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rebuilding a critical food supply chain.
You don't have to completely 'rebuild' things though.
1) Limit the number of people who can go into a supermarket at the same time, based on the square footage of the publicly accessible areas. Once you're at the limit, it's one in, one out.
2) Make people more aware of, and try to enforce the distance rules inside the supermarket - way easier when there's not tons of people piling up anyway.
3) Disinfect stuff like trolley handles etc. regularly, ideally every single time it's returned to the queue at the front.
Instead, if you're in a supermarket, apart from emptier shelves and the occasional person with a mask, most of the time you might as well think things were completely normal. Do they really want to tell me that people going on a walk or run in the sunshine is 'taking the piss' and a big risk for the spread of the infection in the general population, but piling into a supermarket as normal is just what we do?
Similarly, with public transport, for heaven's sake don't reduce the service. Leave it exactly as it is unless it is actually completely empty. Don't force the people still taking public transport into a tighter space.
Also, one could think about staggering opening hours of all those 'essential businesses' out there, so that the people who still have to get to work don't have to take the same rush hour train / tube / bus. Flattening the curve, anyone?
All of that are measures one could think about, which limit people in specific, but comparatively small ways, but could definitely have a noticeable impact vs just continuing as before. But no, let's jump straight to putting everyone under house arrest instead...
SwissChap-
The government isn't there to triage every application of "common sense" in this situation. As I noted before there are loads of people who would use their "common sense" to do stupid shit that clearly leads to the increased spread of this virus. The government's role is giving general advice about going out as little as you can and exercising social distancing when you do. The very clear message is that this is not a time for business as usual. As such they are not trying to limit cycling while ignoring the situation in supermarkets, they are giving general guidance which is not always easy to enact.
The fact that the advice is difficult to follow and has not yet been enforced in supermarkets or on public transport is not an excuse to contravene the clear spirit of the guidance and risk making things worse. "They're not doing it, so I don't have to!" is not a good argument. It's a bit like speed limits: they are the absolute upper bound for speed, you don't get to exceed them just because your common sense says that you can do so safely (people doing this is what leads to all manner of wankerish driving); however, you can drive at a lower speed than the speed limit if you feel that the conditions require it. At this point the aim is to stick to the suggested actions or be even more stringent if you can, not to look for ways to get round the clear spirit of the guidance.
ffm
Because one is simple to do - stop going out - and the other is really hard - rebuilding a critical food supply chain.