Posted on 03/16/2020 8:47:32 AM PDT by freedumb2003
Holy moley!
I have a bit of a cold or something. I am out of Kleenex for my constantly runny nose (yeah, I know *yech* TMI -- but it is important to the story).
I always get up early, so I ran to the nearby Ralphs which purpotes to be open 24 hrs. I encounter a hand-written sign "open from 8 AM to 8 PM."
Well, dangit!
OK, I go back at 8 AM. There is a HUGE LINE to get in!! There was a clerk at the door managing the line so she says I have to wait until the line finishes.
Fair enough. It took the line 10 minutes to finish. When I got to the paper goods, I literally got the last box of Kleenex and the second to the last 8 back of : paper towels. Toilet paper: gone. By the time I snagged the Kleenex and paper towels the shelf was empty!
I have to ask W T H??? Fortunately at home we have Costco levels of this stuff. You preppers can get rich reselling your supplies.
I am on the road in CA (I live in TX) so I can only do what I can do.
Report from Bucks/Montgomery County in PA (we have several confirmed cases in the area).
Went to the local Weis Market. Not super-busy, everyone seemed polite and no panic. Meat, Dairy, Produce, Cereals all well-stocked with a few exceptions. Rice was almost cleared out. Canned goods were a little low but still plenty. One pack of toilet paper that was ripped open and one package of paper towels with one roll missing (tells me that no one was soooo desperate that they would take anything they could find). Tissues about 1/2 typical amount. Bread was down to one small section that had probably just been restocked.
There were a few weird empty areas that made no sense. Like whipped cream, queso dip, string cheese wiped out, and no big jars of Miracle Whip!
yep. that is PRECISELY what I just said to my adult kids.
>>I’m not a prepper but do try to save just enough in advance to maybe get through a difficult time.<<
Yeah, after the Northridge quake we became “preppers” of a sort. You have to assume in Earthquake country (or hurricane or tornado areas) you should always provision for at least 2 weeks.
But I am on the road and it did not occur to me that I need to provision.
When this insanity clears I will provision accordingly. There IS a Costco nearby so I can TCB.
In the largest grocery and discount chain in the country, until about 12 days ago, employees in individual stores were allowed to decide how much of particular products to order (for example, ordering more than usual). That practice was halted at about then. Everything is ordered from a central office.
I just hit the local WM.
They had a fair amount of milk, but no eggs, (dunno why?)and minimal bread.
Beer, wine, and liquor was in great supply, literally overflowing the display areas, that surprised me a bit.
I got my three month supply of metformin for 10 bucks (thank you WM) and it was from India not China.
Yup.
I work for FedEx. My greatest fear is to let my allergies loose while making a delivery :)
My father taught me about the virtues of sardines. Actually in tomato sauce they are pretty good
The world got crazier today.
Every single frozen item in 3 stores — gone.
I promised not to cuss 15 years ago (or so) but WHATTHE F’ing F????
But I did h-5 myself for scoring few boxes of kleenex (or similar). I had to tell everyone in line “I am NOT hoarding.”
To be fair they just laughed and said that “hey we are all doing what we can.”
FReepers — and I dearly love you all (and included an old FRiend here) — 3 rules to get us through this: kindness, patience and humor.
>>Beer, wine, and liquor was in great supply<<
Thank God!!!
Went to a convenience store today. Zero line, two bottles of wine, 18 beers, no price mark up. There is NOTHING wrong with society. I told the cute Korean...”If the world is ending, I’m going out drunk...”
heh - Sponge Bob looks like a corona virus in that scene!
If you haven’t already done so, try to find out from a store employee when your desired item will arrive on a truck. Get there about when the truck arrives, and wait on the sales floor for the pallet or cart to be brought onto the floor. Then be conservative about how many units you take—maybe enough for a week or two, because the trucks will keep coming. Inside word from someone who works in one of the bigger stores.
Most of the food and paper products are produced here in the U.S.A. The grocery companies simply weren’t ready for an epidemic and didn’t want to bother with keeping the extra inventory in advance. Or maybe there’s a tax reason. Either way, they didn’t prepare.
But they’re trying to catch up, little by little, with what the producers can send to them. Two pallets of TP came to that big store yesterday, by the way. Customers hogged it all up within an hour or two (no limits at that store).
Other customers will need to wait for the next truck for TP, probably in another day (about every two days). That store gets other kinds of trucks without TP on them (4 or 5 trucks per week). How many trucks per week depends on the size of the store.
Here’s what bugs me. Maybe around 6 weeks or so ago, I advised FReepers to stock up for a couple of months. Said that stores would have a chance to order more and restock earlier.
Maybe that way, there would be fewer people in the stores, when the stores are very infected. The advice didn’t go very far. It was business as usual in the stores at least most of last month, if I remember correctly.
When most of the stores became somewhat infected, people mobbed those stores. Now the stores are more infected each week, and people are still crowding into them. That’s what I was hoping to prompt as many people as possible to avoid needing to be in those places now and after and to spur store managers to order more earlier and get more production going.
At the press briefing a few days ago, Dr. Fauci said that we’re about two weeks behind in the numbers of cases that we see as compared to the real numbers of cases. The numbers of cases can multiply an awful lot in two weeks, as we’re beginning to see.
Do you have a Brave browser? If so, you might be able to see the following map with numbers of cases without a subscription. Might even be able to see it with another browser (don’t know). The map is updated quickly from several sources.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
Informing people to get them to do something good for themselves is far more difficult than herding cats.
Thank you for the ping! It’s so good to see you again. :o]
Thankfully, I’m fairly isolated where I am, now. I moved from NV about 18 months ago, and it was an adjustment to not be able to shop at 0400 wherever I needed to go, but at least here, the Walmart is 24/7 so I can do some shopping in the early hours, even though the store is almost five miles from where I live.
The last time I was there (a week ago) there was no TP and the paper products were in short supply. I don’t understand the panic and frenzy, but since I’ve been isolated for almost 30 years, it’s OK. I’ve learned to buy enough of whatever for a month, because I never know how I will feel.
As for friends, well, FR is where my TRUE FRiends and friends and family are, so isolation is only panic-inducing when the Interwebs goes down!
Yes, kindness, patience and humor are necessary, now, more than ever.
Was motivated by you and many others on FR to prepare. I was done by Feb. 21st. Much of my stuff was given to my kids (although my oldest boy did prepare, so he hasn’t needed much). And now I’ve given a few things to neighbors.
I shop for grandma and one of our elderly neighbors. I keep warning them that one of these days I’m not going to go out for two weeks, but they always seem to need something. Hard to say no, so I go on my weekly shopping trip.
I wear gloves, N-95 mask and googles and have a system in place for decon of myself and the groceries so I feel pretty safe. But one of these days they just might close everything down. Everything else is closed, but the grocery store is crowded (parking lots are full) with perhaps 10% of the people wearing masks, nobody wears eye protection. I can’t imagine that the state will allow that for much longer. What is the use of shutting down all the other businesses but allowing the masses to crowd the grocery stores!?
We live in Northern Virginia and I was driving to work on Monday and you could go bowling on the interstate it was so empty. Both commutes reminded me of the Autobahn.
Tuesday, same thing. A typical commute for me is 75 minutes, each way. Monday and Tuesday, it was less than 40 minutes.
Wednesday, traffic was dense but moving, like on a Saturday. Commute was back up to almost an hour. Stores were mobbed, gas stations were mobbed, there were groups of kids hanging out at fast food restaurants and one church parking lot was filled.
I think we will be on mandatory lockdown by the end of the month.
Thanks for the thanks on being prepared and the account of how you’re doing. I’m guessing that you might be in one of the hot spots (no need to tell where you are).
I’m not in a hot spot, yet, and have seen very few people wearing masks. But they do crowd up the local big store every day now. Here it comes.
>>old the cute Korean...”If the world is ending, I’m going out drunk...”<<
Best advice ever!
:)
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