And thus violating social distancing. Yeah, closing off aisles actually increases concentration. meanwhile, people will go to places and concentrate where clothing isn't blocked off. Great, smart. Meanwhile, what of that isn't actually essential? For example, are we walling off fruit snacks, too? Imagine being in a lockdown, starving for food 'cause you are afraid of going out to a store and catching the koof, then finding out you have to ration certain approved foods, when, for a person who isn't sick, that high calorie tastycake would carry you much further than that high protein stake you're paying twice for but is cut in half.

For like 2 seconds maybe....imo not that big a deal. Also if aisles were two way people could likely go the other way if need be.

Good points

I take it youre a proponent of "the 5 second rule"? Hint: germs don't care. Sure, the risk is lower than 5 seconds, but, well, pool analogy above.

But, well, have you ever seen a store where people actually followed the aisle arrows? XD

Of course it's silly.

Well you need to give people to stock up on toilet paper. Damn if you, damn if you don't. There is no easy way out of this.
Even worse in federal countries like my own, where every state "brews their own soup" (as we say here), lock down one - people will swarm the neighbours.

I'm actually a friend of the federal idea instead of strong centralised power - power needs to be as close to the people as possible, because the "check" in "check and balances" has to come from way "below". But in a crisis like that it gives Berlin the means to further chop local responsibilities. Because people behave like idiots. Chalk up another one to "why we can't have nice things".

Of course kohlrak is wrong - lockdowns do work, if done right. Here we're down from an incident rating of over 700 in December to 240. Because of lockdown. And the numbers started to decline after two weeks after the lockdown went serious, as last year. But it has to be a real lockdown, not something like "yeah, lets have people wear some masks, that should do it". Here we have closed down schools and kindergartens, all shop that are not immediately necessary for everyday needs, homeoffice is encouraged if possible. Mask requirement in public. You can meet exaclty ONE member of another household at home. Only go outside for basic needs like shopping or work, or exercise. Travel is limited to a 15 km radius, and you need a valid reason. Curfew from 10pm to 6am.

Of course this all comes at a high cost, not only economically, but also mentally. Cabin fever is rampant, and I don't exclude myself, although I'm more of a loner by default. And still 240 is way too high. The standards are >50 = high risk area, >200 we're all gonna die!1!.

Actually, the general advice seems to be that one needs to be in proximity with another person for 15 minutes for it to count as being exposed.

In any case, the risk is incredibly low if the rule is violated for just 5 seconds. It's even lower if both people are wearing masks. It's even lower than that if both people are outside, or if there is a closed door between both people. (I got a delivery during the pandemic that would have had to be signed for during normal times, but during the pandemic the delivery person only had to see someone to deliver it.)

Like how the US has operated with regard to the pandemic?

What if you live in a food desert where there's no grocery store in a 15 km radius?

Yep, and if people didn't follow them(when they were there) and a staffer saw it they'd ask people to follow em.....like this one 80+ yr old man with a cane in the store near me the one time: they made the man turn around and go down another aisle to come back up the one I was in.

I'm actually not that familiar with how the US federal system handled it. I know it was bad over there, and I guess deniers in high places *cough* were certainly to blame in part... But I don't know how individual states handles it, and what it meant for the neighbours. US states are considerably larger than our's though. So more people live farther from a state border - that may help in some regards.

Central Europe is too densely populated for that.

Good question

From whom, the same people that say that you can't spread influenza if you don't have a fever? You know, those people in the United State's Center for Disease Control? I take these people very seriously. Read my explantion on covid above, find points you disagree with, else i'm not too concerned with what regulators say. They've proven they largely don't have the intelligence level to understand what i wrote above, because they have made loads of regulations that do more to spread it than to prevent spreading. Yeah, the time reduces, but it's, well, like not much. I've regularly been among a small minority that regularly manages to not get infected when among people who follow the regulations and get infected anyway. Wanna know my secret? The secret is stupidly simple: i assume the regulators are full of shit. Instead, i try to understand things myself, come to my own conclusions, and think for myself. It's done me way better than any of these sheep that simply flout the rules or even the sheep that fully obey the rules and still somehow manage to get sick. If you really want to eradicate a bug, you have to take it as if it were life threatening and catch it early. If, for example, when we heard about this, we stopped all flights from china and quarantined travelers for 1 month (and we could've afforded to provide for them, since their numbers would've been much smaller), we could've had our super duper harsh lockdown early and prevented the spread entirely. But we didn't take it seriously until it was already out of control.
Deniers are all over. There's some leaked footage that even the damn press that "fearmongers" about covid all the time doesn't buy it. It's largely been virtue signalling from anyone who hasn't known someone personally, i've noticed. It's why the regulations don't make much sense when you analyze them critically. The most effective things we could've done we refused to do, and that's pretty much every country in the world. We handled SARS-CoV-1 better.

EDIT: Most US politicians simply saw it as an opportunity to turn into a polar issue. Notice the hard lockdown people were out marching in "protests" when it met their interests, but everything else needed to be hard locked down, even trying to arrest people for being alone in their cars with the windows rolled up as a cure for cabin fever. The whole lot of them are sophists, thinking that they could play with this and some are finding out that, magically, this thing was actually more serious. Maybe, but we know how the EU is: it'd be more than just central europe. And i've seen some pretty isolated frenchmen.

I doubt you can walk in any direction in France without hitting civilisation and supermarkets and museums. 'Muricans really have no idea how densely the old world is populated.

Food deserts do in fact appear in densely populated urban areas, so I don't think there's such a thing as "too densely populated" for there to be food deserts.

I once took a tour in france. There were a few places on our way around the country that appeared to be devoid of human life for miles, outside of the highway, hence why i mention it. I could be wrong, though, as that was over 10 years ago and i have no idea where i was.

Don't get me wrong, i'm aware of the population density, but even in america most people are not that remote. It's usually one-offs here and there that are far from a store.
So we're at this point in the conversation where i have to point out that, even when spelled correctly, the term is ripe for misinterpretation. Not a serious problem, obviously, but it's fun, none-the-less.

What really needs to be pointed out is supply chain issues, as well. Rural areas notoriously lack anything being hoarded, 'cause cities always get first dibs.

That's exactly what I was talking about. People aren't aware that there's this virus-thingy. Close restaurants and they'll meet at home. And this is exactly why most restrictions don't work. And when you tell them that it's lockdown-time again, they start crying about how they followed all the rules and that a lockdown is a crime against humanity -.- People are stupid.

Have a look at Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece... It's done all the time in Europe. Where I live it currently isn't allowed to meet anyone who doesn't live in your household (restaurants, bars, gyms, shopping centers and huge stores closed, curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.). That's what "lockdown" means in Europe. And guess what? Numbers are going down drastically. I live on an island with a population of ~1 milion people. We had 400 or 500 cases a day. Today we had 200 (last few days ~250). In March and April we weren't even allowed to leave our houses except for buying food (at the closest supermarket) or going to work. In May you were allowed to go outside. But not when and where you wanted! Only 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) and only at a certain time (parents with their kids, older population and the rest of us had a different "schedule" when we were allowed to go outside).

You can still buy food here. Supermarkets, computer stores, farmacies and other essential stuff is still open. But telling people that they have two days left to buy their christmas gifts before everything non-essential has to close, was a silly decision.

Yeah, well... how to explain this...? Easy! They didn't have those numbers because of a lockdown. They had a lockdown because of the numbers! Shocking, I know...
Honestly, there are enough countries with numerous lockdowns by now. You can clearly see that they work.

That'd qualify as the mentioned "valid reason".

You can still buy your toilet paper here. Supermarkets are still open, of course. But in the part of Spain where I live, we had the same problem you had in Germany (I'm german, by the way). They announced the closure of non-essential stores before christmas. Of course everyone rushed to get their gifts together. That's NOT how you keep people from getting too close to each other.

Spain is organized in a similar way. We have autonomous regions (Bundesländer) and the central government (Bundesregierung). The difference in Spain i that the regions can't decret too many things that restrict the population in their movement. The central government needs to declare a state of alert - which takes away the power from the federal governments. Currently we have a state of alert where the central government doesn't interfere. They basically said "Well, in therory we DO have the power now, but do as you wish". They decreted some possible restrictions and every region can decide on its own what to enforce and what not. The only thing the central government decided is that you cant travel from one region to another without having a valid reason.

You must be from Bayern, Sachsen or Thüringen then^^

It's pretty much the same here. Except that you can't meet anyone and that schools are still open (roughly 1/4 of last weeks numbers came from schools!).

I live on Mallorca. We're currently somewhere around 250. Our neighbour island Ibiza on the other hand, is doomed. Around christmas they were at 100 per 100.000 in 7 days. Now they're at 920! They found the mutation from the UK there and think it's spreading.

all these lockdowns are dumb , imho they only to show force and help big companies
why don't they lock down supermarkets?