Are hoarders panicking unnecessarily ? Until I saw this, I thought they were
/
And hurricanes blow through. Far Rockaway supermarket, 2011, pre-Sandy
“The next two weeks are extraordinarily important,” said Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator. “This is the moment to not be going to the grocery store, not going to the pharmacy, but doing everything you can to keep your family and your friends safe and that means everybody doing the six-feet distancing, washing their hands.”
So, up to now, I’ve been what I considered to be a rational shopper, hitting the grocery store a couple of times a week and trying to be a good citizen by not joining in the panic. I did buy slighter larger quantities than I usually do: a larger package of chicken, for instance, or the 18-count box of eggs, instead of a dozen, but always just one of each item, so that others could also find supplies.
But if the government is truly contemplating a complete, two-week shutdown, and Dr. Birx is not the only “public health expert” advocating one, merely the most prominent one, I’d be a chump not to go stock up as much as I can, as quickly as I can. And if the mere whiff of enforced hunger is enough to set me off, I’m bound to encounter many fellow shoppers just as worried as I am, and many empty shelves.
Am I crazy to worry? Will Birx and her friends really shut down grocery stores say, tomorrow? Well, in Vermont the governor banned, overnight, effective immediately, and without warning, the sale of books, movies, computer games, toys, clothing, outdoor gear, paint, all home and garden implements, art supplies — everything that, in her sole judgment, wasn’t absolutely essential to keeping life alive.* The kind and quality of life she didn’t say, though her model sounds pretty much like every other utopian socialist society she and her ilk have pushed for for most of the past hundred years. But grocery stores? When the nation’s “coronavirus response coordinator” hints at it, we should probably take her at her word.
I’m off to Hannaford’s.
*technically, she only banned the sale of these items at big-box stores, but she’d already shut down the small retailers, and Amazon no longer offers prompt delivery of all frivolous items like these — a three-week delivery time is now the new normal — so the effect is as I state.
