In the alien-disaster movie, Independence Day, a song by REM was featured that can be revived as our new theme song: “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”.
It’s astounding how the world around us has seemingly fallen apart in a matter of days. The fans of zombie movies and/or Apocalypse movies or TV shows are gleefully clapping their hands (or so I imagine) and exclaiming, “See? See? Told you!”
Now, to be fair, I’m not seeing zombies wandering the streets yet, but truly, could anyone have predicted such a collapse of everything in such a short time?
A line that I hear repeated in fictional shows and movies all the time seems to be applicable here: “You can’t make this stuff up.”
I suppose an early sign of the craziness was the mindless panic-driven buying up of all toilet paper from every store.
This had, and continues to have, absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the coronavirus. It’s nothing more than sheer panic, and the problem is this panic-buying creates its own momentum to the point that people are caught up in it who really aren’t panicking.
At our house, our TP supply was getting low, and we needed to buy some more — but, due to the very limited supplies in most stores, I was dreading having to make the rounds of the stores on Saturday morning to find this necessary commodity. Fortunately, I went to Wholesale shortly after 9 a.m., and while the shelves for TP and paper towels were largely empty, I found four or five packages of Charmin available.
As I only needed one, and not three or four, I took just one, gratefully, in addition to the milk and other things that we needed. While in the checkout line, I noticed someone with at least two of the other packages in a shopping cart, and knew I had snatched this package just in time.
Later during the weekend, I did a more general grocery supply trip, and it was surreal to see all the empty shelves. Basically anything that was at a low sale price was gone, so I had to improvise with items to ensure we had enough groceries for the coming week or two.
I think a good idea that people should consider at this point is to help out the vulnerable people they may know, either as family, friends or neighbours.
If there are seniors, for example, who may have mobility issues and can’t get out to the store, find out what they need and go to the store for them. If they need TP or specific food items, go find it if you can and buy it for them, and be a good neighbour and friend. This is a challenging time for most of us, but for those who are vulnerable, it must seem really frightening — so lend a hand, help them out, and we can all make it through.
