Pandemic Logic at Work

I have to ask: are we having a meat shortage or not?

Last week, they told us meat was going to become a problem, fast. Whether or not it was true, I felt I had to get out there and try to blunt the effects of hoarding by picking up a few pounds of meat. I have learned that when people think something is in short supply, they will generally hog it and make it hard to find, whether or not it’s scarce.

Today I went to the grocery. My local Winn-Dixie had lots of beef on sale. They also had bacon on sale. I picked up two pounds. I’ve been making biscuits, and I will need bacon grease in the future.

I went to Publix, which is another chain. I was hoping to find real bread flour and yeast. I had no luck in the baking aisle. I checked on bacon. They were somewhat low, and there were little signs telling people not to hog it.

At Winn-Dixie, they were selling bacon two for one. At Publix, the signs said you should only take one package.

One store was trying to get rid of pork, and a store two or three miles away was trying to prevent a run. This is the way the panic has been. What’s unobtainable on one block is abundant on the next.

Smithfield is a big pork producer, and they have been named among the likely plant-closers. Smithfield bacon was on sale here today. Okay. That certainly makes sense.

Complicating things, the situation varies from state to state. My cousin lives near Chicago. She says they can’t get meat. She says you have to park across the street to get into Walmart for anything, and her son told her it would take hours to get inside the building. Those nice, generous Chicagoans. You have to admire them.

What’s the story? Is there no shortage? Is there a slight shortage? Is the shortage still a week or so away? Did Trump abort the shortage when he pressured the meat packers and gave them special status?

Why is it you can’t get into a Chicago-area Walmart while the one closest to me is packed with nearly everything and not crowded? They even sell toilet paper. There is a lot of empty space in the paper aisle, but you can get toilet paper. In Chicago, you pretty much have to use leaves.

I’m wondering if this epidemic is completely different for Christians and unbelievers. Are they suffering more than we are? I live in an area where chain stores play Christian music, and things are not bad at all.

I guess reality is always different for the blessed and the cursed. It was certainly different when the flood started and when God burned Sodom and Gomorrah. It was different when he struck Egypt with plagues and killed Pharaoh and his army.

I don’t think the meat shortage will amount to much, because Trump is on the case. Still, if you live in a godless area where people don’t care about each other, a perceived shortage can be worse than an actual shortage.

Maybe when the election comes, they will marvel at us because we haven’t turned on Trump. Maybe because their experience has been worse, they will assume we went through the same thing.

I did something fun today. I bought paper towels. I bought 6 big rolls of Bounty. Real paper towels. Not an off brand. Did I need them? Not really, but I’ll need them in a few weeks, and I figured it was okay to buy them because they were sitting on the shelf in mid-afternoon. I wouldn’t have done it at nine. I just felt that if I bought them, I would stop thinking about paper towels.

Maybe I shouldn’t have bought them. Hard to say.

I am considering getting masks. I have no idea how I’ll do it, so maybe it won’t happen. I think they will do nearly nothing to protect me, but they might help other people if I get C19 and don’t know it. I wonder if they’re available anywhere.

Amazon has some dubious listings that look fraudulent. And they want over four bucks each for disposable masks. Surely that’s not the normal price. Forget that. I’m not paying $4 every time I get out of the car.

I checked, and the regular price is around $1.20 per mask, if you buy 10. It’s a wonder no one is shooting price gougers.

Should I get cheap surgical masks instead?

At first, they told us masks were pointless. Then they told us N95 masks could protect us if fitted very carefully and disposed of after use. Now they’re telling us to wear nearly anything.

Forget it. If cheap is all I can get, I have a camo thing I bought for hunting. It will be just as good as a surgical mask, and I can wash it.

I want to get tested to see if I really did have C19 in January. It would be great to find that out. It would mean I am immune and in all likelihood, not contagious. Testing is still reserved for sick people, however, and going into a place where they are testing seems like the only really good way to catch C19 in this county.

I’m going to chronograph some ammunition and forget the whole business. I think June will be a very nice month.