And so here we are (my wife and I), sitting mostly at home, only going out for absolute necessities such as food and drugs. The drugs are coming from my local CVS, and I can do the drive-through for that, thus staying away from the contaminated herds of stupid denying people. The food and other basic supplies I’m getting almost exclusively from a local Costco. Here’s what that was like when I went out this past Tuesday.

Firstly, all the grocery stores have suffered from panic buying. Toilet paper was the biggest visible buyout, but other items were being scarfed up and hoarded for no good reason. These included bottled water packs, eggs, and bread. I’ve read that pastas were also being scarfed up, and I’m sure there are even more items.

When I got to the Costco closest to where we live, I discovered that the Costco staff had closed off the front of the store with stacks of blue flats at least waist high (at least to me), and we were directed to start a queue off the side, single file. The the staff let us in a few at a time. I was able to get in after a five minute wait outside. Note the sign at the entrance about social distancing.

I got in and picked up the few items we needed. As I moved through the store I kept hearing staff saying “one egg, one bread, one water.” By one egg they meant flats that contain two dozen eggs. Two dozen is all the two of us can consume even in a single week. It usually takes about a week-and-a-half before I have to go back and get more eggs. A single bread purchase from there lasts a week, and as for water, well, tap water is actually pretty good around here. Once I got to the checkout, the Costco staff had set up the checkout lanes so that every other one was closed, helping to maintain social distancing.

And to give you the obligatory empty toilet paper isle, this is from the Publix closest to where we live. This was taken right before I went to Costco. All the other Publix isles were still fairly full, at least at a glance. I didn’t spend any time in that store because it was too crowded to suite me; I was in and out in under two minutes and kept my “social distance” the entire time.

I don’t know a “good” way to end this except with this latest COVID-19 map update. The numbers are steadily climbing, especially for the US. We could have avoided the worst of this if we’d acted eight weeks before we finally did. Now, we have to get through this as best we can.