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Well the Covid-19 pandemic continues to spiral into new funkiness. Last Thursday L.A. County declared a “Safer at Home” order with a tentative expiration date of April 19th. The State of California shortly followed with a similar order but no expiration date, which is probably wise what with the number of cases still currently expanding rather than contracting and most health professionals warning the worst is yet to come.
Psychologically we seem to be having a whole range of reactions, from people hoarding food, toiletries and firearms like societal collapse is just around the corner, to people still taking their whole family to the beach like they’re on vacation, where they were packing in nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of other families thinking the same. The latter behavior has already caused a lot of the U.S. to issue even stronger moratoriums on public (and even private) gatherings deemed non-essential.
Yesterday Dawn tentatively ventured out to one of our local supermarkets and found it mostly empty of people but with shelves full of meats and produce once again available. Still no toilet paper though, and a clerk she asked confirmed they restock it every day but every day people are still lining up an hour before opening and buying it all out. That’s impressive considering most stores we’ve been to here have put per household limits on certain high-demand items like the aforementioned TP. My theory on the TP shortage was that there was a first wave that included several, ah–let’s gently call them “entrepeneurs”–who bought up as much as they could with the intent to resell it at exorbitant prices. That didn’t work out so well once Amazon and E-bay caught on and started prohibiting private sellers from doing that, leading to a lot of attempted returns at Costco. One guy infamously made the news by complaining about being stuck with his whole garage full of hand sanitizer (he later donated it after a serious dragging on social media).
This second wave? I don’t know, maybe people caught by surprise during the first wave and so doing whatever they can to score some precious paper? During the announcements on the 19th the city mayors assured us the supply chain was intact and there would be no shortages, which seems to be bearing out so long as you don’t need to wipe your ass.
Along with some of the rush to the beaches are reports of a rush inland, particular to various national parks, which recently caused Joshua Tree to close to vehicle traffic after it ended up looking like a parking lot. People haven’t gotten the hint. I’m hearing personal reports from friends in rural mountain and desert communities with growing concerns as the city folk seem to have en masse decided their hometowns are the place to “get away from it all” even though again, it’s turning out everyone else had similar ideas. This is likely not what the governors and local authorities had in mind when they encouraged that people could still talk a walk outside as long as they did so responsibly.
But there are certainly people staying home as well, as evidenced by the comparison picture at the start of this blog. The fleeing of the cities isn’t so hectic that you have the scenario imagined in TWD where the side of the freeway going in is clear while the side going out is an auto graveyard. Instead, the whole freeway is empty. The Las Vegas strip is empty, and that’s a shocking sight, much moreso than L.A. where there’s still traffic on the streets but bumper-to-bumper rush hours are a memory and the air has gone clear and blue just apparently from the reduction in active commuting.
I hope that the virus doesn’t hit as hard as expected, because if it does it’s ironically going to hit worst in these rural communities suddenly playing unwilling hosts to hundreds of quarantine-defying strangers who might very well be carrying the infection with them to a place with far less infrastructure in terms of hospital and emergency services than a big city. This is a scenario I admittedly never thought about in my zombie apocalypse, probably because the assumption is always that travel is snarled or suspended in such short order that most everyone’s stuck in place whether they want to be or not. Here we have a virus but no enforced travel restrictions (at least, not yet).
Well, I’ll be back again in a week to check in, and meanwhile if the world holds to form all the big new developments will come shortly after this blog goes live.