How H-E-B planned for the pandemic
texasmonthly.com
texasmonthly.com
Read the article. It is rage-inducing how much better a single grocer did than the federal government with all of its resources. January. Talking with counterparts in China. Executing on existing disaster plans (federal response had one, but ignored it https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-n...).
Singapore has done well, but besides them there have been lots of missteps all over.
Let me know when the US has six times the per capita cases of Italy, then we'll talk.
Italy currently has a death figure roughly 40 times higher per capita than the US. If you scaled it to the US population, it'd be around 50,000 dead.
Let me know when the US has a per capita death figure 40 times higher than Italy.
Of course nobody wants to look at the disaster going on in the EU. The way the EU has entirely let Italy and Spain down. How Spain is having to beg NATO for supplies because their EU friends are leaving them to fend for themselves. The way China has helped Italy more than the EU. Some more things nobody wants to talk about: the extremely high mortality rates in Italy, Spain, France; the lack of testing in Britain; the lack of basic medical supplies across Western Europe, leaving doctors in Spain and Italy to work with bare hands and without masks; the hyper infection rates among healthcare workers in Western Europe due to poor practices and lack of medical gear; the shift to leaving patients over 60 to die because they can't help them any longer, producing the terrifying death rates in Italy and Spain.
"Spanish army finds care home residents 'dead and abandoned'"
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52014023
Bloomberg: "Spanish Doctors Are Forced to Choose Who to Let Die"
"‘We are collapsing’: Virus pummels medics in Spain and Italy"
https://apnews.com/7ec91dc45d8d7c2ea86b0a97446a303a
"Israeli doctor in Italy: We no longer help those over 60. Dr. Gai Peleg told Israeli television that in northern Italy, the orders are not to allow those over 60 access to respiratory machines."
https://www.jpost.com/International/Israeli-doctor-in-Italy-...
Bloomberg: "Europe’s Desperate Doctors Are Shielded by Trash Bags"
Foreign Policy: "The EU Is Abandoning Italy in Its Hour of Need"
“Old people [in Spain] have been abandoned in an astonishing way,” said Carmen Flores, head of patient rights group Defensor del Paciente.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-...
You're off by an order of magnitude. The US has 260/million and Italy has 1275/million. That's 4.9 times higher, not 40.
US cases are currently doubling every 4 days. New cases in Italy have dropped, and they are no longer experiencing exponential growth. If that continues, we'll catch them in about a week.
But most of the US didn't really get their act together with testing until this week. We're a little delayed both in transmission and in testing, and the US is not showing any deviance from exponential growth at the moment.
A. Doing far more testing
B. Further along the pandemic curve
Give it another week or two and you'll see how bad things are really going to be.
The fact that people like Cuomo are now being praised for the way they handled this suggests that we aren't going to learn the lessons we need to.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/bill-de-blasio-andre...
And Italy, where 1 in 10K have already died?
In some respects, China's initial response was poor. The government in Wuhan forced the doctor who was warning about the virus on social media to shut up, and it did not ban large public events quickly enough.
In other respects, China's initial response was excellent. Immediately after the first suspicious cases of pneumonia were reported by local doctors in Wuhan, the Chinese CDC sent a team to Wuhan to investigate. China alerted the WHO just two days later. It then announced the discovery of a new coronavirus about a week after alerting the WHO. It published the genetic sequence of the virus two days after that. Two weeks later, it quarantined Wuhan, a city of over 10 million people. Two weeks may seem like a long time, but compare that to how long it's taken for governments in Western countries to take similarly drastic actions.
Several Western European nations are seeing far higher per capita case loads and death rates.
Several prominent healthcare systems across Europe have proven wildly incompetent so far, including Spain, Italy and Britain (which is barely doing any testing). The famed French healthcare system is proving barely able to handle what's going on there, thus their very high mortality rate.
I think the San Francisco Bay Area counties did a pretty decent job (not S. Korea or Singapore, but that's a high bar) and I'm optimistic that they've significantly bent the curve (that's what I see plotting the data), but can't be very confident until after this weekend.
Given the scale of difficulty, the country has moved swiftly.
It is yet to be seen if it is even possible to organize a shutdown the solve this problem, at India's scale. But, even the naysayers have acknowledged that in this case Modi made good decisions.
I don't see Germany doing anything well except testing. IE, they haven't controlled infecting, which is increasing exponentially[1]. Germany originally had an ideal seeming death rate of only 0.2%.
But that was a rather illusory achievement that could be explained by finding all the infection but not stopping them (they're at 0.6% now, a significant increase and this will naturally continue increasing). By Tomas Pueyo's important calculation, one death implies up to 800 infections (1% death rate plus three weeks of doubling from when the patient contradicted the disease)[2]. So if you did find all those infections, you can see a very low apparent death rate but you wouldn't have reduced the actual death rate or the infection rate and you'd still be hurdling towards the situation of having so many cases your health system is overwhelmed and your death rate shoots up.
Angel Merkel said 30-70% of the country might catch the virus, which is pretty much poisonous "herd immunity" Koolaid that Boris Johnson spouted (now that fatalities have spiked in the UK, he's singing a different tune and I hope Merkel will also).
[1] https://cv19info.live/germany/ [2] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
What are their real case and death numbers? We'll never know, because they've lied about everything from day one. They have been the exact opposite of transparent about anything.
China only had ~82,000 cases, but Italy, Germany and Spain are all going to surpass that? Yeah right. Inflate China's numbers by 10x and you might be close. In late January / early February they magically changed which cases they were counting toward their official figures, intentionally excluding mild cases that tested positive. That's what produced the instant tapering you see in their case numbers from that date in time forward. It's also why their case growth graph looks so unique - bizarre - compared to everyone else that has had a bad outbreak.
There's supply chain evidence that things are going back to normal on China side. They wouldn't be able to hide all these deaths that would happen if they just told the sick people to go back to work.
Meanwhile, there's very little evidence that would suggest their numbers are lies. Sure, they weren't exactly forthcoming at the beginning - but then again, until few days ago, US government was lying even more than they did, and yet we don't assume this means today's numbers are bullshit (as opposed to being limited by still-lacking testing capability).
Singapore experienced SARS, which also took the lives of doctors and nurses in addition to their patients. That country’s healthcare system has been stress-tested in a way that most haven’t.
When you have to compete, you have to develop competence to survive. Only those that don't have to compete (monopolies) or those that survive despite incompetence (bailouts) are the exceptions.
The competence of private companies only really applies to a very narrow subset of corporations.
That's a misleading and false generalization. You can't cherrypick one of the better prepared companies to make a statement about companies in general. Especially when there's nonsense all over the news about other companies like GameStop and Guitar Center claiming to be essential retail against all reason: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/business/coronavirus-esse....
See: Amazon. They are incompetent in many aspects of their business, but due to their sheer size that incompetence is shielded by their other investments.
H-E-B does a lot of things that are more benevolent than the kind of behavior that we're used to seeing from publicly-traded organizations and I can't help but wonder if the private ownership (truly private, as opposed to publicly-traded) has something to do with that.
H-E-B is one of the things I will really miss if I ever have to leave Texas. They're always there any time there is any kind of disaster, to provide relief. I've even heard that they treat their software engineers well (they bought Favor). They're really a one-of-a-kind company. I hope they never IPO.
I think I tentatively agree with you. I work for a company that was once privately held by a small number of owners who were primarily invested in that company. The impression I got from the old-timers was that management was a lot more generous back then. However, once they sold to a publicly traded firm, the squeeze started and it's never really stopped.
Sometimes an individual person can be satisfied with their wealth and position and focus on other things, and individuals can be influenced by moral and ethical ideas. The market, on the other hand, is like an amoral monster that's always eating but never satisfied.
An obvious example is that the president could have picked a highly competent, non-partisan manager as the head of his coronavirus team. Regardless of his competence, Vice President Pence is clearly a polarizing figure without a track record of dealing with crises of this scale.
This crisis could really benefit from a highly competent manager who could bust heads and sweep away bureaucratic hurdles. But that person would need to be someone honestly trusted by all stakeholders. We're seeing lots of actors maneuvering to gain ideological advantage even in the midst of these terrible events (shame on them). I don't even know if such a person exists any more but their non-existence would mean the US is in for serious trouble.
We could pay government employees more, but then voters would complain.
One example being NYC leaders and even health officials encouraging New Yorkers go participate in parades and other large gatherings through Feb and even into March, with messages of defiance against Coronavirus concerns:
https://mobile.twitter.com/wesyang/status/124303311804449997...
Edit: Removed ventilator comment as that specific claim seems to be misleading, and it's not something particular to NY. Many governments weren't prepared for a surge.
The U.S. as a whole had plenty of advanced warning about ventilator[1] and pandemic preparedness[2].
1. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-an...
That's misleading.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/25/donald-tru...:
> A 2015 New York state report said that in the case of a “severe” pandemic, the state would be short about 16,000 ventilators during the peak week. But the report did not recommend buying 16,000 ventilators [emphasis mine], and did not indicate whether the state was at a fiscal position to purchase them.
> The state did not plan to increase its ventilator stockpile because it anticipated that in the event of a severe crisis, there would be shortage of trained staff to operate them and demand would outweigh any emergency stockpile.
> The report said the state had to balance the likely ventilator shortage with the need for adequate funding for current and ongoing health care expenses.
And even if New York had bought them, they'd still be significantly short. Apparently current projections say they'll need 30,000 (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/gov-cuomo-says-new-york-need...).
Yeah, but that's with the benefit of hindsight. And ultimately, the idea that NY should have bought those ventilators back then is a deeply political cheap shot indented to distract people from the current administration's own lack of preparedness.
On Feb 25, over 2 weeks CDC said covid-19 was detected in the US (from travelers back from Wuhan) and wasn't a risk for spreading among the general public.
The flu is here every year but we don't cancel parades.
De Blasio on Mar 2 was a lot later.
I make sense of inexplicable government slowness as: avoiding panic (worse than a pandemic), yet OTOH most people needing tangible evidence before they'll take it seriously.
China is a company who's CEO is Xi Jingpin and it has 1.4 billion employees.
US Government (and all other democratic governments) have to show and to convince the rest of the Congress that we need to shut America down. Not saying that US gov did stellar in this pandemic, but its harder than it seems. It is also unfair to compare governments to private companies with 5-10 magnitude of order difference in every aspect from finances to number of people.
This is remarkable because it's hard to imagine most American companies, which are always looking to squeeze out a little more profit to juice the quarterly report, keeping someone on staff whose full-time job is to plan for what seem in good times like extremely remote contingencies. H-E-B, notably, is privately held.
Some day...
It feels like an eternity ago but there were several major food scares, recalls, and deaths, from contaminated vegetables last year.
I'm so happy they have my back.
HEB is privately owned and run by the owners. Those are very different incentives than public or VC-backed ventures.
> A contingency plan is a plan devised for an outcome other than in the usual (expected) plan.
That sounds a lot broader than emergency preparedness.
HEB, Dr. Pepper and Whataburger are Texas treasures as far as I'm concerned.
I wonder how much longer the Butt (yes, really) family will keep hold of H-E-B.
Same with YETI and Epic meats. Texas has had incredible success in creating ascendant consumer goods businesses for some time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7hCw5Q8qGw
I enjoyed watching the video just because it gives an idea how big one of these company's warehouses is. (Best view starts about 0m55s.) Those are some tall shelves, and there are a lot of rows of them.
They're supplying probably millions of people with food, so it makes sense, but I still found the visual impact interesting.
At least TP or water have a long shelflife, but (regular) milk and eggs???
I haven't tried it, but my understanding is that it has the same caramel-sweet flavor that most lactose free milk has, because of the higher heat during pasteurization (UHT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-temperature_process... ). I think the shelf stable is heated more than the lactose milk, which the lactose milk is still plenty noticeable.
That is incorrect. Different hens lay different colored eggs.
Also, the thing farmers do have control over is the colour of the yolk.
You can buy Egg Yolk Color Charts: http://www.robotmation.co.jp/keiranycceng.htm
This article talks about it a bit more: http://blog.chickenwaterer.com/2013/03/influencing-egg-yolk-...
Can you elaborate on what this "Nordstrom's story" means? Didn't find anything on a quick search.
https://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/blog/retail_radar/2...
(The tire story is half-true it turns out. Nordstrom didn't just occupy a former tire store location, they bought out the company that sold the tires.)
One interesting thing about disasters and wars is the ways in which they point out (if only by subtraction) how the world spends its capabilities and resources during peacetime. In this case, what HEB is pointing out is 'the cost of variety': by offering hundreds of slightly different meat products, HEB is able to manufacture a lot less total than it would if it focused on a few products and could scale them & get economies of scale / experience curves (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/02/what-cost-variety.html). Similarly, one can see this with any retailer like Aldi or Apple which makes a point of having as few distinct units as possible.
This massive societal loss is particularly disconcerting when you note how rarely the different varieties ever actually differ in a noticeable way (I've done this with many food staples), and in some cases are literally the same product in different labeling (for price discrimination); they don't exist because of any actual need for such specialization, but because they can and they are useful for rich First Worlders to help signal & consume an identity. But when the rubber hits the road, no one really needs those hundreds of varieties of slightly different meat products, and 50 works fine.
Ok, so some of that work would be missed over longer timescales, but I still feel like there's a lot of wasted busywork.
The article doesn't mention the huge food bank donations the company has made during the crisis. HEB is a good corporate citizen and a great place to shop. As the story says, thank an HEB employee for everything they're doing right now.
There was a short queue to get in (~5 people stood 6 feet apart), but once inside there were very few customers compared to any other time I've been in the store. I got everything that was on my shopping list.
Of the things that I saw labelled as limited to a certain number per transaction, toilet paper was the only one that was completely out of stock (I didn't check hand sanitizer, but assume it was too). I got eggs, milk etc with no problems.
I spoke to the cashier and they said toilet paper sells out by 10am most days.
Now that they’ve stocked up, they’re not going to the store.
My best understanding is that current Waffle House closures have nothing to do with supply chain problems and are mostly due to state or local restrictions on venues like restaurants. Many places are insisting that takeout is fine, but dine in is unacceptable (and I don't disagree with that).
Complying with the law to contain the pandemic in no way tarnishes their track record for having an amazingly robust supply chain system.
HEB has also failed to implement a one person per cart policy like Aldi. The lines out front are dense, like going into a sports arena, not 6' spaced between people [I see the signs painted on the ground in the article, but I haven't seen those at any of the 4 HEB's I go to regularly].
They also don't limit capacity except to the legal fire marshal limit. Some of the other grocery stores around Houston have limited capacity to 25% of normal, so that everyone has plenty of space inside the store.
Places like randall's and whole foods are much more expensive.