Fluffy Herald of Relief Appears

I have earth-shaking news. Real American toilet paper is available from Amazon. I don’t mean weird Chinese paper which is somehow puffed up so it takes three rolls to do the job of one real roll. I mean actual American toilet paper. I saw Angel Soft in the listings, and it’s in stock. Other brands must be on the way.

Surely the clouds have parted.

I thought this would happen two weeks ago. It did happen, though, and that’s the main thing. America’s garages and spare rooms can only hold so much toilet paper. People couldn’t keep buying huge quantities forever. Eventually, we had to see a change.

Now what are the hoarders going to do with their house-choking stashes? Check Craigslist next month.

I have a cousin in the Chicago area, and she says she’s down to two rolls. Apparently, the good-natured midwestern folk of Chicago have treated each other very badly during the last month or two. She says they cleaned stores out. Things many Americans were able to buy easily were not available there.

I’ve heard people say Chicagoans are wonderful, friendly, helpful people. Nothing like New Yorkers.

Whatever. The proof is in the pudding.

The other day I heard a quote about hard times. I can’t find it. Paraphrasal: hard times don’t change a man; they reveal him. That’s what I have to say about Chicago’s hoarders, as well as all other hoarders. There is no point in virtue-signaling after you’ve been exposed. Makes you look worse.

The hoarders here are completely nuts. If you go to one store, you’ll find it completely stripped of one type of item, but if you go to another, you’ll see that item for sale, along with things you couldn’t find at the first store. Example: my local Winn-Dixie had a run on potatoes, but a Publix a few miles away had plenty. Two days ago, the only dish powder I could find at Publix cost $14 for 37 loads, so about 38 cents per load. It was that weird encapsulated kind. Anyone who buys that is begging for poverty. I drove a mile to Walmart and found I could get almost whatever I wanted. I bought two boxes of the store brand, which is very cheap and works just as well as Cascade. Paid about half what the fancy stuff cost. I would guess you use half an ounce per load, so 300 loads at 2.58 cents per load. What drives a person to buy pods? It’s madness.

Walmart had paper towels, too. I bought two rolls, just for the thrill. The beef had been raided (unlike Publix and Winn-Dixie), but they had a magnificent, highly marbled cowboy rib eye for a good price, so I jumped on that. It was excellent.

If there were any sense to the hoarding, every store would lack the same things. And no, it’s not a supply thing. It’s not like Publix has a secret potato farm surrounded by guard towers. Hoarder obsessions vary depending on location.

I do not read newspapers, but several times a week, I try to go to the local paper’s website to see if I’m under martial law or anything. I check the COVID-19 numbers. It’s really creeping here. The known total for the county is 121, or about one in 2500. We’re never going to get a major epidemic among the general population. That’s my prediction, anyway. It may find its way into senior facilities, but if we’re at 1/2500 as of April 19, I don’t see us ever ending up like New York.

Speaking of New York, there are a lot of Northerners who live here during the winter, and they’re gone, presumably reducing the travel between here and the north. We had a high percentage of travel-related cases. If you think about it, epidemics can only spread to new areas through travel-related cases.

The median age of the cases here is 50, and it’s probably close to the average, too. Is the virus hitting older people more often? Could be, but it may also be that because most cases are mild or asymptomatic, the people who are reporting their illness are generally those who don’t do as well as the average victim. That would lead to over-reporting of old people, smokers, diabetics, and fat people.

This is not a healthy county. Smoking is everywhere, and the people eat garbage. Obesity almost seems fashionable. Add these factors to the large number of seniors here, and you have a bomb waiting to go off. But it hasn’t and probably won’t.

I have to hand it to the people who run the ALF’s. I know these places are not as clean as typical homes, but someone here must be doing something right. We don’t have a single ALF death cluster, but Massachusetts is jam-packed with them, to the point where they overwhelm statistics for everyone else. Massachusetts has had a bona fide ALF catastrophe. They must be doing very little to protect the elderly.

I would have expected worse performance here.

Apart from having a low population density, I don’t know why we’re doing well. Traffic here is just about normal. It’s not like we’re imprisoned, the way people are in other places. There is still a lot of mingling. I’m considering looking into a haircut next week. The ponytail look is not for me. The Seventies are over, and we should do all we can to put a stake in their heart.

The Johns Hopkins USA graph was still on a plateau last night, which is the last time it was updated. The graph was turning downward again. A plateau is good. We can’t have a true disaster if the transmission rate is sufficiently low.

I wonder how my Ebay bench grinder poverty index is doing. Last time I looked, there were 44 items listed under “Baldor bench grinder.” Let’s see.

It’s down to 41! We’ll see what it looks like after a week or so. Still higher than it was before the epidemic.

Still not ONE major celebrity death.

I suppose I should talk about the supernatural approach to epidemics, since it’s the most important approach.

We got here by neglecting the supernatural, and we should focus on the supernatural to get out.

Disease comes from sin and poor relationships with God. Idolatry, including atheism, is a major cause. Epidemics come to countries where not enough people are repenting and praying. They’re not random things that happen to “good people.” Calling yourself good is actually a great way to invite disaster. The word says God is near to them that are of a broken heart and saves such as be of a contrite spirit, and it says he fights the proud.

The word also says God will heal a country if his people will pray. It doesn’t say, “if everyone in the country will pray.” It says “my people.” God was willing to spare Sodom for 10 righteous people, but he couldn’t find that many.

We should be attacking the epidemic with prayer and repentance. Those of us who are already trying to live God’s way should be praying for revival and repentance, not just an end to the epidemic. Of course, we will be attacked for saying sin is in any way involved in epidemics, even though everyone knows how VD works. Sin even contributes to non-infectious diseases like cirrhosis, lung cancer, COPD, and obesity-related illnesses. The connection between sin and disease should be obvious even to atheists.

Most Christians don’t bless or curse. I guess they don’t know they can. You can speak defeat to problems. You can speak help to people. Isaac did it. Balaam did it. Peter did it. Jesus did it. We should be doing these things.

We should be saying, “I speak defeat to the spirits and people contributing the panic and selfishness.” “I speak defeat to the spirits that spread the disease.” “I speak defeat to the hoarders and the spirits they serve.” “I speak defeat to Satan in his effort to use this disease to turn people into servants of the Beast.” “I speak victory to God’s servants and those who speak the truth about the epidemic.”

Even jihadis know curses and blessings matter. They gather in groups and curse the USA and Israel. Somehow, we don’t think our words have power.

I pray for the epidemic to end, and I also pray for God to defeat the spirits and people who are using it to train people for Satan. I ask God to destroy this plan, and I ask him to spread revival and repentance. I ask him to free people from crooked pastors and dependence on churches, and I ask him to spread true Christianity like a disease, outside of church, from person to person, so people will know him personally, as they are supposed to. I ask him to take Satan’s training exercise away and make it his own.

The Bible mentions several epidemics. Were any NOT caused by sin?

Let’s see.

The Egyptian plagues were caused by sin, and two were bodily afflictions. The hemorrhoid plague in Gaza was caused by sin. The Revelation plagues will be caused by sin. A plague killed 185,000 Assyrians in one night, and it was because they were against God. A plague struck Israel because of David’s sin.

It’s strange that so many Christians think an epidemic is an unjust attack on an innocent society. Where, exactly, is this innocent society? Is it America, which has killed at least 60,000,000 unborn babies since Roe v. Wade? Is it Israel, which has generally rejected Jesus? Is it China, which leads the world in abortion and infanticide?

What does the Bible say about protection from plagues? It says that if you dwell in the secret place of the most high, you shall not fear for the pestilence that walks in darkness. It says that if you make God your refuge, no plague shall come near your dwelling. It says the Hebrews were spared the plague on the firstborn because they obeyed God.

Sometimes famines are epidemics. They can be caused by crop diseases. The Bible says famine comes from curses related to disobedience.

It sure seems like plagues are connected to our attitudes toward God.

If the pandemic is an end-time thing, it will happen again. It may not come as a coronavirus epidemic, but some other global disaster will hit, and it will be followed by others, because the end will be a series of birth pangs. They will precede the emergence of the Antichrist and the return of Jesus Christ. Labor pains get more frequent and more intense, so if you don’t like COVID-19, you will really hate what comes later. It’s time to come inside.