With so many places closed. Are we not causing more harm by funneling many to few? That is millions of people going to grocery stores as that is one of the few places open.

Nobody should be going to the grocery store more often than usual, so it shouldn’t matter.

Then why are shelves cleared daily? We know they are going more often to get more or find what they didn’t on the last trip. The longer this goes on the more people will stock up.

I just returned from a grocery store that could win the prize for the slowest checkout in history. I was a bit uncomfortable about body density while standing in line. TP, cleaning supplies, sanitizer, water, pasta, and rice were stripped. Fortunately, I anticipated this and have quietly been building my supplies of these items for several weeks.

Because people believe what they want, regardless of the lack of logic in their decisions. Concluding that they don't know when this will end causes too many to buy more than they need and hopefully, it's not perishable. The only way to keep the shelves full is to limit quantities bought and find ways to buy more goods. Since there are fewer mom & pop grocery stores, the big ones will do better- I would hate to be an independent quickie mart owner.

I think the panic buying is over, Ive been going to the store daily for misc. things, yesterday was the first day I saw it back to normal since this began. TP/Papergoods were fully stocked too!

Not here my friend, the elite and entitled better than the rest of us crowd here in Scottsdale is still ravishing the shelves like the world is ending tomorrow.

This made me laugh, so you have a twelve foot long cashiers station including the transfer belt to bagging. they put up a two foot wide plexi glass barrier between the cashier and client. I watched as at every single station every one stepped to the side of the barrier to do business.

In an effort to support this opinion, COJ linked to the non-peer reviewed study by Imperial College which claimed some rather startling mortality rates for both the UK and US. I responded by suggesting that it was too soon to rush to judgement, citing previous examples of 'expert opinion' being so far wide of the mark they would now be considered risible.

Ignoring this, the undeterred COJ insisted on the report's veracity citing the 'prestige' of the issuing authority, and latterly the number of its authors. However, as the more astute would appreciate, these are fallacious arguments. It matters not where a report is written, or by how many people (the glib response would be to cite the oft mention Einstein anecdote of only one being sufficient). The primary consideration for a report's veracity (some would argue the only consideration) is the quality of the data upon which it is based.

In response to COJ's comments, I linked to an essay by Dr. John Ionnidis, which raised exactly that point: that the presently available data was too scare and of too poor a quality make any valid judgement - particularly when used as a driver of policy. COJ's answer was to dismiss these concerns, misrepresent the opinion of Dr. Ionnidis, repeat the assertions about the Imperial College report (and its voluminous number of authors), and cite its support by Dr. Anthony Fauci. In doing so, though, he inadvertently highlighted my concern about assumptions (of which the Imperial College report makes many) leading to false conclusions and thus bad decision making.

Even though I twice made specific mention of the UK, COJ failed to check my profile and merely assumed me to be American - "Your own Dr Anthony Fauci..." In doing so COJ has failed to appreciate the full ramifications of my illness prior to Christmas and its relation to infection reports and thus mortality rates.

N.B. Reports of problems in China first emerged around mid-December, though it wasn't until the 31st December that China officially informed WHO of there being a problem. It was also mid-December that my previously reported symptoms first developed - so it's more than likely that even if I did seek medical attention they would have been dismissed as flu. It may also be of interest to note that my wife's symptoms (a severe sore throat, nausea and vomiting) were considered, by the G.P. she saw, to be tonsillitis, though such symptoms are now also considered indicators of COVID infection.

As neither I, my wife or son have been tested, the question of what we had remains moot (though I remain convinced it was indeed COVID). My previous comment thus remains. How can any valid judgement of infection/mortality rates (particularly for the UK) be made when routine testing is not being undertaken and its first appearance in the UK remains unknown?

Having now cast his considerable analytical mind to the subject, Nic Lewis also remain unconvinced by the Imperial College study.

[Link: nicholaslewis.org]

COJ has a serious fear porn addiction. Some folk like all the doom.

Dr. Fauci is a weasel, take everything that deep state swamp dweller says with a grain of salt. Would love to see his financials, no doubt he's become very wealthy in his career as a governmental parasite.

Dr. Fauci three years ago - [Link: healio.com]

I just went up to my property about 25 minutes north. Nice , isolated river town. Went into a fully stocked grocery store with fresh veggies, meat,bread and reduced priced donuts that were a day to old. walked right up to checkout and the one next to her was empty as well. Hell no, I am not telling anyone were it is.
Sirloin steaks on sale for $5.99 lb. Bacon 2.49lb.
The main grocery chain in my town is looted every day. My wife being a first res ponder has a badge to 1 hr early access. We have not used it yet. There are lemmings out there in people form using buses to find all the TP they can.

Wow, apparently I offended you by trying to have a civil debate.

Exponential growth is a characteristic of a pandemic / epidemic disease. Basically you have a finite amount of time to slow down the disease before it spreads through population. So even if you are unsure about the spread rate (R0), it is prudent to take precautions to get ahead of the disease as best you can. If you don't and the R0 is significant, situations like Italy / Spain can happen where the hospitals are overwhelmed.

The big key point is if you ignore the potential exponential growth nature of a disease, play catch-up to the disease is very difficult, the genie is out of the bottle. I fear this is happen in New York and London right now.



No research paper is going to be peer-reviewed at this point as this takes considerable time. I presented some worse case scenarios that could happen if the Imperial College report ends up being accurate. A country narrows its options by not taking early action to try to slow this.

Now if we assume Country A, takes strong early action, and the IC report ends up being wrong/overstated, a country can loosen its suppression strategies after 3 - 8 weeks and the worst that comes out of it is that will be economic costs associated to the suppression.

In comparison, if the report is right, a country A is a better position to flatten the curve, reduce the chances of the healthcare system being overwhelmed, have less deaths and less economic fallout over the long-term.

Now lets say Country B is late to the game and has delayed action, if the report is inaccurate, it will suffer less economic cost in the short-term (when compared to Country A) due to its reduced or non-existent suppression strategies. However, if the report is accurate, then it will suffer considerably greater deaths as the numbers show in the report. The economic costs will likely be higher as well as suppression measures will have to more extreme and last longer than Country A.

A good example of Country A in my opinion is South Korea. A good example of Country B is Italy.

The absolute key point is ***response*** time is critical when dealing with a Pandemic. The University College report highlighted some of the worst cases scenarios and presented a recommend action plan to minimize the fallout of this disease.

Due to the spread of the disease at this time, most countries have 'made their bed' in regards to being either Country A or Country B. Hopefully the report is wrong and there is turnaround quickly. Italy / Spain and upcoming crisis in both New York and London lead me to think otherwise.


Actually I didn't dismiss the concerns, I presented an argument that data can be still useful even if is incomplete (and is still unknown whether it is complete or not). Here is what I said:

"Your first premise is the data is incomplete. Please show me why you think the data is incomplete or off in the Imperial College paper. Assuming the data is somehow incomplete, what is the proof that the data can't be analyzed without producing wildly varying results.

According to this book, publish by Jason W. Osborne. (Associate Provost and Dean of the Graduate School at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina, Professor of Applied Statistics in the Department of Mathematical Sciences), data is capable of being analyzed in a variety of ways even if it is incomplete.

[Link: sagepub.com]"



The first recorded case in the UK was Jan 31, even later than the US. I am sorry I assumed you were American but I am not sure why this matters. For the record, I am Canadian myself.


I am not sure why you feel so certain that you got Covid in the UK, 6 weeks prior to the first reported case in the UK. The 'regular' flu shares all the symptoms of Covid and can be randomly very harsh on some people for no apparent reasons. This seems far far more likely than you have an extremely early case of Covid.

I hope the University College proves to be off and your guys are right, the world will be much better off.

COJ sometimes you gotta let Darwin work itself out.

USA is working very hard to be #1 at this. Currently in the #3 spot behind China and Italy. 6000 more reported cases and we got this! 216 people died yesterday in the US. So glad this has been blown out of proportion by the media.

[Link: worldometers.info]

Whats happening now is that the 1 trip per week is 2 and 3 trips now because things are out of stock. On top of that...each of the 1-3 outings now have stops at 1-3 stores. The first day the morons decided to buy up everything i went to 5 stores before finding toilet paper at Home Depot. Normally i would have went to 1 store, 1 time.

So while the TP hoarding idiots think they are helping themselves...everyone else is out there spreading whatever they have to more places while trying to find TP. The TP hoarders are making it more likely that they will contract COVID-19. #morons.

SMH....really? IS everyone that does not agree with your worldview a deep state swamp dweller? There does seem to be a preponderance of experienced viral expects that seem to agree with him