Pandemic supply chain in your area

Poppy

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While New Jersey and NYC were the epicenter of covid-19 for months, many if not all states of the USA experienced food and/or toiletries shortages due to populace hording of such items. For the most part supplies have caught up to demand, here.

However, I suspect that NJ will not be able to sustain the relatively low levels of infection spread much longer. We are starting to see rising numbers of infection rate. It is blamed on younger people socially gathering. I wonder, will we see hording of food, TP, paper towels, and sanitizers, with the accompanying shortages of those products, when the $hit hits the fan again?

Yesterday, I went to Costco to pick up TP, and paper towels to store in preparation, just in case. I was limited to ONE package of TP, and there were NO paper towels in the warehouse.

How are things in your area?
 

raggie33

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i dont understand why there is a shortage i mean we are not pooping more
 

bykfixer

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Dust in the Wind
Our stores are stocked with "off brand" toilet paper and some regular brand. We figure it must be the kind normally bought by cruise ships, hotels and restaraunts.

Rice is still a hit or miss thing along with numerous household cleaning products and of all things dishwaher powder. Plenty of liquid though.

The Mrs like chocolate covered vanilla ice cream bars and those are as rare as an honest politician lately. None to be had in store brand or name brand. So it is kinda strange the things we are in short supply of.

My son works at a big name drug store and says thermometers are finally starting to show up again but sell out faster than a 2 for 1 beer sale.

Another thing missing is my favorite mixture of leafy veggies (spinach, chards and kale). They don't even have a space for them anymore. Those are great for glucose control and I switched to all spinach and "spring mix" until they return.

Last week breakfast pork products like bacon, sausage and ham were all gone. Taco shells are hit or miss as well. But there's plenty of Red Baron pizzas and broccoli now. They seemed to be the panic buyers favorites back in March along with ramen noodles, which are back.

My state is having a gentle spike. Case numbers in the 900's each day with the 20-29 group taking a whopping lead over the other age groups. My governor closed bars at 10pm in one area. We figure covid must not come out to play until after 9:30 there? I have to keep reminding the youngsters I work with to stay at arms length. I tell them us old folks have a new version that causes the under 30 crowd to grow hair out of their ears and nose.

Anyway, supplies in my state seem pretty stable right now as we cut into our stockpile of non perishables and add a little back each week. We had stockpiled bird products and are rotating those as well before freezer burn sets in. Oh, and the coin shortage seems to be mostly gone as well.
 

Katherine Alicia

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Over here a lot of factories are being hit with new outbreaks of c19 and are being shut down as a result, so random things are missing from the shelves quite regularly, last week it was pre-packaged sandwich meats, because a factory up north somewhere where they produce these got hit.
other than that, things seem to be almost back to "normal" again.
 

Devildude

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CNY
Here in central New York things are spotty on cleaning supplies. Canned meat is hit or miss. Plenty of tp though and paper towels are available. There are some weird holes but hey sometimes it depends on what day or time you go out. I try to hit the stores during the week as most people wait for the weekend to shop and being on third shift helps. Most stores are well stocked in the morning.
 

turbodog

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i dont understand why there is a shortage i mean we are not pooping more

We are, sort of. TP makers make a certain amount of commercial TP for use at work/restaurants/other businesses. With those shutdown, people are going at home more... a lot more. This causes a shortage of the home type TP.
 

Lynx_Arc

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Tulsa,OK
Things are pretty stable here but spotty at times from store to store usually if you need something most stores have it in stock but a few will be out of it. Since we are in the middle of the country and right next door to Walmart's home in Arkansas we often have things here before other states and keep stocks of stuff more. I've always kept canned and packaged food in stock as sometimes I get working a lot at a job and don't want to have to go to the store till the weekends so I need over a week of food in reserve but when I find sales I often stock up for 2-4 weeks of some items. I bought a big box of TP enough to last about a year and a half at Sam's finally when they got it back in stock.
I notice generic canned pasta is out of stock almost all the time now here though I usually have a dozen cans of it and buy it 6 cans at a time at one place and a dozen cans at another that used to be cheaper priced. The one thing I do miss is they no longer have Cherry Vanilla Coke in cans anywhere. I guess maybe the price of vanilla spiked or something.
 

turbodog

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There is shortage of aluminum cans due to people drinking a lot more at home. Coke probably cut back their non-core product mix to compensate.
 

Lynx_Arc

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There is shortage of aluminum cans due to people drinking a lot more at home. Coke probably cut back their non-core product mix to compensate.
That is quite possible as the supply chains have been tortured by this virus and the lockdowns even though things seem to be appearing often you have shortages of supplies and people to manufacture things and truckers to haul them and so on. I just hope they don't do away with cash self service registers at places because of change shortages as I don't really like to charge $4 worth of stuff so I don't have to wait 20 minute in line at a full service checkout.
 

ledbetter

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California Central Coast
Things are pretty stable here but spotty at times from store to store usually if you need something most stores have it in stock but a few will be out of it. Since we are in the middle of the country and right next door to Walmart's home in Arkansas we often have things here before other states and keep stocks of stuff more. I've always kept canned and packaged food in stock as sometimes I get working a lot at a job and don't want to have to go to the store till the weekends so I need over a week of food in reserve but when I find sales I often stock up for 2-4 weeks of some items. I bought a big box of TP enough to last about a year and a half at Sam's finally when they got it back in stock.
I notice generic canned pasta is out of stock almost all the time now here though I usually have a dozen cans of it and buy it 6 cans at a time at one place and a dozen cans at another that used to be cheaper priced. The one thing I do miss is they no longer have Cherry Vanilla Coke in cans anywhere. I guess maybe the price of vanilla spiked or something.
i may sound like a snob, but I think I'd rather starve than eat canned pasta with cherry Vanilla Coke. Dry pasta keeps a long time and all you have to do is boil water. Add some tomato paste and water, wine, butter, oil, whatever and voila!
 

Quillz

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Here in the my area which is the Central Valley of California the latest hoarding item seems to be canned Spam.
 

Lynx_Arc

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i may sound like a snob, but I think I'd rather starve than eat canned pasta with cherry Vanilla Coke. Dry pasta keeps a long time and all you have to do is boil water. Add some tomato paste and water, wine, butter, oil, whatever and voila!
Naw... you don't sound like a snob we all have our own foods we like best and the way we like it. I'm just not into cooking at all and hate tomato soup, raw tomatoes, tomato paste etc. Anything that tastes too much like tomatoes I hate. I prefer pasta that doesn't taste like tomatoes at all.
 

ledbetter

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Naw... you don't sound like a snob we all have our own foods we like best and the way we like it. I'm just not into cooking at all and hate tomato soup, raw tomatoes, tomato paste etc. Anything that tastes too much like tomatoes I hate. I prefer pasta that doesn't taste like tomatoes at all.
There's always ham and cheese and butter. Don't think of it as cooking, just mixing a few items together.
 

Lynx_Arc

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There's always ham and cheese and butter. Don't think of it as cooking, just mixing a few items together.
My idea of "cooking" is putting something in a container and tying a number in and pushing the start button and coming back when I hear the beep and eating it.
 

Poppy

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Northern New Jersey
For the past three weeks we've been packing and moving, so we have done "take out" dinners, and lunches. Cooking has been limited to toasting bagels and making coffee for breakfast. Yesterday our area was hit with a tropical storm that traveled up the East Coast. The Governor closed the state. Trees are down causing power failures throughout the state. Fortunately, we have power.

At any rate, yesterday I went to the supermarket for medicinal items, and checked out the cleaning and paper isles.
There were ample cleaning products, but still missing is Clorox spray disinfectant, Lysol spray, and any kind of disinfectant wipes. There wasn't a paper towel in the store. TP was down to about 30% of their typical supply, and 30% of that was the industrial type.

Glancing up and down the isles, I didn't see any glaring bare spots, so now I wonder if the paper towel shortage was due to hording in prep for the coming storm?

And yes Mr Fixer, the frozen pizza situation has been restored to normal here too. :)
 

thermal guy

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i dont understand why there is a shortage i mean we are not pooping more

No but we are hoarding it. Can't tell you how many people I get behind in line in the store that are Buying 30-40 rolls at a time.
 

markr6

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Jul 16, 2012
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i dont understand why there is a shortage i mean we are not pooping more

Start eating the canned and processed food and you won't have to poop for a week.

Everything seems about back to normal here. Produce is fine. Meat is there but a little more expensive now. TP and cleaning products in stock.
 

Lynx_Arc

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Tulsa,OK
For the past three weeks we've been packing and moving, so we have done "take out" dinners, and lunches. Cooking has been limited to toasting bagels and making coffee for breakfast. Yesterday our area was hit with a tropical storm that traveled up the East Coast. The Governor closed the state. Trees are down causing power failures throughout the state. Fortunately, we have power.

At any rate, yesterday I went to the supermarket for medicinal items, and checked out the cleaning and paper isles.
There were ample cleaning products, but still missing is Clorox spray disinfectant, Lysol spray, and any kind of disinfectant wipes. There wasn't a paper towel in the store. TP was down to about 30% of their typical supply, and 30% of that was the industrial type.

Glancing up and down the isles, I didn't see any glaring bare spots, so now I wonder if the paper towel shortage was due to hording in prep for the coming storm?

And yes Mr Fixer, the frozen pizza situation has been restored to normal here too. :)
I don't think paper towel shortage is because of the storm as much as some other reason. We are far far inland so any hurricane is only a rain storm here and I was looking for paper towels and 2 stores either didn't have them at all (dollar tree) or only a 6 pack of them (Aldi) etc. I think people are buying them up due to the virus fear thinking that they are going to get it from a surface in their home somehow.
 

turbodog

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We were going to slaughter a cow in a month or so. The local processing places are backed up for 6-8 months. No fresh steaks for us...
 
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