So the news of the decade is COVID-19 aka Novel Coronavirus. It apparently affects people’s brains before even infecting them. Either that or Australia is screwed royally…
Today is a typical day post-COVID:
Yesterday’s national disaster was that a truck carrying toilet paper caught fire. Yep. Because all our Newly-Minted Born-Again Preppers have decided that … (Ready for it? Brace. This stupid, it burns…) Yes, this idiot populace has decided that the only way to deal with a coronavirus outbreak was with a sufficient supplies of poo tickets.
Never mind that they’ve in the process exposed themselves to every person wandering in and out of town from whatever pool of infection they may have come from. Because this increases their chance to have a story to regale their grandchildren with, assuming they survive. But they’re going to have clean buttholes you hear! SHINY! BRIGHT! CRAP-FREE! BUTTHOLES!
And that’s not the only thing. Apparently the NMBAPs are also stockpiling – baked beans, Because you can never have too much gas when locking down, with your family, for an unknown period in self-imposed quarantine. Which they’ll break anyway just because stocks of TP are back at Woolies.
Another hot item has been cat litter, apparently. Because letting kitty out for shitty is too big an ask? Or are people just short-sighted? Unable to formulate and pursue a thought to its logical conclusion? Or maybe they really are total idiots.
Here’s how my day went:
Got up early(ish) to hit the shops and get my spouse some toilet paper. (We have a small stock but why would we fill the house with rat nesting material? And who expected people to be so goddamn stupid, anyway? This is just boggling my brain. What are these people hoping to achieve?)
Went to the pet shop first to pick up the usual fortnightly diced ‘roo meat for them. Nope, someone panic bought the whole load within a day of restocking. I can’t begin to enumerate how many kinds of stupid this is. Let me try…
One. It’s kangaroo which is an Australian animal FFS. Has not been anywhere near Wuhan because they can’t afford the bloody airfares.
Two.; The people out culling the ‘roos are Australian people, outdoorsy types that a) won’t come into much contact with CoV-19, and b) will have healthy immune systems thanks to the, you know, outdoorsy nature of going out and culling ‘roos – which is not something you can do while waiting in an airline lounge hoping to catch some snort of C9V-19 or whatever disease du jour.
Three: The people who process this, who package and freeze it, they’re also not all likely to catch the galloping Corona at the same time. Ditto the delivery driver(s). There’ll be plenty of ‘roo meat again next week for heaven’s sake.
Four: I have no words for a stupid greedy pet store owner that chose not to impose a per customer limit so as to not leave hundreds of other animals hungry. Just a greedy shortsighted mob of sons of bitches.
So anyway. I’m sorry I sort of had to leave you guessing at my true feelings there but I hope you got the gist of it.
Oh yeah. Five: I then had to go to two other supermarkets to find substitute Biologically Appropriate Raw Food for the cats, so I’ve had to expose my lungs to several hundred more people.
Sorry. Sorry. I’ll get back on track.
So there’s all of that going on, I go to my local ALDI which had been totally out of TP the day before. It’s only just after 9AM after all so I expect their restock might have put new TP on the shelves. I’m right – I see a pack of TP in someone’s trolley, so I scoot to the TP aisle and – it’s empty. Scabbed clean within half an hour. (Actually probably less time because there were no other carts with any in, so they must have loaded up and left within minutes of the store opening.)
I decided the local hospitality wholesaler would be a good bet, they sell “Who Gives A Crap?” TP and so I wandered in – nope, the smaller packs of WGAC were all sold, they had huge cartons of 48 or 52 or something at $52 apiece, which is not in our budget.
Oh and we’re not finished yet.
I brought home what I had and prepared to go for a drive to pick up some 1000litre water totes for the garden watering, but my (un)handy person has time constraint issues and I can’t hurry myself much more so I’ve had to delay that until next week.
And to see shelves empty of baked beans and TP (and, in apparent desperation, kitchen paper towels and tissue and wet wipes) and pet litter and so forth has been a sobering wake-up for me. I’ve been slacking on the preps because I really thought things would be as they were when I was a kid.
If a cyclone cut our town’s weekly supply truck off, the store would empty their freezers for us, and never once thought about price gouging. If we went short of milk powder, we’d borrow some off the neighbour down the road. If they had no sugar, we had no trouble splitting our sugar in half and sharing that. So we had less for a week, but someone else didn’t have to go without, either.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if people could stop being arses for just a few weeks and go back to a community based way of life?