• @[email protected]
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    7211 months ago

    To be fair this is a good idea underdeveloped countries as canned drinks in storage are usually contaminated externally with rat shit.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      This is true of warehouses everywhere, not just ones in underdeveloped countries. Developed countries just usually have a higher turnover and distribution closer to production sources, so they sit in storage for less time.

        • @Anyolduser
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          3011 months ago

          I’ve worked at a few warehouses picking orders and I second this. At least in the US health and building codes require rodent traps and inspections happen regularly. While I’m sure infestations happen businesses that want to stay open follow the law and get pests under control.

          It’s amusing seeing people who clearly haven’t spent time in warehouses tell internet strangers that warehouses have rats.

          • @[email protected]
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            1611 months ago

            A single rat sighting inside a US food-grade warehouse is a serious event.

            I’ve personally tasked people to chase around a bird and shove it out the door for 2 hours because you can’t just allow it to exist.

            • @[email protected]
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              411 months ago

              Wow, in other manufacturing I’ve had to call something “biologically contaminated” to mean that the bird infestation in the warehouse is out of control but we can’t convince anyone to pay to fix it

          • @[email protected]
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            311 months ago

            Ha! I was picturing a dollar general when I wrote that. The last time I was in a major warehouse it was also for a discount reseller.

        • @[email protected]
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          1511 months ago

          That place was horrifying, trash and spoiled food everywhere and rats running around like they owned the place.

          Are you sure it wasn’t just a regular dollar general

          • @[email protected]
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            511 months ago

            The John Oliver piece on them was the first look I’d had at them in twenty years, absolutely baffling, and just pure neoliberalism in action.

    • M137
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      -1311 months ago

      You somehow forgot a whole word. How the fuck does that even happen?

  • @[email protected]
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    6911 months ago

    My neighbor died. My 34-year-old coworker died. Those early days of COVID were fucking terrifying.

  • Crass Spektakel
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    3711 months ago

    I tended to get every flu and every diarrhoea even before the pandemic. One day I decided to wash my hands thoroughly after shopping. Then came the pandemic. I am not making this up but I haven’t had any sickness for eighth years. No flu, no diarrhoea. I didn’t even catch COVID. Just because I started washing my hands a bit more often, around half a dozen times a day.

    • @[email protected]
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      211 months ago

      I drove a 1000k to the french alps just before the covid thing got traction. We do 4 restroom stops. I was always virtually alone washing my hands. The day we returned the ski resorts closed and lockdown was imminent. Now there was a wait to wash your hands. You had people screaming for soap and washing for 5 minutes straight up to their armpits. I just drove past the same restroom stops again. I was alone in washing my hands again. People are stupid.

    • @[email protected]
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      111 months ago

      That should be common sense, you arrive from street let the shoes at the door or outside if you can, wash your hands. You’re in the street Shopping or using public transportation, dont touch your face, wash your hands when you arrive somewhere.

    • @[email protected]
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      3211 months ago

      Ugh, I bought 100% alcohol by the gallon and made my own 70% disinfectant spray cause it was easier for me to source a full gallon of industrial alcohol than get a package of Clorox wipes.

      I almost forgot that shit!

  • Marxism-Fennekinism
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    11 months ago

    Sadly, no it won’t. Because we’ve royally fucked over the planet for ourselves and things like this will only become more common. Not necessarily exactly this picture, but the age of crisis is well upon us and will only get worse from here. Your grandkids will understand because they’re in for much worse.

    • @[email protected]
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      611 months ago

      Maybe we’ve reached the conclusion of the Fermi paradox. Only that WE won’t be sending anything out there anymore.

  • BarqsHasBite
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    1611 months ago

    I think I’m going to continue washing apples, cucumbers, things like that.

    • @[email protected]
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      511 months ago

      Always wash the dirty dozen!

      • Strawberries
      • Spinach
      • Kale, Collard and Mustard Greens
      • Peaches
      • Pears
      • Nectarines
      • Apples
      • Grapes
      • Bell and Hot Peppers
      • Cherries
      • Blueberries
      • Green Beans
      • BarqsHasBite
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        11 months ago

        Well that’s pesticides. My list is related to warehouse gunk, rats, people coughing on them, etc.

        *PSA: to get rid of pesticides soak in baking soda bath. They break down.

      • BarqsHasBite
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        311 months ago

        When I got home from the store and in soap and water? No. It was a rinse off with water when you ate it.

      • @[email protected]
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        1211 months ago

        Which was always overkill because Covid doesn’t really transmit by touching contaminated surfaces like the flu does.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 months ago

          But we didn’t know that at first. Even the experts had no clue how it transmitted and had to just be like “assume it spreads in all the ways until we can figure out how it spreads.” And then of course once they knew people needed to mask, they told people not to mask for a good while. At least in the U.S…

          The logic was “medical workers need masks more than anyone else, so we have to tell everyone not to mask to save our reserves of masks.” But they didn’t say “don’t mask to save reserves for medical workers.” They said “you don’t need to mask.” (Fauci himself was saying this knowing full well people needed to mask.)

            • kase
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              711 months ago

              Sometimes I forget how fucking weird 2020 was. I joined a group of people at my local church who were sewing masks. I didn’t know how to sew, but I could cut fabric. I’d bike across town (too young to drive… wait a second, 2020 was four years ago, holy fuck) to pick up a bag of fabric with instructions included, then drop off the cut pieces at another house. The weirdest part is that I never met anyone in the group, save for the one person I talked to over facebook messenger.

              They were strange times. ¯⁠\⁠(⁠°⁠_⁠o⁠)⁠/⁠¯

  • @[email protected]
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    1411 months ago

    Ironic that whoever is washing the Pepsi and Cheetos has a much higher risk of dying from heart disease than COVID.

  • (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
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    11 months ago

    Before covid some groceries (mostly fruits/vegetables) lasted 1 week or a little more. After that sometimes 2 or more, just today I cut a pineapple that it’s 3 weeks old. I’m going to keep washing them.

    And it’s really nice to just open the fridge and just bite the apple w/o needing to wash it (again).

    • Duchess of Waves
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      2711 months ago

      I watched a documentary on DWTV about a similiar phenomena in Germany. There was a specific sort of bread, a cheap one, which stood fresh for two weeks if packed well. During the pandemic it suddenly stood fresh for NINE MONTHS. The finder of that bread was some sort of forensic specialist and because during the pandemic crime pretty much vanished he had too much time and explored that phenomena.

      So, did they put more chemicals into the bread to keep it more fresh?

      Actually, no. wholemeal bread stays due to the acid produced by the leavening during baking which is a natural process. Actually ALL bread stays in theory fresh “forever”.

      But. If it gets contaminated with fungus spores then those can slowly break up acids in the bread. Well, the final verdict was: Before the pandemic most bakers were so fucking dirty and contaminated that they pretty much only delivered fungus-contaminated bread. During the pandemic though the bakers were required to sanitize their work space and themselves a lot more thorough. And that made the bread free of fungus.

      The forensic specialist has kept another bread for over three years now. It is as fresh as the first day. No chemicals involved, just wrapped airtight into a plastic foil.

    • @[email protected]
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      511 months ago

      How do you dry things? I’ve tried pre-washing things before to reduce the friction to cooking, but everything always go bad so much faster because of the extra moisture.

      • @[email protected]
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        611 months ago

        I bought a few metres of calico, because it’s a cheap, close weave natural fibre.Cut it into sheets the size of a tea towel with pinking shears (because I’m too lazy to hem anything)

        When I wash produce, I lay it out to air dry on the sheets, and I throw a dry sheet into the tub or container I’m storing the veg in to continue wicking moisture.

        If I’m in a rush I’ll pat dry and rub dry produce that I can, but mostly it’s laying it out to air dry, either on the counter or in the fridge itself before going back and putting the dry veg in a proper container.

        I’ll occasionally swap out the cotton in a container for a fresh dry sheet if the produce in the fridge is getting soggy. Things like lettuce and spinach for example, I’ll give them a fresh dry sheet at least once a week and they’ll last 2-3 weeks for me.

        I tend to wash everything in a weak dilution of vinegar, in my experience that reduces moulding.

        I don’t have a salad spinner so when I want to spin something dry, I wash it and then put it in a mesh produce bag, go outside, and spin the bag around like a human windmill.

        All the calico sheets just get thrown in the wash with all my actual tea towels and kitchen towels. If they get really gross they can be boiled to sterile clean them, or worse case scenario, composted.

      • (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
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        11 months ago

        Yes I do dry them with a cloth towel, some things that trap moisture can’t be washed like onions. Bananas for example usually skip them, if they have a small scratch/cut they tend to rot from the filtration tho.

  • @[email protected]
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    1111 months ago

    The dark days of instacarting groceries and having everything smell like the inside of a smokers car

      • @[email protected]
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        111 months ago

        Huh.

        That doesn’t strike me as a likely vector, given that most viruses don’t survive on hard surfaces very long. If you’re going to that kind of extreme, you would really need to be setting up an airlock on your house so that you could change and shower before going inside. For people that worked in hospitals with covid-19 patients, where they had very high exposures, that was a real thing that helped reduce spread. But the average person? It’s just not a big enough risk.

        FWIW, I had covid-19 once, and it was after I’d gotten my vaccination and booster (very mild case), and that was with pretty basic precautions like washing my hands, not going to indoor gatherings, and wearing a respirator with P-100 filter cartridges whenever I was in public.

        • @[email protected]
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          1311 months ago

          At the beginning of the pandemic people didn’t know much about COVID and did whatever they could to keep safe. Especially in high risk households. As better research became available many of the approaches such as wiping down groceries got used less.

  • @[email protected]
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    -911 months ago

    Everyone who did this is fucking stupid, respiratory illness spreads in coughs and sneezes, (aerosolized fluids), not on surfaces.

    • @[email protected]
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      2111 months ago

      To be fair, we had zero knowledge of what would or wouldn’t spread the virus around march/april 2020