What have done towards your prep?

[Mortblanc]

The canned goods are back on the shelves here SS. They got pretty scarce back when the lockdown started but they have recovered well and the stocks have recovered.

I was at the local Chinese imported tool outlet a couple of weeks ago and it looked like it had been stripped clean, had me worried. I went back last week and the place was fully restocked and healthy. They had a big sale that cleaned them out, short term.

There might be some localized shortages that are being spotted on specific items. They are generally short term. The way our shelves are stocked over here one person buying a dozen cans of soup can wipe out the inventory for a week!

One thing we are having to work around over here is our culture of "short stocking" items and then recommending people not go out on unnecessary trips.

If you are going to limit your trips that means buying in bulk. It is difficult to buy in bulk when a huge supermarket only keeps a dozen cans of any one item.

The local stores also have the nasty habit of limited offerings. There are more cans of food in the pet food isle than in the vegetable department. There is a whole isle of sugar filled cold cereals and only a half dozen boxes of oats or other hot cereals with unlimited shelf life.

The times have changed, along with the demands of life, but our supply chain and our eating habits have not changed. That is one reason for the American spike in infections after the end of lockdown. People just went back the their old shopping and behavior patterns. Run to the store two or three times each day, buy one can at a time, run out tomorrow to fetch the same thing you bought today.

I have changed from shopping twice a week for fresh items to shopping once a month and buying one huge load to limit my exposure to infection. If they are out of something I am not going back in a couple of days to see if they have restocked. I will do without or substitute.

This thing is not over and I am still in the high risk group, that is a factor that will not change, so my shopping and exposure times must change even of no one else does.