Are you worried about coronavirus?

General Chat
1978

The whole topic is about what we all find worrying about the whole thing, personally, so, yes I daresay each and everyone of us in the topic worries about what happens in their own country first and then what happens to the rest of the world. Not that I am implying that people do not care about others, but simply from the fact that we all tend to know more about the mishaps and bad management in our local news-cycle, than the news-cycle abroad :slight_smile:

In that regard, I honestly couldn’t care less if there was a video of Germany’s chancellor or British PM or whatever other top 10 country leader going full Gollum “my preciouuuuusssssss” on the vaccines, because the more immediate problem is that even if we had been swimming in vaccines, the 30.000 people living in my area wouldn’t be able to get one anyway.

That is a fact that worries me, that is the one I am sharing here. I honestly do not see the problem.

We are told to “stay home, do not spread the virus”. Fine, that makes sense.
The government is issuing fines to people that move outside their towns and prefectures. Ok, that makes sense.
And suddenly for a lot of of rural areas the same government and health experts say “oh, yeah, have 30000 people sent into another town to get them vaccinated, good idea boss” :sweat_smile:

I think that 300 posts earlier someone posted news/research articles about how the whole issue with the irregular and conflicting guidelines issued by governments has caused, in many cases, the most disbelief and pushback for the implementation of any measures and here is a perfect example of that.

Graphs are very useful, but more often than not, they mean totally different things for each country, since there are very important factors that can play a big parts in the results, but cannot be measured by any graph.
For example:

  • Are the samples being collected by trained personnel or not?
  • Are the tests being conducted by well-equipped labs or not?
  • Are the tests chosen of the most accurate kind or not? (especially in the first months that was a very important issue, even in very rich countries and even now there are the “normal tests” and the more inaccurate “rapid tests”)
  • Are the people that are being tested chosen randomly or are they hand-picked by the local authorities that administer the test?
  • Expandng on the previous one, are the local authorities using medical data for their decisions or do they choose people with other things in mind (e.g. testing for their friends and family first, testing people from specific areas to keep the local number of cases low and avoid a full lockdown etc etc )

Those are hard things to discern even within the data of the same country, let alone making comparisons between totally different ones.

I will paraphrase one of my favorite quotes and say that “either you sell vaccines or you do not. If you do, those will eventually end up in the hands of the people that can afford to buy them”.

A lot of people went to the hospital due to the coronavirus. Some of them famous, like the PM of the UK, the president of the USA and here locally the Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox church. All of the famous ones recieved special treatments (which was not really available to the public, mostly due to cost and scarcity) and were out of the hospitals in record time and going back to their public positions.
Meanwhile people without wealth and status did not receive such illustrious treatments and while we can all complain about it, I do not think that any of us really finds it strange that people with wealth and power, get treated better. That is the way of the world.

Similarly, Germany and France and Britain are huge economies that have global power. Is it really any surprise if they were able to get better treatment compared with smaller countries, with weaker power and economies?

Even if you go to a supermarket and buy soda you will notice that the smaller cans cost more per litre, than the larger ones. The people that have the ability to consume more, are treated with a better price everywhere.

Yup!

and yup. This is what I have been trying to say and probably failing :slight_smile:

2 Likes
1979

…while urging other people to “go to work/to church/keep up the economy/be free/do not surrender/disregard science for tourism/open schools so parents can work” etc etc etc

Yes, I do feel entitled to accuse them if they get priority treatment.
It’s not that we both had a random accident and they got priority in surgery because of their money.
It is that they caused much of the expansion and now they get priority treatment on top of that.

I remember what officials from Germany, UK, Denmark, the USA, Sweden, France, Netherlands, Spain were saying about Greece in March last year and it wasn’t very polite.
Although I care more about how we’re going to get out of this bad situation as a species and with the minimal damage to all countries, I feel I have the right to keep an eye to what the ones who ridiculed my need to protect myself are doing now that they stepped in the soup themselves.

3 Likes
1980

I don’t remember very clearly. Was it about corona or about tension between Greece and Turkey (refugees/immigrants, Cyprus, oil drilling)?

1981

It wasn’t just Netherlands who said so.
Something about Greece and Italy and Spain (two first victims and first lockdown) spending on a problem “that doesn’t realy exist” and who would come later begging for EU money. Which is partly true, I must admit.
Coronaviruses, however, are not shy crossing borders and cross they did.

1 Like
1982

That’s a weirdly specific consequence of a pandemic.

2 Likes
1983

It’s a pretty cool video as well. I didn’t know this about Japan :slight_smile:

1 Like
1984

I went to my local supermarket to buy some groceries today, and the new clerk refused to accept cash, coupons, vouchers, but only accept electronic contactless payment. (even key in the wrong price for the unlabelled fruits and vegetables several times, experienced clerks seemed to change to non-busy shift hours, and leave inexperience ones to take the risk for busy hours)

If not for the discount and vouchers, there is no reason to go to a physical store to buy groceries. I can just have them deliver to our house for the same price, and over a certain amount, no delivery fee either. I feel shopping behaviors have started to greatly change along with store brand recognition and customer loyalties. (loyal to the delivery services than stores)

How much do you guys’ and gals’ routine shopping or grocery purchasing changes due to covid-19?

5 Likes
1985

Really?! I’d understand a strong suggestion, but unless there’s a policy in place, it is weird to reach the cashier and be turned away.

Personally, we’ve been getting groceries delivered since the beginning, but we sometimes did that before anyway, for convenience. I think we’ve actually went to the supermarket a handful of times this past year, more to go out and less to actually shop.

Coupons and stuff are not really a thing here, and delivery is free for the amount of stuff it makes sense for us to buy, no sense to bring the delivery people every other day (I like scheduling ahead, so this hasn’t really been a problem to adjust).

I only go out to buy meat and vegetables/ fruit, because the ones delivered by the supermarket are considerably lower quality than the specific shops I go frequently. But it’s a 2-person household, so not many trips per month are needed, we stock the fridge.

However, I’ve noticed a raise of 10-15% in grocery prices, compared to before the Events.

PS. We shifted from a very big supermarket to another, because quality was good, but they kept messing up our orders, one time they overcharged 30 Euros or so. I think their cashiers are OK, but they hired anyone willing for pickers and it shows.

2 Likes
1986

In East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, even Vietnam), mobile payment, and electronic payment via credit card or even public transportation card for daily transactions are so common, no-cash checkout is really not the problem here. It’s the promotion coupons, vouchers that still kept some people visiting supermarkets or malls. Some have more delivery drivers waiting than customers The same with most restaurants, even fast-food chains like McDonald’s, KFC. When I pass by I don’t see customers inside, but delivery service drivers with their uniforms.

I see more delivery service vehicles on the roads as well. They are always in a rush and drive super fast. With competitions for delivery services, I can make an order and expect a delivery depends on the distance, usually less than 1 hour to get the delivery, and their apps would show expected delivery time accurate to within 5 to 10 minutes. And I can even track the current location of the driver for my delivery with their GPS.

As to buying fruits and vegetables, here they all came from roughly the same wholesalers if you buy from supermarkets, so really not a quality problem for me. The real good produce is from the traditional market, with limited quantity. Although some of them also joined the delivery services as well, or other types of shopping assistant services (they would help you buy any products from any stores). As to their price, I don’t feel any different comparably, and from time to time, the delivery services will have their own coupon codes and vouchers for limited time discount opportunity in order to take away customers from other delivery service competitors. One of them even start their own “supermarket brand” without physical stores, but guarantee delivery 24/7 for groceries (but a bit more expensive comparably).

One interesting thing here I found is that almost all products are in “constant” discount on their label, but their online stores will have a different type of bulk and buddle sales. If I do the math, they usually round down to the same unit price as the physical store discount. But some would still require physical coupons/vouchers, usually in the form of sticker collections to get the full discount price (even discount on top of discount in limited quantity).

I certainly do feel the services start to suffer more and more. There are a lot more opportunities for students for part-time jobs as clerks than before, and in nearly every store I can see signs for hiring part-time employees.

6 Likes
1987

You are overestimating Japan. In my experience cash is used by far the most in Japan, way more than I’m used to at home. Credit or debit cards aren’t used much, but recently there has been an increased interest in paying by phone. It’s quite new though, I’ve only seen adverts for that in the last two years.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, I’d say that 95% of payments is done by debit card.

1 Like
1988

I’d say the capital controls of years past caused a huge shift towards electronic payments here, and they kind of stayed afterwards.
Cash still goes around though, because of the usual reasons.

1989

It changes rapidly since covid-19

Now, it’s not the same, at least in Tokyo where some of my friends live.

1 Like
1990

That might be the case, yes, sadly I haven’t had a chance to visit, since they locked their darn borders. I haven’t been able to meet up with my girlfriend for over a year now :cry:

3 Likes
1991

There are signs like those in most big city stores.

1992

I like cash.

2 Likes
1993

Yes, I’ve seen those at plenty locations, but it used to be rare to actually see people use those options, at least when I last was there near the end of 2019.

And quite often it’s not available at smaller stores or restaurants.

1 Like
1994

From what I heard most older generation in Japan still prefer cash, but those younger used to mobile payments and have daily use for public transport cards, shift to favoring electronic payment since covid-19 quickly.

Although I think you could still use some coins for the countless vending machines. But some of them are now upgraded to accept electronic payment like line pay as well, and can accumulated coupons for using them, like collect 20 and get one free.

1 Like
1995

Someone liked an old post of mine and I was transported on this thread, circa March 2020. Surreal how the discussion has evolved and how many things have happened.

I wonder if I have the energy to reread 2000 posts with 2021 goggles.

Remember when we were discussing how many years it would take for a vaccine and if Summer would indeed “kill the virus”?

3 Likes
1996

Doing deliveries is really a hard time work you need to rush have clients happy and if any problem it’s all on your shoulder. Gives me some compassion instead of hate each time they invade my pedestrian space at high velocity.
Besides take away has a cost, it’s not that free but it’s quite popular; it’s part of chinese modern life, waste of time to go eat outside and show off that you can afford it too.

1 Like
1997

This solves problem with virus on surface of real money
But, this problem is infinity times more tiny than virus on surface of what you buy.
So that contactless payment movement is unnecessary complication that solves almost nothing.

1 Like