In the march/april stage of the pandemic, I chose to shop at such "shi-shi" places exclusively because a) there were no lineups, b) their non-frozen supply chain meant they had to sell meat or it would rot, c) they were owned by people with families in the neighbourhood/city, and d) the higher prices kept out hoarders, panic buyers, and the mentally ill.

On the last point, there was almost always some psycho causing problems in the regular supermarket because it appealed to their sense of drama and got them attention. The extra %15-20 was worth avoiding the risk of an altercation.

The contempt some people have for local shopowners who provide services that are actually worth a premium is shocking, albeit typically british.

I assume not, but if your final sentence was aimed at my tongue-in-cheek appraisal of the value of chi-chi delis (which, obviously, i was shopping in) during a pandemic, then please appreciate that I also today spent 35 minutes waiting in a queue for a local butcher and over the past months have been highly appreciative of my local Turkish-run mini-market.

I'm not sure I do think it's a British thing to hate on local shopowners, if anything - the opposite, what with us being a nation of them, and all.

Sure major Supermarkets have captured most of the spend, but that's just the way things are. Convenience comes in different forms.

Not addressing your main points, but that is a seriously prejudiced view of people struggling with mental illness. Mentally ill people aren’t “psychos”, many people in all walks of life struggle with anxiety, depression or something else. That’s not to say violent people don’t have underlying mental health issues. It’s quite an outdated view that mentally ill people are distinct from “normal” people, and aren’t just people who’ve suffered trauma. What happens if you find yourself dealing with these issues, are you going to shame yourself into not seeking treatment?

During a public emergency with uncertainty like the beginning of the pandemic, a person who becomes physically aggressive in a supermarket, makes a point of coughing and spitting on shelves and aisles, and threatens the cashiers and stock staff everyone else depends on, because they want to provoke a confrontation that makes them feel powerful - does not earn sympathy.

Equating people experiencing depression with those who have violent delusions and borderline tendencies creates a worse stigma on seeking treatment than recognizing that dangerous people are just plain dangerous. Sure, we're all people etc, but in an emergency, there are men and women you can trust, and there are ones you can't. A psycho is someone who threatens or harms others for gratification, and it is an epithet they earn. If that's "prejudiced," perhaps we're just from different cultures.

The stakes change when there was a reasonable threat that their actions could put people and their families at risk.

You're attacking a straw man of your own invention here. In casual use (like above), "psycho" means somebody acting in a bizarre or dangerous manner, eg. trying to buy all the toilet paper in the store and not taking "no" for an answer. Nothing to do with actual mental illness.

Obviously the etymology of the term comes from psychological illness via a certain famous Hitchhock movie, and that's one reason why the term du jour these days is "Karen" instead.

The way things were announced in the UK, they just set up for what India did: a no-notice lockdown that causes people to disperse on crowded trains. Oops.