Comparisons shopping in the supermarket - Germany / UK

[vetran]

1) People waited in well spaced queues, the floor has been marked with tape to indicate the correct distancing. People keeping a good distance apart whilst browsing the aisles.

2) Contactless payments are pretty much the norm anyway. Didn't notice if they have stopped accepting cash. Haven't seen anyone pay cash for their supermarket shop for ages!

3) No, shield. Seems like a good idea.

4) Yes, a number of staff/customers with PPE.

5) "Security" on the door to the supermarket to limit the number people in the shop at any one time.


A plus point is that most things are in stock, there's "rationing" ( i.e. one pack of loo-roll per purchase ) on a few items.

Our local supermarket has reduced it's opening hours in-order to allow more time to re-stock. It's only open 7:00am-8:00pm 7 days a week now. Which caught me out the first time when I wandered down at 10:30pm to grab a snack for supper.


The small & independent food shops in the village are all well stocked. Most are limiting the number of customers into the store at any one time. For example the butchers only allows 3 customers in at a time.

So all-in-all it looks like in my area people are taking it seriously, talking to friends in other parts of the country it's pretty much the same picture.

I'm sure you can go onto social media if you wish and find some counter-examples and then try and imply that they are indicative of the situation in the entire country.

Aldi & Morrisons had a screen as well.

pharmacies were limiting to 1-2 customers.

ALDI & MOrissons ~ 10 customers.

all very friendly.

[vetran]

In Germany they say "For you ze War is over ", we say "shut it Fritz".

FTFY

[Paddy]

Thai massage parlour
All in NATO gas masks and rubber gloves. Not quite the same as before.

[vetran]

Thai massage parlour
All in NATO gas masks and rubber gloves. Not quite the same as before.

nah that is just "fetish Friday". watch out for for "torture Tuesday" they use bulldog clips then....

[tomtomagain]

One of the more positive aspects of all this is the 600k people who signed-up within 36 hours to support the 1.5m vulnerable people in society.

If we can protect and support the most vulnerable AND if most people can rise to the occasion, take it seriously, and stay at home then I'm hopeful we can avoid the carnage that is currently playing out in Spain and Italy.

Guessing that other countries have taken similar steps regarding the most vulnerable, but not seen anything about it in the media.

Perhaps some of our ex-pats can enlighten us?

[rogerfederer]

One of the more positive aspects of all this is the 600k people who signed-up within 36 hours to support the 1.5m vulnerable people in society.

If we can protect and support the most vulnerable AND if most people can rise to the occasion, take it seriously, and stay at home then I'm hopeful we can avoid the carnage that is currently playing out in Spain and Italy.

Guessing that other countries have taken similar steps regarding the most vulnerable, but not seen anything about it in the media.

Perhaps some of our ex-pats can enlighten us?

I am scared of the process; this isn't a war effort in the traditional sense. The best preparation for these for these people is appointments for testing (if we had enough...sigh), ensure they get a negative result back at least once, if not twice after two or three swab tests, then get them out to help the vulnerable.

What will happen is that people who are asymptomatic or haven't yet generated major symptoms but do shed the virus are about to infect vulnerable members of our society. I appreciate many need urgent help but I can't help but think that it is about to lead to a major spread of the virus despite best intentions. In China they measured virus load over a period of time with test patients (such as medical staff on other non-Covid19 duties) and noted that people shed before symptoms for up to 21 days. You'll notice "24 days" mentioned in some research, but that's a different study. It's still over 3 weeks in some cases and we don't know how widespread such a long virus-shedding incubation period is.

Dangerous.

The process of getting people volunteering is critical to ensure the spread is minimised to as best an extent as is possible.

[NickFitz]

Sainsbury’s yesterday: bloke at the door controlling the one-out-one-in rule. Everybody in the queue (about six singles or couples ahead of me) was keeping two metres or so apart, other than the woman behind me who was so close that I came very close to tutting

In the shop: people generally good at steering clear of one another unless something - a tin of kidney beans, the last few lasagne sheets - got them excited and they lunged in front of you to stare at it, a couple of feet away, before deciding they didn’t want it and walking off. This usually happened when you had some hapless shelf stacker two metres behind you and couldn’t reverse your trolley out of the situation

Tills: no screens around checkouts (possible I didn’t notice as I used the self-checkout) but they’re being installed Real Soon Now. I think they’re encouraging contactless and trying to avoid cash but haven’t banned it entirely yet. Again, not sure as I always pay with my watch anyway (that sounds like bartering for cigarettes from a Russian soldier in Berlin in 1945, I mean Apple Pay).

Some people were wearing masks, but not of the kind that would provide any meaningful protection. Still, whatever floats your boat. IIRC the shelf stackers had gloves, presumably left over from the now-closed butcher/fishmonger/pizza/hot-food/deli counters.

The Timpsons concession was closed too.

Perhaps the worst thing though is that the three-items-per-customer limit applies to types of thing, not brands. So you can get three bottles of one ale, or one bottle each of three ales, but three bottles each of several different ales isn’t on

Seems unfair to those of us who appreciate good beer when, presumably, people who have no taste can get three 24-can-packs of Carling Black Label, but there we go

[minestrone]

3 bottles of vodka, 3 bottles of gin, 3 bottles of whisky.

[NickFitz]

3 bottles of vodka, 3 bottles of gin, 3 bottles of whisky.

Not sure how they count spirits. I checked with one of the staff, who confirmed that it’s three bottles of beer, three bottles of wine and so on. You can’t have three red wines and three white, so maybe spirits are all lumped together in the same way?

[SueEllen]

One of the more positive aspects of all this is the 600k people who signed-up within 36 hours to support the 1.5m vulnerable people in society.

If we can protect and support the most vulnerable AND if most people can rise to the occasion, take it seriously, and stay at home then I'm hopeful we can avoid the carnage that is currently playing out in Spain and Italy.

Guessing that other countries have taken similar steps regarding the most vulnerable, but not seen anything about it in the media.

Perhaps some of our ex-pats can enlighten us?

Hope none of you have signed up as you are cynical bastards.