Love in the Time of Coronavirus, Round 2

I went to a big-box grocery chain today, and thank goodness I didn’t need to stock up on toilet paper, hand sanitizer, frozen vegetables, or fresh meat — there weren’t any of those. And no bananas! Why bananas??

However, there was plenty of cheese, cured meat, and gluten-free bread, which was what I went there for. And the store was fully stocked with French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese wine, just like it always is.

Bacon, sausage, ham, eggs, toast, and wine. What else do I need?

Oh, that’s right — Irish whiskey. I had to go to the ABC store for that. No shortages there.

I saw one face mask at the supermarket, and an employee was wiping down the handles on all the shopping carts as they came in. Other than that — and selected empty shelves and overloaded carts in the checkout lines — there was nothing unusual.

There were no screaming fights over toilet paper, but that may be because there was no toilet paper whatsoever in the store.

12 thoughts on “Love in the Time of Coronavirus, Round 2

  1. A couple of my colleagues said they’re running low on TP and couldn’t find more. We live in a major city, with grocery stores and big box stores of all kinds everywhere. But the retards of this town are busy stacking rolls so they can still wipe their butts after the apocalypse. It’s absurd.

    • I too found it amusing and annoying that the first impulse of so many low information consumers to news of the coronavirus pandemic was to go and buy enormous quantities of toilet paper from every store in town. What they are going to need it for with empty cupboards and pantries is beyond me… But at least they will have toilet paper.

      I think most morons have not begun to truly panic and started buying every scrap of food that they can find. Anecdotally, the stores in my locale are mostly stocked with certain items bought out. Eggs, sandwich meats, steaks, water, paper of all kinds, sausages, frozen vegetables, ramen noodles, and some canned meats seem to have disappeared but still plenty of other items that are a little more useful still remain on the shelves.

    • Actually, the toilet paper phenomenon may provide a resurgence for Freud, who many consider to have been a Fraud. Freud postulated the tendency to hoard, or hold onto things (like money) to have originated from childhood toilet habits. And now, we see a primary example of hoarding directly linked to bathroom products. People run past canned meat, beans, real food, and actual necessities, so they can load shopping baskets full of toilet paper.

      By the way, I’ve seen a these people in person, and almost universally, they seem hugely obese and dumb, dumb, dumb. Lots of them are chattering to each other in Spanish.

      In terms of full disclosure, I follow the YouTube (BitChute) creator Stexhexenhammer666, who recommended a month or more ago to stock up on necessities. So truthfully, I did a bit of stocking up before anyone even noticed. Yes, even toilet paper.

      By the way, there’s a very nice video on how to make a mask from a paper towel. This mask actually serves more to protect others from any infection by you.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgkCpK2XRR4

  2. Meanwhile, here in Northern Germany, many (most?) still have not noticed or accepted the first spies of the invading pandemic. The student who cut my hair, yesterday, thought it was all overblown nonsense. She will probably change her mind when her shop closes and their graduation is pushed back from this summer.

    The local bus authority still has no protective gear for their drivers. So, they have roped them off from the rest of the bus, and now have their riders enter and exit through the back door. How people are supposed to pay a cash fare, I do not know.

    The local newspaper has been doing its best to lighten the news for their predominantly older readers. They devoted an article, devouring pages 4 and 5 of the weekend edition, illustrating some multi-cultural alternatives to shaking hands, with their smiling, Caucasian employees serving as models. About 80% in, they buried the lede about social distancing, the useful bit, and managed to split up and gravely mutilate that, when they pasted the spread in their press office window.

    Not so many years ago, people were more practical and things worked.

  3. Curiously, as of yesterday, in my small town in Atlantic Canada, fresh meat was ON SALE in the supermarket. Yes, ON SALE.

    All appeared normal.

    Now, I’m not sure that fresh meat is the thing to stockpile in case one wants to self-isolate or is expecting supply-chain disruption, but the thing I did buy for that reason was ALSO on sale: lentils. Lentils are a reasonably good source of protein, and store well. That, plus they can be made into so many different things that it leaves room for variety.

    I usually keep at least a bag of rice and some variant of pulses around, figuring that there’s enough food for a month in there, if needed. It might get boring, but one won’t starve.

    Yesterday seemed like a good time to have an extra bag in stock, especially as it was on sale.

    The great thing about rice and lentils is that they don’t really seem to go bad even after YEARS, so I don’t mind having them in overstock.

    • Mike! I like your suggestions about rice and lentils.
      As you stated it might get boring. ( irony on) : Let me know some recepies of rice dishes that associate well
      with my overstocks of 1989 Château Mouton….huhmm… only dreaming!

  4. Furthermore, there is no finite category of superficial cues to which the behavioural immune system is sensitive.

    This is because there is no finite set of symptoms associated with infection. (Different kinds of parasitic organisms produce different kinds of symptoms. Different people may show somewhat different symptoms even if they are infected with the same species of parasite.

    And parasitic species can evolve rapidly, with the consequence that their symptomatic manifestations may be highly variable over time.

    Thus, to avoid costly false-nesative errors.
    the behavioural immune system must be sensitive to a very broad range of cues that might be potential indicators of infection. Indeed, it has been suggested that any
    rerceived deviation from prototypical human morphology and motor behaviour may implicitly connote potential infection riscs.
    ——————————

    https://youtu.be/2AaWoUMmlLQ

  5. Here in SoCal I went to my neighborhood Costco to pick up some eggs and almond milk. The parking lot was full with cars waiting for available spaces, something that I have never seen before. I was blessed to find a space near the store but when I went to enter the entry was cordoned off to a single line, that stretched around the perimeter of the store! Another first. This was at 10:30 in the morning. Later that afternoon around 5:00pm my wife and I went shopping there only to find a line waiting from the sales registers to almost the rear of the store! All the shopping baskets were full with some actually hauling two shopping carts! From what I understand the panic is due to fears that the store will be closed as it is a venue for ‘mass gatherings’ that could provide an opportunity for the contagion to spread. The school where my wife teaches has been closed for three weeks and the services at our church have been cancelled. Sniff! The reason for all this is apparently an executive order by our Governator effective 12 March that forbids gatherings of 250 people or more in a single venue. So…..it would seem that the good folks of California are under house arrest, in a manner of speaking in the wake of one death of an elderly person in Placer County (the boonies in the Sierra Nevada Mountains). At least we’re not in solitary confinement, yet. So, where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name, there He will be in the midst of them, which is what we will be doing as He is the only comfort that we have in the midst of this insanity that thank God has not become undisciplined, and we are praying that it remains disciplined, respectful, and neighborly.

  6. a correction to my previous post: our church will be holding its regularly scheduled services this Sunday. Stay tuned for the State of California’s response to this seeming refusal to bow the knee to Sacramento.

  7. Walking in slow motion around the store I really notice the speed. “Letting go” really can put you in charge for a few moments. At the cash registers apart from the bog rolls there are mostly lovely boxes and packaging with food pictures and advertising on the boxes that may be the source of health advice. Maybe there is a connection between the two? Tons of fruits, veg, oats, grains. You name it really. Marketing has done quite a job.

  8. What’s wrong with people? Running out of toilet paper would be a nuisance, but hardly a disaster if there’s a shower nearby.

    • Low information consumers. Same idiots are also low information voters.

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