This thing and that thing.

[aadler]

So, in China my granddaughter is back home, after spending six weeks with her other grandparents in Nanjing, but still not back in school. My daughter-in-law is still working from home; my son Kevin is back to working in an office, but 1) they have to wear masks, 2) they have to use hand sanitizer on a frequent basis, and 3) the office is sprayed twice a day.

At the same time, back here on the home front …

On my job, we were told toward the beginning of the week that anyone who wanted to work from home was allowed to do so without question or prejudice. I hadn’t specifically intended to take advantage of that (except possibly the two days a week I’m both working and not driving Susan to work as well) because, since she’s a health care professional, it was more likely that I’d catch Covid-19 from her than from anyone at my job. However, she was called midway through her clinical yesterday and told to send her students home, everything would be distance learning till after Spring Break (and we don’t know how long afterward). That turned things around; and, as she has underlying lung issues that put her in a more vulnerable category, it’s now not particularly desirable for me to risk bringing anything home to her.

(Also, my son kind of ordered me to take the work-from-home option. He can’t actually compel my obedience, but as we get closer to the day when we might wind up living with him, it seems prudent to stay on his good side.)

Yes, there have been coronavirus cases diagnosed in my state, that being the reason for the sudden change of approach even ahead of the most recent White House announcement. Not really unexpected, but the abruptness of it still caught me psychologically off-balance. Not distressed or fearful, just focused on maintaining equilibrium.

And, when a state announcement coincides with national news, what happens then?

Susan has been on disaster preparedness teams in her professional life, and so has a certain bent toward advance preparation, and I might have picked up a few tendencies along the same line when I was in the Army. As an example, in the trunk of my car I have a sleeping bag, a two-person tent, and a first-aid kit, ‘just in case’, and at home there’s a month’s supply of freeze-dried food even apart from our usual complement of dry staples (rice and beans keep for a long time, and together supply all the amino acids necessary for survival). Plus, of course, all the guns and ammunition I used to have before the tragic canoe accident …

The point is, we stock ahead, and stay stocked ahead by replacing supplies long before they run out. Which is good, because, yes, we are currently facing the results of panic-buying around us.

It was time to replenish a few things, because we were down to that minimum one-month supply. I had to hit two different stores before I could find mac-and-cheese, three to get a bag of rice, and you can forget toilet paper, every shelf in every store is stripped. (Same for dry pasta; I got a single bag of egg noodles because that was all that was left.) The thing is, at some point unreasoning overreaction to an unrealistic assessment of need serves to create the need: when morons buy out all the toilet paper, normal people who aren’t panicking suddenly have to start behaving unreasonably just to keep up with basic usage. Susan and I aren’t facing that issue — because we’re better than normal — but it still affected us, in that our strategic reserve has become our main supply until things even out again.

Which they will. In a free market economy, demand is met by a supply response; if toilet paper is being bought out, caravans of trucks carrying toilet paper will already be on the highways.

Meanwhile, we’re where we are, and we’re okay with that.