In the photos I see, I don’t understand why people wear masks but not gloves. Based on sources such as the CDC and this paper, old-fashioned hand washing is a better defense against the virus than masks. I understand the anxiety that leads people to wear masks anyway, but it seems to me that anxiety would suggest gloves as well. Gloves not only protect hands from picking up or transferring germs but also keep one from accidentally putting one’s unwashed hands in one’s mouth or other orifices.
4
Whole Foods, aka Whole Paycheck, deserve fines just from their everyday prices.
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@Schlomo Sheinbein
In NY the Whole Foods stores are actually cheaper than the traditional supermarkets and corner groceries. Their stores are also cleaner, have better quality products and carry a larger variety.
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@Schlomo Sheinbein
Why fine WF? Because the fruits and vegetables are not covered in pesticides or the animals not tortured before slaughter?
Whole Foods' prices are the cost of misguided agriculture policies that favor big agri over small; that favor mass production over farm to table.
Don't blame WF or farmer's markets for the high prices of organic. Blame an ignorant public and a bought and paid for government.
11
No because you don't have to shop there
1
There is a message here for all of us, especially those in major cities, who depend on "Just in time" delivery of food, medicine, etc. as even a temporary disruption can cause chaos. Realize when you fail to prepare (and protect) yourself and your family, you may be betting your life nothing will ever happen.
1
That banner on the truck doesn't just say "Rushing to Wuhan's resscue with 5000 tons of vegetables." Its starts with the name of an insurance company.
5
At least Wilbur {the virus is good for our economy) Ross isn't leading the Chinese agricultural effort, which I fervently hope has success.
2
'The Ministry of Agriculture has ordered the farm industry to increase output “by every possible means” while also keeping prices “basically stable.”' hahahaha - good luck with that. Typical useless bureaucrats.
China will weather this crisis more because of individuals like the farmer Mr Li and the medical professionals on the front line.
3
Brave people! I impressed by the regular people who are working without knowing they will get paid. If the U.S. avoids an epidemic this spring, next winter people from Wuhan will be in high demand as caregivers if the infection confers immunity. I think 2019-nCoV will eventually circle the globe. We should not be jerks to China right now. The research they are doing will help us later.
4
Let us not judge the Chinese too harshly. This country is awash in guns with an aggravated political divide. Survivalists and at least one major American religion known for stockpiling food (Hello, Idaho and Utah) are undoubtedly watching this play out.
1
The Iron Rice Bowl, "we must feed the people" Deng Xiaoping. The drive for nutrition is at the core of Chinese civilization. Numerous populace is their power but also their achilles heel.
3
As a people we are loosing our own history. We then offer judgments about how China must use normal supply and demand economic policy during this crisis which we all hope and expect to be short term. Try googling ‘Food Rationing in the US’ and ‘Fuel rationing in the US’ and Richard Nixons price controls while your at it. The concept of individual liberty with no concept of obligation to others, or freedom of speech with on concept of acceptance of consequences when that freedom is abused to harm.
Other counties find it these pronouncements of policy that we ourselves don’t use, to be a demonstration of arrogance and honestly they also seen stupid. Not because the policies are wrong, they are misapplied due to lack of education or memory.
Americans should not be smug about China's problems in distributing food in the face of this coronavirus epidemic. How well would our food distribution work if/when a coronavirus-like epidemic invades North America? Can anyone imagine the Trump Administration handling such a disaster!
4
Insightful article. To the New York Times: Please help us to find a way to help these people who are suffering in China, we don’t need more fear inducing and critical articles, we want to know what kind of helps they are getting and how we can help! I am puzzled by the lack of support to China from the international community. China has been our biggest trade partner for over 25 years, these people made probably half of the products in our house and on our body. They can made them affordable and provided American importers and mega corporations profit margins hence employment opportunities and tax dollars for the American people. They also buy a lot of our products from us. They are suffering and yet apart from endless criticisms and racism, no support or even just a shred of sympathy has been offered. China is doing the best they can. Millions of people are suffering with constant fear, lack of food and supply and a very uncertain future.
We need to figure out a way to help, not to throw more rocks.
35
The description of the chili pepper farmer who with his wife and 2 daughters picked one ton of peppers and would be fine if he didn't get paid for them sent chills up my spine. In the US, the agribusiness operator would have hired a half dozen undocumented workers, or turned on the AC in the automated picking machine and hit the "Pick" button after the satellite sent him the right GPS info. And the invoice would have been paid by the US treasury. The cash needs to flow to pay the pickers and the bank that owns the machinery, or the family corporation that runs the farm cannot continue to operate.
12
Sanitation seem to be inconsistent at best, desperate at worst. Trucks crossing a quarantine line are sanitized (what is that going to do?), but a guy in a cloth coat (cloth holds shed cells well) leans into a man’’s car and nearly touches his forehead with the temperature reader. Cars are pretty germ laden places, especially in winter when you have the heat running on air recirculation. So then the checkpoint guy does the same thing with the next car, and the next. and viruses live how long on surfaces?
7
It appears that China either doesn’t know or doesn’t want to release the answer to how long the virus remains active and transmissible on surfaces (thus leading to decisions by major manufacturers like Apple to close factories altogether)
2
Trump has a well known self proclaimed love of winning, I am sort of puzzled that he is passing on his opportunity to one up China in their hour of need. He should sell or donate what can be legally sent to China all the food and medical supplies they need and have the packaging all say Made or Donated from the USA, sort of like we did during the Marshall Plan after WW2. He can even emblazon the packaging with President Donald J Trump (impeached suffix optional), and even if for all the wrong reasons for helping other hurting human beings, his usually hollow gotcha would allow his subsequent preening to benefit somebody besides himself.
14
My understanding is that, generally speaking, Chinese people like to shop for fresh food just about every day. Unlike Americans, they don't shop weekly and don't have as large refrigerators/freezers. They could make do stocking up on less perishable items, but their normal eating habits will be disrupted.
12
Sounds more like the masses are helping themselves and each other, while the government is just making demands of producers and providers to send more. Like the comment below made about the US and Puerto Rico, Katrina, and other states, I don't believe the US could mobilize and build a hospital in two weeks.
Here in the New England area, when there is a snow storm there is a run on the groceries to the point of empty shelves. Imagine if we had an epidemic or natural disaster that meant possibly weeks of an event, versus just a few days for a snow storm. I am not certain what Americans would do. After 9/11, Manhattan and New York/New Jersey residents seemed to have banded together.
Let's hope this epidemic in China and Worldwide has peaked and infected/sick are far fewer than predicted.
11
I think the comment from the chili farmer who remembered how he had been helped out from the help of others and if his half ton of chilis turned out to be unpaid and became a gift he was O.K with that makes me feel that the sentiment is very honorable and gets lost in all this China bashing we see all the time.
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@Robert I've spent time in China. The common man is not dissimilar from we in the USA. While the leadership warble disguised stupidities at one another the citizens find ways to accomplish and accommodate. Few cultures despise the others who help in time of need. Those good feelings however rarely survive beyond the generation that was helped.
5
Looking at the recent achievements of China, lifting almost a billion people out of extreme poverty in 40 years and at the same time moving from the tenth to second largest world economy, it is simply mind numbing that Americans want to offer criticism. The US is a democracy with a downward and failing trajectory. Poverty levels are flat, (at best) and upward economic opportunity being replaced by skyrocketing inequality. And if we want to make comparisons about ability to respond to natural disasters, let’s look at Puerto Rico or Katrina. No hospitals built there in just a few short days. And when treated in the USA overall healthcare outcomes can be expected to be abysmally low yet expensive while China’s access and outcomes are dramatically increasing and improving. Want to feel safe? Walk around a Chinese city at night.
China is far from perfect, corruption is rife, the news is skewed and censored (sound familiar?) and they have a long way to go to reach the standards of a “Western Democracy” but their system of government has catapulted their nation into success.
My bet is they will deal with this health challenge, in the same manner that has driven them forward over the last four decades.
34
@Jules Lee
"the news is skewed and censored (sound familiar)?
What news in the U.S. do you know that is censored, Jules? You're confusing bias and POV with censorship which is not only a false equivalency it's a dangerous fallacy. My comment below on the other hand wouldn't last an hour before being "scrubbed" for not being as "patriotic" as your own, i.e., laudatory.
I have in fact walked in Chinese cities at night and felt far from safe. Little wonder since I was strolling about the most massive surveillance system in the history of mankind. Between cameras, police checking papers, hotels reporting my arrival to the government and "guides" escorting me I frankly felt the opposite of safe. I felt like a character in an Orwell novel.
Finally, I would suggest you speak to Uighars or to the citizens of Hong Kong before you proclaim the Chinese experiment an international success. Consider being one of them or one of the millions who feel abandoned and persecuted merely for being a resident of Wuhan. We are talking not about abstractions but the lives of tens of millions of people.
The criticisms herein are well-deserved.
7
China should be commended for taking drastic steps to fight and eradicate the coronovirus. One of my concerns is, many people who are restricted from leaving or travelling will find there financial resources curtailed because they cannot work. Soon many families will not be able to purchase the neccessities of life like groceries(food) , shelter & medicine. However if there is one country that can mobilize & defeat the coronovirus, it's China.
21
@Deepak When the infections were first noted, the Chinese government made a bad situation worse. See https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/business/china-coronavirus-government.html and https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-02-03/coronavirus-china-media-censorship-propaganda
Chinese politicians put their interests first and actively suppressed doctors who tried to alert the public and fellow medical workers. Now instead of a house fire, China is dealing with a city block aflame.
3
Swine flu and bird flu outbreaks along with the coronavirus epidemic are certainly plaguing China's ability to feed its populace just as a China was becoming a world leader in tech production. As in the U.S., poor animal husbandry by agribusiness may be helping to spread these infectious diseases among animals meant for human consumption. Just as in the U.S. and the rest of the Western world perhaps greater use of meat substitutes may prevent the chance of animal epidemics spreading to human populations.
11
@Ken M. - If they allowed price gouging, very soon no one who couldn't afford to pay $9 a head for cabbage (and equally inflated prices for other foods) would have anything to eat at all.
Millions of people trapped in a city is bad enough (but a necessary evil at this point). Millions of starving people trapped in a city would result in tragedy beyond most people's ability to even comprehend. The government is absolutely right to control prices.
In any emergency scenario, allowing business owners to significatly raise prices only compounds the misery and suffering that has already occurred due to the underlying disaster.
30
@Kristin, it is your “solution” that would lead to mass starvation. No one is going to sell cabbage for less than the cost of obtaining it. Letting the market set the price may temporarily lead to $9 cabbage, but allowing the government to set an artificially low price leads to no cabbage at all. I will choose having $9 cabbage available any day.
7
I guess you would, if you happen to have the nine bucks. So what?
3
China bashing is in full swing . We are blaming them for food habit hygiene and now alluding to the bio-engineering gone wrong
It seems it is like nuclear accidents that have taken place over the years in Georgia ,NY and outside in Spain
Escape of virus intentionally or unintentionally is likely to happen when people are testing and altering genetic sequences ,thinking of potential change that can affect certain ethnicity, and pharma is considering how to prepare for a hypothetical disaster.
The unfortunate part is that China is no different from any other country when trying to hide any role that can raise concerns about self - image,accepting blame,shunning responsibility,facing possible public outrage and not losing undue benefits which are all linked in one big thread of otherwise seemingly normal activity .
6
I'm very ambivalent about the volunteers jumping in to alleviate the shortages. Their sense of civic duty is admirable but remarks like "we have to listen to the government...what the government wants, that's how it's going to be," are frightening.
It is both heart warming and chilling at the same time.
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@Laurence Bachmann
Indeed, I have the same feeling. That is how they have been taught at school and society. Brainwash is powerful thing.
2
@Laurence Bachmann
What is chilling is the possibility that Americans would not come to the aid of their fellow citizens. That we have been fully indoctrinated in selfishness and fear.
5
@Mel
Certainly we have failed the people of Puerto Rico shamefully, and probably should have done more in other catastrophes. I don't think that is the same thing as the government encouraging citizens to turn in neighbors or the government actively surpressing information as it does daily in China.
There is still a robust press here and information does disseminate through it and a nearly uncensored internet.
4
Like misguided politicians in the US often seek to do, Chinese officials are acting against “gouging” of consumers, heavily fining a supermarket for selling cabbage at $9 a head. As a result, consumers who wished to pay the current market price of $9 and obtain cabbage will be unable to do so. Great result.
4
@Ken M. More importantly, denying the use of market prices means consumers will stand in line, paying with their time instead of money. Standing in line with lots of shoppers increases the risk of exposure to the epidemic corona virus.
1
@Ken M. "...will be unable to do so, and will have to pay far less for the same cabbage. Great result." There, fixed it for you.
3
@Ken M.
Where in this story do you find that $9 is "the current market price"?
3
The problem is that when you have an Orwellian society you end up with Orwellian problems -and no vegetables.
17
We just paid $12 for a head of red cabbage at a store in Seattle known for organic produce. Perhaps some fines are due here too.
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@Bill Carson
I'm sure you're aware of this, but incomes in the Seattle area are probably on average 12-15 times the Chinese average.
So, no, not the same thing at all.
8
@Bill Carson
You're paid exponentially more than the Chinese and your food prices are determined by a government whose policies favor big agri over farm to table; pesticides v. organic.
If you want to fine anyone, look to the Feds.
3
@Bill Carson
LOL! I've been to stores like that myself!
But in truth, you didn't have to. That was your choice. An organic head of cabbage is $3 at Trader Joe's.
4