The Panic Buying Narrative Simply Doesn't Wash

The government is trying to explain the fact that supermarket shelves are empty by blaming unknown individuals for panic buying. It is a narrative that simply is not credible. Yet, again it is an exercise in “othering” as a means of distracting attention from the real source of the problem, which is the government policy of closing down the economy, and, thereby, production and supply itself. The government policy is bringing about economic and social chaos by shutting down production and supply, whilst itself being an ineffective means of dealing with the problem of COVID19, but, rather than admit that its policy is disastrous, and ineffective, the government is looking for scapegoats, at the same time as frantic attempts at arse protection are being made by those responsible for developing that idiotic and failing policy. 

The panic buying narrative is not credible for several reasons. Firstly, supermarkets introduced low maximum limits on the number of items that could be bought, more than a week ago, so its obvious that the problem cannot be some small group of anonymous individuals who are going into shops selfishly buying up all of the supply of certain items. There may well be such action taking place, as always does during such periods, but it is likely to be higher up the supply chains where well placed individuals and organisations are buying up supply in large quantities, direct from suppliers and wholesalers, and storing it so as to release it later when prices are much higher. Indeed, try to buy things like dog kibble direct from suppliers, and you will find that its not available, and market traders are reporting that wholesalers themselves are running short of supplies of a range of goods. But, supermarkets' empty shelves cannot be explained by panic buying by a small, or even large number of anonymous shoppers, because of the limits the stores have themselves imposed. 

Those limits are themselves unfair, for the reasons I set out earlier this week. If someone goes into a shop, for example, they can buy three bananas. If they are a single person household, that three bananas only has to last them for a week, but if the person doing the shopping is doing it for a household with several adults, or with children, they still are only entitled to the same 3 bananas, which must now suffice to feed 3,4 or more people in the household for the week. And, that applies to all goods on which such limits have been placed, such as with milk, bread and other necessities. In fact, precisely because of that, its not surprising that, seeing that unfairness, and the lack of goods on shelves, it leads to people in multiple occupancy households shopping more frequently, having several members of the household shop simultaneously, so as each to obtain this minimum ration, and so on. At least, during wartime rationing, families were given ration books that provided them with a a ration based on the number of people in the household. The current flat rate rationing is more like the flat rate taxation of the Poll Tax, introduced by Thatcher in the 1980's. 

But, the fact that the supermarkets introduced such low maximum limits a week ago, itself shows why the empty shelves cannot be explained by panic buying. The shelves are empty from first thing in a morning, and nor is it just stores that are empty. Its virtually impossible to get online deliveries.  If you do manage to buy online, the goods could or should come direct from the supermarket's warehouse, yet many items are simply unavailable. Even after you have placed your order, you find that items that had previously been available have now disappeared from your order. The shelves are empty because government policy has told workers to stay home and not go to work, and that necessarily and quickly leads to production stopping, and supplies disappearing from stores. As Marx put it, 150 years ago, setting out the operation of The Law of Value, 

“Every child knows that any nation that stopped working, not for a year, but let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish.” 

(Letter to Kugelmann) 

In fact, in the modern economy, its a matter of days, not weeks, before a nation would perish. The government has created this economic crisis by its irrational policy of closing down production. It may be that the government, and all those that are behind it, because of their bourgeois ideology, are simply incapable of comprehending the fact that all of the goods and services produced are there because of labour, because they attribute their supply to capital not labour. Whether they actually believe that or not, it is certainly the case that their ideology, and the foundation it provides for the continuation of the capitalist system, requires that they continue to present the delusion that all production, all wealth and value, in the economy, is the product of capital not labour. When, in a crisis like this, it becomes apparent that it is labour that creates value, that also produces the physical goods and services (use values) in society that all require to survive, the apologists for capital are forced to find some other explanation for that situation. So, now, they tell us that the empty shelves are not the result of them telling workers not to work, but are, in fact, the result of workers, or at least some “anonymous” section of those workers engaging in selfish, and irrational behaviour in panic buying! 

But, the panic buying narrative is facile, not only because the supermarkets have introduced rationing. As I pointed out the other day, if, in fact, there is no problem with supply and production, then the supermarkets, which for 30 years have used Electronic Point of Sale systems, so as to be able to instantaneously know when the sale of various items is rising rapidly, so as to be able to order in larger quantities of those items, and to increase the frequency of their delivery, would simply have done so over the last fortnight. After all, at Christmas, every household in the country buys much more than at other times of the year. It buys more, because, over the holiday, each member of the household tends to eat more food, drink more, and to consume things that they would not consume at other times of the year. Each household also buys more, in the run up to Christmas, because it knows that, because of the holiday period, what it buys will have to last it for longer, until the next shopping expedition can be undertaken. That last condition is, in fact, a direct parallel to what each household currently needs to do, if it is to follow government advice and self isolate, for 2, 4, 12 or more weeks. Yet, at Christmas, far from supermarket shelves being depleted because of this “panic buying”, they are overflowing! 

The government has wheeled out supermarket bosses and others to say that food production has actually been ramped up by 50%, but that £1 billion of additional food and other groceries have been bought and stockpiled by households, again intended to feed into this panic buying narrative. The figure of £1 billion sounds very big, or at least it would have done until government programmes, announced in recent days, are now measured in trillions rather than billions! But, what does it actually amount to. According to ONS, there were 27.6 million households in Britain, in 2018. We would expect that figure to have now risen to at least 28 million. But, for ease of calculation let's take 25 million as the number. £1 billion divided over 25 million households means that each household has bought, on average, just £40 more than it would normally have done. In my household of 3 adults and a dog, our normal weekly grocery bill comes to around £120, so, if that is about average, then £40 amounts to only a 30% increase, even if it was repeated week after week, rather than being the current sum total of the additional buying that households have undertaken. That 30% figure is much less than the average additional spending that an average family would undertake every Christmas! 

But, in any case, the additional spending that families undertake at Christmas is only to cover them for being able to get to, or not wanting to go to the shops for several days. Now, the government is telling us that we must all self-isolate for at least 2 weeks, some for 4 weeks, and for others 12 weeks. In fact, given that the reality of the government's policy envisages the lock down lasting for at least three months, and, in reality, means a period of lock down for about a year, each household would need to double, quadruple, and more its purchase of goods so as to be able to ensure that it is isolated during that period!  Even a fifty percent increase in household purchases then does not constitute panic buying, but is grossly inadequate to meet the requirements for self-isolation that the government has asked us to undertake!

The empty shelves are not due to panic buying, but are due to the government closing down production and supply, though not yet as effectively as its arguments suggest is required, which is inevitably leading to an inability to resupply. The government will not admit that, because it is locked into its idiotic policy of closing down the economy and production, which itself flowed from it capitulating to a moral panic whipped up by the media in search of sensationalist headlines, and which, in turn, caught the wave of hysteria whipped up on social media. 

The policy is not implemented consistently because it can't be.  If everyone did stay home from work, electricity supply would stop, refuse and sewage workers would stay home leading to a rapid return of cholera, typhoid and other 19th century killer diseases.  On Marr, this morning, Hugh Pym, described what was required for social distancing, and said that if you have touched hard surfaces, then you need to wash your hands.  If you have been on public transport, and touched such hard surface, therefore, he said it necessary to wash hands as soon as possible.  But, of course, if you use public transport, be it the bus, taxi, tube or train, you will not be social distancing anyway.  You will be in close proximity to dozens of other people, at least one of whom is almost certain to be a carrier. and pass it on to everyone else, so washing your hands would be pretty ineffective.  But, the government whilst telling everyone to stay home does not mean it, and actually depends on people ignoring its advice.  It depends on the public transport workers continuing to turn up to work; it depends on other workers continuing to use the public transport to get to work, and it depends on those workers then sharing a closed environment with their workmates.  The government is speaking out of both sides of its mouth at the same time, and has to do so, or the collapse of the economy would rapidly ensue.

What has happened, in Britain, appears, not surprisingly, to have been a reflection of what has happened in the US. In the US, Donald Trump denied that COVID19 was real. As a result, the US failed to take any action. In Britain, according to reports from the FT and others, Dominic Cummings originally adopted a similar stance to Trump. Cummings approach was more nuanced, not denying the existence of COVID19, but believing that it could be allowed to spread unconstrained amongst the population, so that herd immunity would be built up, amongst the 80% of the population for whom it only presents the potential for causing mild or even no symptoms. But, such a stance was itself idiotic. Those that have promoted the current government stance of closing down the economy, which is now also failing, whilst creating even greater problems by causing economic and social disaster, are trying to cover their arses, by painting the alternative to this failed strategy as being that first proposed by Cummings, or worse Trump. But, of course, that never was the real alternative. There are two potential other alternatives that could have been effective without causing economic and social disaster. 

One option was that adopted by South Korea. South Korea, did not close down its economy in the way that China did, or as Britain is now doing. Instead, South Korea instituted comprehensive testing of its population, and of anyone entering the country to determine whether or not they had, or were carriers of, the virus. On that basis, they were able to quickly identify the small minority of people who might spread it amongst the rest of the population. They identified any carriers coming into the country, and then quarantined them. They identified those already in the country who might be carriers of the virus, and similarly isolated them, and then vigorously traced their contacts with others, so as to quickly track down and isolate all carriers of the virus in the country. That worked. It got in quick, focused on a small minority of carriers, prevented them spreading the virus to others, and was able to concentrate its healthcare on dealing with those infected. That is the way a successful strategy of containment can work. But, as the UK government's scientific advisors told it, such a policy of containment can only work if its instituted right from the start, when the number of potential carriers is small, and only if you carry out comprehensive testing to identify and isolate those carriers. The British government, as with the US government, did neither. 

An effective strategy can only work if it focuses resources on isolating the minority. That minority can only be either a minority of potential carriers, or the minority at serious risk from contagion.  Any strategy that tries to isolate the majority, will necessarily fail. It will fail, because its impractical, and because it will lead to the virus spreading anyway. And, because, in such a strategy, the minority who will be most affected by the virus are, thereby, left subject to be infected by it, as soon as the virus infects the vulnerable minority, it will cause mortality rates to spike higher, which is what has been seen in Britain and the US, and Italy. As soon as the virus infects this vulnerable minority, especially where that minority live in closed communities, in care homes, in hospitals, and so on, it will spread amongst them like wildfire, causing infection rates, and mortality, again, to spike higher, which, again, is what has been seen most clearly in Italy, but now, also, in Britain and the US. It is exacerbated by the fact that, because this minority was not the focus of attention, so as to effectively isolate it, health systems become overburdened with the need to deal with serious infections amongst this group, and it is further exacerbated by the lack of adequate resources within health and social care systems, for example, the lack of adequate PPE, and isolation methodologies. 

Healthcare workers, in UK hospitals, for example, complain of the lack, not just of ventilators for the seriously ill, but also of adequate PPE, for themselves, so as to prevent the further spread of the virus in the hospital environment to other vulnerable patients. The same complaints can be heard from GP's, but worse still is the situation for care workers. There appears to be a dire shortage of adequate PPE for workers in elderly care homes, still less is their adequate equipment and support for the care workers, often employed on zero hours contracts, zooming from one home to another, in order to provide care for vulnerable people, and, thereby, acting as a further means by which the virus is spread amongst the most vulnerable. Of course, no one at all considers the voluntary carers. Those in the plethora of mutual aid groups springing up across the country operate out of the best of all possible motives, but without adequate PPE, without proper protocols being in place, their potential contacts with the vulnerable are another means by which the virus can spread to those in the most at risk categories. 

According to the FT and others, it appears that, having been given a briefing by scientists, the government was told that, without any mitigation, COVID19 could cause 500,000 deaths in Britain. In fact, the latest analysis by the government's chief scientific officer, Sir Patrick Vallance suggests that number is wrong. As I pointed out the other day. He estimated that the actual number of infections was around 100,000, so that the current number of deaths meant a mortality rate of 0.1%. So, if even 50 million people were infected, that would correlate to deaths of 50,000 people. In fact, because the scientists believe that its only necessary for 60% of the population to develop herd immunity, so as to prevent the further spread of the virus, that would mean deaths of around 30,000 people. That, of course, would be terrible, but is not that much worse than the 17,000 deaths from seasonal flu that occurred in 2018. 

But, of course, a sensible course of action would not have meant no mitigation. The government was apparently also advised that, even with mitigation, the number of deaths could be 250,000. Of course, that depended on the mortality rate being 1%, rather than the 0.1% that we now know it to be. So, now, scientists believe that they may get the actual number deaths to be below 20,000 in Britain, which would be comparable to the number of deaths from seasonal flu, in a bad year. The number of deaths also depends upon the kind of mitigation that is employed. A lock down, because it tries to isolate the whole of society, rather than just a minority, inevitably fails, and results in infections continuing, and being drawn out over a longer time period. It continues to expose the most vulnerable, so that it creates a higher than necessary mortality rate. It also means that the economy is put in a condition of cardiac arrest for a much longer period, meaning that it risks not just permanent heart damage, but also brain damage. That is manifest not just in a collapse in GDP, but as I set out yesterday, also in a fatal destruction of the economy's physical capital base itself, thereby undermining not just immediate production capacity, but permanently reducing the economy's productive capacity, and bringing about a serious reduction in the size of the economy for decades to come. 

Cummings apparently swung from his original position of total inaction, to the current policy of total lock down, after having been given the advice about the potential 500,000 deaths. This is reminiscent of Trotsky's description of the zig-zags typical of bureaucratic-centralism. It was seen in the regime of Stalin, and also of Hitler. Of course, the change of course has to be hidden, and explained away, and then when the new course also begins to fall apart, scapegoats have to be found to explain its failure, a rewriting of history is required, bowdlerising the positions put forward by others, and so on. 

So, for example, on Marr this morning, he questioned Michael Ryan from the WHO, and put it to him, that it was not true that only those in their 70's and 80's were at risk of serious consequences from the virus. But, no one has ever said that its only the elderly at risk. It was always stated, from the beginning, that those at risk were the elderly – I would actually include in that those over 60, not over 70 – and also those younger people who suffer other underlying medical conditions such as respiratory diseases, immune deficiency diseases and so on, and pregnant women. Trying to claim that the argument was that only the elderly were at risk, and needed to have been isolated, is already an attempt at rewriting history, as it becomes apparent that the lock down of the economy that the media was baying for for weeks is not working to prevent the spread of the virus, whilst it is simultaneously, and predictably, causing far greater problems, as a result of economic and social breakdown. 

In fact, even now, the government is saying that it is writing to the vulnerable to tell them to completely isolate for an indefinite period. But, it is only classifying 1.5 million people in that category! But, 20% of the population, i.e. those in the actually at risk categories, comes to around 13 million people, nearly ten times the number that the government is identifying. As someone who has had asthma from the age of three, and nearly died from pneumonia, you would think I come in that category, even though fortunately not yet in the over 70's category. But, it appears that I will not be amongst that 1.5 million people that the government is contacting. Fortunately, I have not waited for government advice that could have killed me, as Grenfell residents also found from their experience, but started self isolating a fortnight ago. 

The government did not take the approach that South Korea did, and so did not engage in comprehensive testing to quickly identify a small number of carriers so as to isolate them. As a result, too large a number of carriers existed to make such a strategy feasible, because the rate of infection is too fast. The only rationale strategy, therefore, at that point, was to isolate the next best minority, and that is the 20% of the population that is actually at risk of serious consequences from it. But, the government did not do that either, and it is still not doing that. Instead, it is trying, and failing, to isolate the whole of society by its crazy policy of a total economic and social lock down. That policy is not only destroying the economy, which will have far worse consequences, for health and well being, than would COVID19, and for a much longer period, but it is also failing in its own terms, because it cannot be effective, so that the virus continues to spread. Moreover, as Michael Ryan told Marr, this morning, confirming a point I have previously made, as soon as societies that have imposed such a lock down, relax it, the virus will again run like wildfire through them, because it will have been impossible to have completely eradicated it, and without herd immunity having been built up, or a vaccine having been given to everyone, it will again have vast unprotected populations to once more infect. In fact, it is likely to be worse than that, because, in a year's time, the virus itself is likely to have mutated, so that it may be even more deadly. The best way of stopping that is to kill it off quickly, and the only means of doing that is to quickly build up herd immunity amongst the 80% of the population that are not at risk of serious consequences from it. In a year's time, that fortunate situation may not exist, it may have mutated to be more like flu that lays low everyone it infects, and yet be more deadly. 

The failure to properly understand the nature of the virus, and, thereby, how best to deal with it, has been hampered by the role of the media, searching for cheap sensationalist headlines, and itself driven on by hysteria on social media. It has also meant that the scientific advisors have also been under pressure to conform and respond. I am grateful to Nomadron for this post, which also takes up this point, and links to the analysis by Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, who, as well as being a pulmonologist is also a mainstream SPD politician, and Vice-Chair of the German delegation to the Council of Europe.  Wodarg's analysis can be found on his blog . 

The rational means of dealing with the virus was to isolate the 20% of the population at risk of serious consequences from it. Resources could then have been concentrated on enabling this 20% to do so. It would have meant ensuring that these households were supplied with groceries and so on, something which still is not being done, even for the 1.5 million, and also ensuring that they were provided with the information on what was required for effective isolation. It would have meant ensuring that the health and care workers coming in to contact with them were provided with proper PPE, as well as having been given appropriate instruction in the required protocols to ensure isolation, and so on. If that had been done there would have been no reason for any significant increase in hospital admissions. The increase has been almost entirely of people from amongst that 20%, just as the number of deaths has been entirely from that 20%. That would have meant that no closing down of the entire economy was required. It would have ensured that necessary supplies and production continued, so avoiding the empty shelves and other economic and social dislocations that are arising. It would also have meant that herd immunity amongst the 80% would quickly have developed, thereby killing off the virus, and preventing its further spread and mutation. In turn, that would then have minimised the period in which the 20% needed to self isolate. 

The reality is that the current strategy is not viable. It will collapse around the government's ears, and it will be forced to abandon it. Already, therefore, we see the preparations for widespread arse covering amongst the government, its advisors, and amongst the mainstream media that were the ones responsible for the headlong rush into it.