>> If you think you only need to budget supplies for two weeks, you’re just wrong. You need to budget for _months_
Can you back this up at all? As I explained in my comment, Italy, one of the worst hit countries globally (and on 'lockdown') has grocery stores still functioning. The idea that people will be required to not leave their homes for months is fear mongering , impossible to enforce, and even in the worst case scenario people simply won't do it - they'll go stir crazy and give up a lot quicker than they think.
Saying “can you back this up at all” in response to this is just glib rhetoric. There’s no published standard of evidence for this, by very definition of the type of event (panic).
When you buy a stockpile of supplies, it is for contingency, not immediate threat. You are not accounting for this.
If the probability of being home quarantined is, say, 1%-5%, that’s huge and requires stockpiling at least some supplies. The grocery stores functioning today has literally nothing to do with it. That’s not fear mongering.
In the absence of hard data on the probability of home quarantine, then what do you recommend people do? Prepare for a worst case scenario? Act like nothing will happen? Somewhere in between (but where exactly, and why?)
I’ll reiterate, your responses so far are just glib rhetoric. Unless you can provide a reason why people shouldn’t prepare for a worst case scenario (knowing it’s unlikely to get that bad, but better to have the supplies if it does), it’s extremely disingenuous of you to brandish such moralistic grandstanding judgment towards people trying to prepare for an emergency.
Ideally we would all have our own stocks of essentials that we build up gradually over time during normal circumstances. Unfortunately this is both difficult for some people, and antithetical to the modern trend of urban minimalism.
Can you back this up at all? As I explained in my comment, Italy, one of the worst hit countries globally (and on 'lockdown') has grocery stores still functioning. The idea that people will be required to not leave their homes for months is fear mongering , impossible to enforce, and even in the worst case scenario people simply won't do it - they'll go stir crazy and give up a lot quicker than they think.