Not sure what happened, but there sure is a change in how authorities are approaching this.