COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

[Valeyard]

Last night, a group of guys broke in at night in a grocery store.

They had guns. They were beginning to loot it, stealing all the food, when the police showed up.

They began firing at the police, who fired back. It turned into a western, so they had to use grenades to make them disperse. I'm not kidding! The looters escaped.

http://www.leparisien.fr/yvelines-78/cor...281767.php

Does it actually say they had guns? When I put that article into Google Translate it just says they "throw various projectiles".

Does France have food security? By that I mean does France produce enough food domestically to feed itself if it were cut off from all global trade? I thought France does have food security, but many European countries including the UK do not and are dependent on imported food to feed themselves, and it's those countries that don't have sufficient domestic food production where I'd expect the panic and rioting to be the worst - heck some of them may have to resort to rationing if there is a disruption in the global supply of food. There can also be a shortage on opioids (like morphine) because most countries do not produce enough poppies domestically to fulfil their own healthcare needs - and there's not enough legal opium in the world as it is to meet medicinal demand. Only a few countries are actually allowed under the UN treaties to grow and produce medicinal opium for export (for example India, Australia, Turkey, France, Spain, UK) most countries produce at least some opium for their domestic needs (China, Germany, etc) and some countries produce very little or none at all (USA). If you want me to scare you - in 2017 Australia was the only major producer of codeine-rich poppies, which means from the global supply you couldn't get it anywhere else - not from France, not from India, not from Turkey. In 2018 Spain started cultivating that variety, thus in 2018 the only major producers of codeine-rich poppies were Australia and Spain (figures here). Imagine the panic that would happen if you run out of opioid medications! And remember there's not enough globally as it is, particularly in developing countries like in Africa/Asia/South America.

A lot of countries are really ill-prepared for such global supply disruptions. It's not like you can just send the military to Afghanistan and harvest their illegal heroin crops, you can't make morphine or codeine from those poppies, those are heroin-rich poppies and completely useless medicinally unless you want to resort to prescribing heroin instead of morphine! If you look at a map of the world, all the major producers are located: here (Australia) in Asia, and in Europe. There's no major supplier in Africa, or North/Central/South America. That's what seems really odd to me - the US for example has literally no reason why they can't set themselves up as a major producer. Or at least produce enough domestically for their own needs like China. But as it is they're dependent on India and Turkey for morphine, and Australia for codeine... seems silly to me.

[Stamper]

Yes, in the event that all food production stopped, there is a 3 weeks delay until supply runs out, and food production doesn't stop.

The story changed, they wrote they fire at the police first. It happens a lot.

[Valeyard]

What I have no compassion for is people panicking, thinking for themselves, and putting others in danger which is what happens when you go to a market and buy all the water, toilet paper, cans, milk etc. resulting in empty shelves. We live together but many think for themselves regardless of the others. This is animal thinking, not human. It's basically George A. Romero Zombie / Dawn of the Dead.

It's not really panic at all, it's loss of control. That's quite difference. To give you an example, one of my close relatives bought a 24-roll pack of toilet paper on the weekend. That's perfectly normal those are normal sized packs that people buy - in fact there's also 36-roll packs in most supermarkets here. Many supermarkets here have run out of toilet paper completely, especially convenience stores that don't have the backing of big warehousing, so lots of them ordered the single-roll toilet paper products that they wouldn't normally stock. Now you can get single rolls of toilet paper like Who Gives a Crap, at lots of places, and they all have plenty available because they limit those to one per customer (yes really!) Anyway, two days after buying a 24 roll pack of toilet paper, my relative purchased a single roll of toilet paper. There's no logic in that at all. They've never purchased a single roll toilet paper product in their life! They literally don't need it, they've enough toilet paper to last months.

Calm down a bit, both of you.   (yeah, I know you are calm. )

I think you two have different pictures of people buying stuff in stores in mind.

There plenty of youtube clips showing how insane people like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkfmDxPTcZ0  and this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVHYTdGUAZM

So, I believe thats the kind of people Stamper has in mind, not the people that are just doing a bit stocking up, to minimize leaving house in the next weeks.

Nothing about that first clip is "insane", Costco is a wholesaler not a supermarket, their customers are supposed to buy in bulk. I don't really like Costco at all, personally, but I can assure you plenty of businesses and others do use them as a wholesaler like child care centres that bulk buy nappies for example. And yes toilet paper - even regular two-ply normal household sized rolls is purchased by many businesses.

[Stamper]

So though we are confined at home, I drafted my pass and went to the supermarket today.

It was empty. There was tons of water and the racks of toilet paper were full, but no one to buy them.

Same for hands soap, there was like a whole wall of them (previously empty).

Now I will be able to shop freely for a year, without bother. This is awesome.

[FrankT]

This is the real Body Wars.

[Stamper]

I love this: 8 people go into a supermarket, fill all their caddies to the brim, and exit without paying by all the available exits.

Police was able to arrest a few and get 7 caddies back.

https://actu17.fr/yvelines-ils-remplisse...ient-avec/